Shame
House was having a lousy day.
Okay, he was having a lousy life, but today had been particularly grim.
It started when he lost a patient. It would've been bad enough if he had lost the guy due to some incompetence of his own—but it was all basically Foreman's fault. As by-the-book as Cuddy may have been, she was nothing compared to Foreman, who never met a rule he didn't want to strenuously follow. Cuddy knew the value of calculated risks, hell sometimes she found them as exhilarating as House did. ("I love the way your brain works," she had said to him, one night in bed. "You like the way all my body parts work," he had replied, diving for her. "True," she had giggled.)
What was so annoying was, Foreman had been in the trenches with him, part of the team! He knew that sometimes you needed to take a risk to crack the case. "That was when I was a doctor," Foreman said. "Now I'm an administrator."
So the radical heart procedure that House lobbied for wasn't done and the patient had died. The autopsy showed that House's treatment might have worked.
Then, to add insult to injury, Wilson had lost a patient earlier in the day and was irritable, having none of House's pity party.
"You're not the only one who lost a patient today, you know," he had groused.
"I know," House said. "But you're used to it."
"Screw you," Wilson had replied, taking his lunch tray and storming away.
Then, House was late to a meeting with his parole officer and the moron actually had the nerve to say to him, "Do you want to go back to jail? