Disclaimer: I do not own House or Cuddy.

In Dreams

She dreams about him. In little pieces. Tiny images in flashback. Things that are not really there at all now and maybe they never were.

Were we ever? She thinks when he's shouting at her. His eyes flashing with something that she can't quite place. But it isn't good. It never will be good again, right?

A mark on her hand from the burn of a drop of coffee or one of his thumb prints from long ago? She feels the pressure still as though his hand circled her wrist only last night.

"You have a pulse, right?"

Late nights and lonely people don't mix but are invariably drawn into the same time frame. The same minutes ticking by for the both of them. And he cocks his head to the side and for a second he is George Clooney and the quirk of a smile ghosts at his lips and he is playing doctor with her and she holds her breath because she wants to see how far he'll take things.

"I don't know."

Maybe. Not anymore.

When you haven't been touched for so long any physical contact is such a big deal. Such a moment of intensity that she stumbles her words. Silence, only for her breathing, and her breathing is ragged.

But he is shaking too. Only slightly. Only the very tip of his index finger as he releases his grip slowly. It's enough for her to notice and the game halts instantly.

"What? So now you don't want to do it?"

She closes her eyes to the words. Why verbalise it? "Do it." Like signing a form and filing it away? Case closed? More like signing the form and posting it in a mailbox addressed to: "who knows where".

He places his lips above her eyebrow and presses down hard. It's a strange place to be kissed. But everything is strange.

He pulls away and watches the tremble in the corner of her lips as she whispers:

"Please don't say anything else."

"What? Ever?"

She smiles. Yes. Ever.

And when you're sitting opposite me in the conference room please don't look me over like you know every curve and dip of my body. And when you're shouting at me about your latest case please don't reveal your intimate knowledge about my lacy underwear.

She knows he'll do it anyway. Nothing changes with him. And she immediately falls into the pattern of his kisses and the way his hands wander down to the small of her back.

And what they need is to hold onto each other in the dark where no one can see them and no explanations are needed, what they get is a hard quick clumsy fuck and perfectly synchronised orgasms that crash against their aching bodies and shatter and scatter their histories to the far corners of the hospital.

Everything just as it was the last time.