A/N: With the ending of S6, the word that comes to mind is the word I used for the title – saviors. House wants Cuddy to save him from being a lonely, miserable drug addict; Cuddy wants House to save her from being a lonely, miserable hospital administrator. After going through every other option, they land up facing each other, exhausted, wondering if this is really it – if this is what they'd needed all along.
But saving and being saved is not an easy thing – particularly not for House and Cuddy. Because no matter how much you want it, change is a scary thing.
So: House evades, Cuddy smothers, and Zay writes it all with relish.
You will notice, as you read, that baby Rachel and the team are all but shoved in a corner for the entirety of the story. That is because right now, they are irrelevant. I'm not normally that kind of writer – omitting important characters for the sake of my convenience – but this is meant to be a House/Cuddy character study about their internal relationship fissures rather than the more obvious ones (i.e. Rachel and the reactions from the other members of the hospital). Those will come at a time that is not now in this fic. Just so you know.
Enjoy.
Saviors
By: Zayz
Baby, I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
- Jeff Buckley
"Hey!"
Cuddy saw him heading in the direction of the elevator as she was on her way to a meeting on the second floor. Her shout was loud and brisk, as usual, and he turned instinctively when he heard it. His sharp blue eyes took in her skirt, cutting off just past her knee; her hair, which she had taken the time to straighten that morning; her heels, just two weeks old, clack-clacking down the impeccably clean hospital floors.
"Yeah?"
He waited for her to catch up to him, leaning languidly on his cane as though he hadn't a care in the world. His posture sloppy, his clothes typically wrinkled and his sneakers glaringly out-of-place, House seemed her mirror-opposite as she approached him, all business while he was anything but.
"I called the nanny and she said she can stay home with Rachel tonight," said Cuddy, lowering her voice to a murmur nearly inaudible to passerby. "And my work-load isn't quite as insane as I thought it would be. Do you want to get some dinner or something tonight?"
House considered her offer, but not for long.
"Can't," he said solemnly. "Patient."
"Random coma guy?"
"Yup," he said. "He's not responding to the treatment we're giving him. I smell an all-nighter for the team and a most-of-the-nighter for me."
She couldn't pretend she wasn't a little disappointed, as they hadn't been out together for quite a few days, but she did her best not to let it show as she gave him a business-like nod.
"Okay," she said. "I hope he gets better."
"Me too."
House met Cuddy's eye for a split-second before passing her by, headed for the elevator as if nothing ever happened. And Cuddy watched him go, a little bit of worry beginning to form in her stomach.
The dinner invitation had been a test.
That was the truth of it. Asking him to dinner had been designed to ask him something else – something he seemed not to volunteer a good answer for. This confused her. And when she was confused about a House-related matter, the first thing Cuddy usually did was head straight for Wilson's office.
Wilson always knew what to do. It had been his idea to ask House for dinner in the first place.
She knocked on his door and thankfully, he said, "Come in," which meant she wouldn't have to barge in on one of his patients. Obediently, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
"Hey," she said.
"Hi," said Wilson, face as innocent as ever as he observed her from over his paperwork. "What's up?"
Cuddy took a seat on his couch and got comfortable before saying, "I asked him."
"To dinner?"
"Yeah," she said. "About a minute ago."
"Good." Wilson put down his pen and gave Cuddy a more focused version of his attention. He seemed genuinely intrigued. "And what did he say?"
"He said his patient wasn't responding to treatment and he was going to stay late," she said.
"Random coma guy?"
When Cuddy nodded, Wilson considered this seriously.
"Oh, yeah, I remember," said Wilson. "He was in here earlier bouncing off ideas. He hasn't had his epiphany yet, so I'd hazard a bet his team will be running a lot of tests tonight."
"I know," said Cuddy.
"So what's the problem?" Wilson frowned slightly, attempting to answer this question in his head even as he asked it. "He gave you an alibi that checks out."
"It's not the working late that bothers me," Cuddy admitted. "It's…I don't know, it's the way he said it. Like he couldn't even consider it. For all he knew, I could've actually planned something special."
"He's obsessive," Wilson reminded her. "When the patient actually interests him, they take priority."
"Or…" She let this word hang in the air for a moment. "Or…he's trying to get rid of me."
"What do you mean?" Wilson's frown deepened.
"He's trying to push me out of his life," Cuddy said simply, though the emotion in her own frown was far from simple. "He doesn't want me around anymore."
"Come on," said Wilson derisively. "You know as well as I do that getting blown off sometimes is an occupational hazard of being involved with House. One dinner date canceled doesn't spell death for your relationship."
This sounded reasonable enough, but it was clear to both of them that Cuddy didn't believe it. The problem, though, was that neither of them was willing to acknowledge the fact out loud, preferring to leave it unspoken but understood between them. So Cuddy did the only thing she could do: she smiled, thanked Wilson for his trouble, and then left without another word, another look back.
And Wilson watched her go, his eyes lingering on the door for longer than he would have liked. Somehow, he had a bad feeling about this…
By seven, after an extraordinarily exhausting day, Cuddy was finally ready to get out of the office. It was still somewhat light outside, but it was also cold; summer was fading fast and tumbling into autumn, with its shortening nights and chilly breezes. She found herself wishing she'd worn, or at least brought, something warmer.
Slinging her bag over her shoulder and turning off the lights, she left the office and took the familiar route down to House's office. As expected, he was sitting at his desk, his feet up, brooding over a list of symptoms on his board with his red tennis ball in his hands. His team was presumably running tests in the lab. He looked up almost instantly as she appeared at his doorway.
"Hey," she said, her smile soft in the limited light. "You sure you can't come out right now?"
He shook his head gravely, his eyes resting back on the board. "Sorry," he said.
"It's fine," she said, a little too quickly, with a little too much understanding. "You do what you have to do. I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough."
And, on impulse, she added, "Call me when you're on your way out."
He nodded slightly, but it was only to acknowledge the noise coming out of her mouth and she knew it. He was engrossed in this case and couldn't be disturbed. Of course. It made sense. But he seemed a little too determined to stare at the board, away from her. She could just be paranoid – earlier, Wilson had all but told her that – but somehow she didn't think so. Something was definitely up.
Pursing her lips, she chose to leave without another word. He didn't even notice her absence. He just stared at the board, holding the ball, his mind racing, and that was the last image she had of him as she headed out to her car for the night.
It was around two in the morning when she heard the ringing.
At least, that was the time her alarm clock announced to her in glaring red pixels as she wildly scrambled about in bed, half-conscious and wondering if the noise had anything to do with her cannons-and-pirates-in-thongs dream. Not to mention praying that Rachel wouldn't wake in the next room.
As it turned out, the noise was not cannonballs, but her cell phone, ringing and buzzing a symphony from her bedside table. And Rachel, for the moment, was not awake. Thankful but irritated, Cuddy took a moment to glare at it before snatching it up and fumbling to put it on.
"Hello?" The word spilled out of her mouth muffled, like wet cotton.
"It's me." House's voice was a soft mumble on the other end. "You told me to call you when I was done with work."
"Oh," she said, remembering. "You just finished?"
"Yeah. I figured it out." Now a quiet pleasure bled into his voice.
"What was it?"
"Diabetic coma secondary to diabetic hyperosmolar syndrome. The guy had both undiagnosed diabetes and an admittedly well-hidden stash of donuts under his floorboards. The two of them got him into a coma."
"Wow," she said, propping the phone up to her ear and yawning richly. "So I'm assuming you're going to stuff him full of intravenous fluids, insulin, sodium, potassium, and sulfates?"
"Already done."
"Great."
She yawned again and listened to his breathing on the other line. Both appeared to be under the impression that the other would be the one to restart conversation beyond this subject. However, both appeared to be wrong.
So, with a world-wearied sigh (and another quick yawn), Cuddy said, "You should go home and get some sleep. I expect you into work on time."
"Whatever you say, boss," he said, though she could practically hear his eyes rolling through the background static.
"Good," she said. "So I'll see you in the morning?"
"No," he said. "Because I'm going to be late."
She sighed, and considered arguing, but decided the hour was too late (or, rather, too early) to put with House's antics. She would deal with him later.
"Good night, House," she said.
"Good night."
The phone went dead then – giving way to Rachel's whimpers in the next room, which promised a tantrum in minutes to come. Cuddy groaned as she got out of bed and felt around the floor with her feet for her slippers. Damn phone. Damn House. Damn world. Rachel's cry was increasing in volume every second she took in running down the hall to the little girl's room.
It was one of those days that just shouldn't exist.
Thanks to Rachel's crying, Cuddy hadn't gone back to sleep until three in the morning, at which point she received two hours of sleep before going into her morning routine. Feeling sleep-deprived and generally unhappy with the world, she then sprinted into work, her hair not quite as straight as she would have liked, and she dumped her things down on her desk. She almost cried at the stack of paperwork sitting on her desk. She also, apparently, had a meeting in two hours. She would have to brief herself on it before allowing herself to sit down in front of whoever needed to conference with her. Where was her calendar when she needed it? She was sure she would have written something down for this meeting…
Knee-deep in to-do lists, it was all she could do to keep calm. Fortunately, the number of people needing to see her about odd bits of business was low, so she could sit at her desk and pull things together in peace, having asked the receptionist in the clinic to ward off non-crisis situations for the time being. It seemed to be working well enough.
But, of course, it wasn't going to go the full way and work well.
At some point in the haze of administrative maneuvers, the door to Cuddy's office was knocked upon and then opened before she could even ask who was there – and in walked Gregory House.
He seemed relaxed this morning. His appearance was no different – un-ironed shirt, unshaved face, and sneakers – but he was more obvious than he realized about the emotions playing on his face at any given moment in time. Not that she would tell him that any time soon.
"Good morning," said Cuddy, her tone clipped and harried. "Your case file is on the table."
House turned to look at the aforementioned table, and indeed, there sat a blue patient file with a Post-It note on it reading 'House' in Cuddy's handwriting. He strolled over to the table with all the nonchalance his bad leg would allow and then strolled back in front of Cuddy's desk, his sharp blue eyes scanning the file like a computer.
"Boring," he suddenly announced, slamming the folder down hard on her desk and making her jump so violently that her signature smudged. "Brain tumor on the parietal lobe. MRI her head and find it."
"She shows none of the symptoms of a brain tumor on the parietal lobe," Cuddy informed him. "Did you even read that case file?"
"I did, and once you MRI her brain, you'll see I'm right," House insisted. "Boring. I'm not taking the case."
"You're taking the case," Cuddy said with a stab of impatience. "Random coma guy is responding well to treatment – and I took the liberty of checking up on him personally this morning to make sure. You have nothing to do. Therefore, you are going to send someone on your team down to MRI her head while the rest of you come up with alternative diagnoses in case the MRI comes back clean. Good-bye."
House delicately wrinkled his nose as he considered this notion.
"I will do no such thing," he said presently, decisive and cocky. "Send this file back to Boringsville where it belongs."
He attempted to drop it back on Cuddy's desk, but she was prepared for it. As his hand reached down to throw the file, she smacked his hand down to her desk and held it there over the file. He looked astonished at her initiative.
"You will take this case," she said firmly, "and you will now also give me four extra clinic hours this week for being obnoxious."
She held his gaze without a single quiver or flinch, her face like marble. House responded with an intent look of his own, though his was more of a mechanical scan-through, much like his response to the patient file; he was interested to push this a little farther, see how much he could push her before she snapped. Apparently, being merely insubordinate would not do the trick.
The stares remained in place, immovable, for several long, still seconds, until the glint in House's eye gave away his submission half a second before his mouth did.
"Okay, fine," he said, his tone carefully devoid of emotion though his eyes danced away like bubbly soda. "I'll take the case. I may even give you the clinic hours. Let's see how boring our patient is first."
He gave her a sanctimonious little nod before turning around and shutting the door to her office, leaving her sitting at her desk, confused and staring at the doorknob in his wake.
The rest of the morning passed happily enough for House. Empowered by his power-play in Cuddy's office, he took the patient file down to the team and asked the usual leading questions until they came up with a few bogus diagnoses that he could medically justify if asked. The four of them scampered off to collect samples for tests he couldn't even remember hearing once they left the room and House settled into his office with his TV, flipping channels until he found a decent soap opera.
He watched until the team came scampering back, claiming that they had to wait for the test results. He made some dry, cutting remark to this and then told them to sit and wait in the other room, as they were interrupting his soap. Disgruntled but obedient, the team left him at it, and he spent a quiet morning watching TV and making sense of the thoughts flying through his head.
To the untrained eye, the scene in Cuddy's office did not necessarily translate into a win. It would seem that Cuddy, recipient of four clinic hours in addition to the promise of a finished job, had emerged victorious.
But they hadn't been playing for four clinic hours and a patient file. They had been playing for stakes much higher than that:
Information.
House now knew several things that were of great interest to him – something he was very aware of, under the partial-guise of watching TV in his office.
There are two ways to deeply hurt someone: by ignoring them, or by openly insulting them. The previous day, he had tried to former of the two by not accepting Cuddy's invitation to dinner. She was clearly disappointed and had made little effort to hide it from him. She accepted the excuse the patient provided and allowed it to slide.
But when he tried the latter method – insulting her – he found which one struck her most.
By taking advantage of her and calling her at two in the morning, knowing she would be startled and answer, and by making a mockery out of her job by insulting patients in her office, he made her angry. She slammed his hand down and talked tough, holding out his stare until the very end. She made him do things her way and let him know, like she had with her disappointment, that she was feeling something he couldn't wave away.
Usually, in House's experience with women, they tended to hate being ignored. It was those little things – dinner rejections, smoking indoors, making crass jokes whenever the moment seemed too quiet. But with Cuddy, he was – he admitted it – rather surprised to find that she hated being insulted more than being ignored.
And as the blonde nurse professed her love to the somewhat average-looking doctor in the back of the OR, the bolt of lightning hit and House knew exactly why.
Most women expect the occasional outward slash – insults, fights, tear-inducing remarks. They are hit unexpectedly by the smaller incidents and it bothers them. That's why they react and the relationship falls apart. But Cuddy was the opposite: she, being wise to the ways of House, knew that while outward slashes were inevitable, it was the smaller stings that she would bear the brunt of.
She expected to be left alone for dinner some nights because House was tending to a patient. That's why she wasn't angry. She had figured it was part of the 'House charm' – that it was just one of those things that came with the territory. No doubt Wilson had attempted to fill her in on such details, being a frequent recipient of such neglect.
What Wilson had conveniently not told her, though, was that being involved with House wasn't just the ignoring: it was a lot of the insults too.
Not only would she be expected to be alone many nights, she would have to endure the mannerisms he brought when he was there – the jokes, the slurs, the drinking that sometimes got out of hand.
But she hadn't known that; and when it came time to test the breaking point, as House manifestly did every time he got involved with anyone, she hadn't mentally prepared herself for what was coming and had allowed herself to feel hurt.
However, then the question became: why would she want to keep mentally preparing herself for the worst?
The obvious answer would be that she wanted to save herself from getting hurt, but that only enhanced the original question: why would she keep coming back when she knew it was going to be bad?
It was like moving from the plains out to the tip of the Florida, a location generally favored by vicious summer hurricanes. Why would a person do that? Why would they pack up and buy insurance and make safe-rooms if they could just stay where they were and remain safe?
Usually, this spawned shallow, idiotic answers pertaining to puppy loyalty and an irrepressible love for the land. But the real answer – the one that people don't like to give or don't know how to give – is that they want to be saviors.
They want to save the land from being forsaken by people who can't see the beauty behind the storm. They want to grace it with their presence and make it lively again, maybe inspire others to settle too.
And that's exactly what Cuddy wanted to do.
She wanted to be the savior, the one who braved everything to save him from being alone; she wanted that distinctively female reward of being the one who "fixed" him. She did the work – she broke off a potentially happy engagement to a reliable man and pumped Wilson for information – and she made herself a safe-room, an excuse, which she could stubbornly repeat to herself to get her through the worst of it: that this is all normal, just House being House.
Just House being House.
Well, he decided as he flipped to another channel mid-sentence, he wasn't going to take that.
