Sessions - Coffee talk: Always Keep Extras on Hand

"Okay… so if you can believe it, this morning I actually woke up later than Rumpelstiltskin and I find him all dressed and ready in the kitchen making coffee, " Cate said to the table of friends. All of them had a wary expression on their face as they knew that House never got up early… even if the world was on fire. Knowing there had to be more to the story, they were waiting cautiously for the other shoe to drop… so to speak. "I figured that I was incredibly late so I splashed some water on my face, did an airplane shower and threw my hair up in a bun." She indicated her mess of hair spilling out of its clip which could only be considered chic if she were some twenty year old Hollywood starlet in a pair of $1100 jeans. They all nodded in affirmation, having all been there at some point in the last week themselves, and waited for her to continue. "I go to brush my teeth and my tooth brush is wet…"

"Oh, gross, " Cameron gasped.

"He didn't, " Cuddy exclaimed.

"That's disgusting, " Thirteen remarked snidely.

"Yeah, I know, " Cate said in misery. "At least you all agree with me. I was mortified."

"What'd you say to him, " Cameron asked. She was leaning back casually against her chair with her arms crossed over her pink scrubs her own hair escaping out of the sides of her ponytail.

"I walked out of the bathroom with my toothbrush in hand and asked him if he used it, " she explained.

"I bet you anything he lied, " Cuddy sniffed rolling her beautiful gray eyes.

Cate shook her head. "No, he didn't. He was like 'Oh, yeah I'm sorry. I grabbed the wrong one by mistake and didn't realize until I was done', " she mimicked his tone, flashes of the morning still running before her mind's eye.

"He apologized, " Cameron asked incredulously having to lean forward as if getting closer to the story would make it that much more true.

Thirteen snorted in laughter. "He's probably yanking your chain. No question he ran it under the water to fuck with you and then pretended to be all remorseful."

Cuddy nodded agreeing with the auburn haired fellow. "That sounds more like him."

Cate shook her head. "No, he used it. Here's where it gets weird…"

"There's more?" Cameron was astonished.

Thirteen hit the blonde's shoulder snapping her out of it. "This is House we're talking about, duh! Of course there's more."

Cate, nonplussed by the exchanged, continued, "He asks me if I'm upset."

"Of course you're upset, he brushed his nasty, dirty morning breath teeth with your toothbrush, " Cuddy replied. "Who wouldn't be?"

"That's what I said, " Cate told her. "I told him it was gross. And you know what he said?"

All three of them peered at her like they were on the edge of their seats and she had in her very possession the alarm code to Brad Pitt's townhouse. "He says to me, 'Do I need to remind you what was in your mouth last night?'"

"Oh no he didn't, " Thirteen said with wide eyes and a growing smirk.

"What a jerk, " Cameron agreed.

Cuddy just rolled her eyes and then added, "Leave it to him to demean you for giving him a blow job."

Cate shrugged and twirled her coffee cup in her hand. "I almost stabbed him in the eye with my defiled toothbrush."

"I think I would have, " Cameron said surprised by her own reaction.

"Then he says, 'what's the big deal, if we can be as intimate as we were last night, then why can't we share a tooth brush?'"

There was a collective groan of disagreement peppered with disgust. Cuddy shook her head vehemently and sliced the air with her manicured hand. "Mouths on genitalia is not the same as scrapping away digesting food residue from your teeth and gums, " Cuddy supplied.

"It's equivalent to licking his asshole, " Thirteen said.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far, " Cameron disagreed.

Thirteen shrugged. "What, food, bacteria, enzymes, it's essentially the same thing, except one's an entrance, the other's an exit. And I don't want my mouth around either."

"It's not so much that, it's that he didn't get how much it bothered me. And how it didn't bother him at all."

"He's a guy. Guys are gross, " Thirteen said derisively lacing her fingers over her flat abdomen as she leaned coolly back in her chair. "Why do you think I dabble with women?"

Cameron let a little grimace sneak out. "I still don't know how you can do what you do with women."

"Wanna try?" Thirteen said with a suggestive grin and Cameron rolled her eyes. "So it's ok for guys to do it to you but not the other way around."

Cameron shook her head caught in a trap. "No it's different. I'd just prefer a penis in my mouth… I suppose."

Cuddy rolled her eyes and clucked her tongue forcefully ignoring the exchange. "House is gross," she stated bringing the conversation back to the issue at hand. "You need to tell him to never touch your toothbrush again."

Cate sighed. "I did. He went on about how we're living together now and that I was making him share a whole bunch of stuff and that I better get used to it."

Cameron gasped in disgust. "That's so him. Of course he'd never accept responsibility for a mistake he made and turn it into something that you did."

"Like you leaned on his leg until he said you could move in, " Cuddy agreed.

Thirteen's eyes twinkled. "So get him back."

Cate held her hands up and shook her head. "No way. I am not nearly as skilled as he is in that area. I fear the inevitable retribution."

"I switched his Vicodin with laxatives once, " Cuddy offered.

Cate looked at her with her mouth agape. The woman had a mean streak as thick as the man's in question. But then again, twenty years of dealing with him could do that to a person. "I don't know."

"Make him brownies with Exlax, " Thirteen suggested.

"Use his toothbrush to brush your eyebrows, in front of him, " Cameron proposed.

Cate closed her eyes and let out a laugh in disbelief. "You guys are nuts. I'm shocked and appalled at your deviousness."

"Please, we've all be in his line of fire more times than we care to admit, " Cuddy replied. "You need to level the playing field."

"But he didn't do it on purpose, " she objected.

Thirteen snorted and shook her head. Cameron had a dubious frown on her face and Cuddy stared at her pointedly with her gray eyes.

"You could use his face razor to shave your legs, " Cameron offered up. All three of them looked at her like she was blonde all the way to her roots. "What? I did that to Chase once and he nearly killed me."

"The man never shaves, " Cuddy exclaimed in exasperation.

"He has to shave as some point, otherwise he'd look like he was in the Taliban, " she defended herself.

"He has s beard trimmer, " Cate supplied somewhat bailing her out of her inadvertently ditzy remark.

"Oh yeah! Trim your pubes with it, that's equivalent, " Thirteen piped in enthusiastically.

Cate nearly choked on her coffee. "You're a disgusting human being. Remind me never to piss you off." She shook her head at her so called friends. "I'm not going to 'get him back'. While he was an asshole about it, he did actually speak the words 'I'm sorry'. I'm just going to keep extra tooth brushes in the cabinet. If it happens again, I'll have a new one."

"What'd you do this morning, after he'd used it, did you use it, " Cuddy asked curiously.

"No. I couldn't, I bought a new one on the way to work this morning, " Cate said sheepishly. "I brushed my teeth in a catatonic patient's bathroom."

"Well you better stop at Costco and get like twenty four of them, because, I'm telling you, he'll do it just to fuck with you, " Thirteen said.

Cate refused to believe that he was so devious, but there was niggling voice at the back of her that said there was indeed a possibility of at least once.

"Well girls, the moral of this story is, always have a stash of toothbrushes in the cabinet just incase your doofus of a man decides to brush his teeth without opening his eyes in the morning, " Cuddy offered.

"No doubt, " Cate stated in full agreement with a little shiver. Nasty…