He didn't want her to hold her breath around him and make excuses for what he did. And he certainly didn't want to be saved by her. It would be easy to let her – she would undoubtedly make things easy for him – but he could never do that to her. Never.
He knew as well as she did what the stakes in this relationship were. It wasn't a fling or a game. It was, in all seriousness, a chance – one chance to do it right. He wasn't getting younger and neither was she; and after all that had gone wrong for both of them, the other was all they had left.
And it didn't just apply to him – it worked both ways.
He couldn't make her save him because she expected him to save her as well, from the very thing she tried to save him from:
Being alone.
And God; who could expect two such people to save each other like that?
The inanity on the TV blathered on, but House wasn't in it anymore and it was getting harder to pretend otherwise. He turned off the TV and stared at the blank screen, his head racing, registering the problem and attempting to come up with a solution.
And already, he knew, no matter how many ways he thought this through, it wasn't going to end well.
The new patient did indeed turn up with a rather large tumor in her parietal lobe later that afternoon and was immediately passed on to Wilson for treatment options. House managed to convince Taub to take over his four clinic hours for Cuddy and the rest of the team went home early, since they didn't have a case. That left House alone in his office, his little world mostly silent, playing an online game of poker.
He played for an hour, maybe more, before Cuddy knocked on the door to get his attention and walked in. She smelled distinctly like antiseptic. He studied her closely, watching for any lingering feelings of discontent, but her expression was carefully scrubbed of emotion and she gave nothing away.
"Hey," she said, soft against the hum of his computer. "Are you ready to go?"
"Kind of." He closed off the poker window without finishing his turn and hit the power button. The screen went black and he got up from the chair, his expression also carefully scrubbed of emotion, giving nothing away.
Silence. Deliberation.
Then—
"If you want to have dinner together, we'll have to eat at my place," she said. "I couldn't bribe my babysitter to stay tonight."
He toyed with the idea of saying no to her, repeating his behavior from last night, but he relented. What he had to do depended on seeing her in some shape or form tonight, and if this was all he got, he would have to make do.
"Fine," he said simply. "Let's go to your place."
Something brightened behind her face to hear him say that, but she did her best not to show it.
"Okay," she said. "I'll meet you there."
"Sounds good."
She gave him a brief, tired smile and left the office, not indicating that he had to come with her. So he watched her leave as he had watched her enter, deciding he would wait at least five minutes before he made the motions to get up and follow her out.
He reached her house twenty minutes after she did.
Twenty minutes. She watched the clock as she bid the babysitter farewell and checked in on sleeping Rachel. And she herself was later than planned because she had picked up Chinese take-out on her way.
Twenty minutes.
And when he did finally arrive, ambling in through her front door, he didn't seem to have any good reason for it, either.
Lips pursed with irritation she wasn't going to release, she told him to help her set out the dishes as she emptied the bags and he obliged, for once, silently finding the right cabinet and picking up the two plates. They settled in at the dining table, steam rising from the take-out boxes, and helped themselves to rice, kung pao chicken and vegetables.
There wasn't much to say over dinner. Cuddy filled up most of the time with stories about her hectic day at work and how the babysitter – trying to take advantage of her long hours – was attempting to raise her fees. House listened as well as he knew how and tried to nod sympathetically, but the effort was pathetic and both of them knew it. They would probably have been better off if Cuddy had kept her mouth shut.
The meal seemed to drag on for ages, but it did finally come to an end. House chose to sit and observe as Cuddy cleared away the dishes and leftovers; and, as predicted, she didn't say a word about it. It slightly annoyed him, he realized. Wilson did the same thing. They both indulged him and he wasn't quite sure how he felt about it: thrilled, because he was free to do whatever he pleased, or deeply guilty, for putting them into a position where the bad guy won by default.
It was a close call, but the guilt took more prevalence tonight, and he knew something had to be done.
Once Cuddy finished, she tied her hair back with a rubber band and asked, "Do you want to stay over?"
The answer was already in his head before she asked.
"Yes," he said.
Some time around four in the morning, when the dark sky began to glow in the anticipation of day, and both man and woman lay pleasantly drowsy in bed, Cuddy slipped out of bed to get in the shower. House watched as she picked up her robe from the chair beside the door and put it on, even though there was not an inch of her body he had not scrutinized last night or any night before it. She didn't look back as she padded into her bathroom, closed the door and turned on the light, a brightly artificial golden light visible in the cracks between frame and door.
He could hear her bustling around in the bathroom – the clatter of a toothbrush falling on the counter, the sink turning on and turning off, then the distinct rumble of the shower starting up. He lay in a near trance, listening to her shower, looking around the dark room, the ambiguous shapes of furniture. As his eye fell to the window, he realized belatedly that it was raining.
It took her precisely twelve minutes to shower, according to the clock on her bedside table. The water stopped running and now her movements were discernible – her footsteps, the water leaking out of her hair as she squeezed it out. After three more minutes, the bathroom door opened, flooding the room with artificially golden light, and she emerged in one of House's old baggy shirts. Looking at her in it, with her hair sopping wet and tangled, dripping water on her shoulder, he wondered vaguely when he had left it here.
But her musings were not as vague as his, nor were they meek enough to silence. Determinedly, she caught his eye and asked him the question currently on her mind:
"What are we doing, House?"
He started slightly at the unbridled intensity in her voice.
"What?"
The word was so quietly spoken that he wasn't even sure she had heard it. But apparently she had.
"I said, what are we doing, House?" she asked. "I mean, what are we trying to accomplish here? Tell me that. Tell me what you want from me."
He was silent. Of course he was silent. His blue eyes were almost preternatural in the limited light, against the gray of the rain pounding outside. But she realized they were an empty blue – static, scattered electricity instead of real lightning.
"We decided to give this a shot," she said. "But if this is it – if this is all we are – why did you say yes? Why are we still here?"
"I don't know what you mean."
He stated this flatly, so flatly that it contradicted the statement completely and just upset her further.
"You don't talk to me," she said. "Not about anything that matters. The only time you show me you care about me at all is when we're in bed."
She sighed, some of the fight leaking out of her like the water from her hair, and she sat on the edge of the mattress, as far away from him as she could be while sharing the bed.
"I want to make this work," she said. "But I can't do it alone. So tell me…what do you want from me?"
Only now did she glance up and resolutely hold his gaze. And only now did he fight the impulse to avert his eyes and he held her gaze back.
And even though it took him every ounce of bravery he had in him, he quietly informed her, "I don't know."
There are many things wrong with their relationship – the games, the occasional lies, the emotional imbalance, the lack of true intimacy – but after simplifying everything into its base form, coming into the real heart of the matter, they find they match up exactly when it really counts.
Understanding flickered between them and she was instinctively aware that this is the most honest answer he knows how to give: the confession that he, the logical, rational one, has no idea what he's doing either. Their gaze continued to hold and she found herself softening down to nothing.
Pursing her lips, she climbed into bed beside him. She smelled vividly of shampoo and her wet hair was cold against his shoulder. He turned his head to look at her and discovered that she was already there, looking at him, right through him. Despite himself, he smiled slightly.
And as both leaned in – her upwards, him downwards – he allowed her to save them both tonight and he met her kiss as sweetly as he knew how. It was surrender, for however long it lasted, and the arousal beginning in him again felt like a welcome relief.
But even while he began teasing her out of his ratty old shirt and the rain outside belligerently pelted the window, they were both distinctly aware that the issue at hand wasn't really resolved.
His answer, honest as it undoubtedly was, came up short. He didn't know and this left them no direction besides the one they had already been following with limited success. They were right back where they started – trying to feel out the other's boundaries and not step on any toes – and ultimately, doubt and thought brought them nowhere.
This early morning tryst was nothing more than a weak patch on the roof: transitory, quick to fall apart under the hurricanes that were undoubtedly coming near. The roof will eventually give, too tired to carry on, and they will both drown under the weight of the water.
But not today. Not today.
And that makes all the difference.
A/N: If I told you how long it took me to write that, you would laugh. So I'm not going to tell you. It was mostly the last scene that tripped me up. It was hard to know where this series of circumstances would end. So I decided to leave it there – doomed.
No, not cheerful. But I wanted something honest. I ended up with this.
Please be kind and review, yes?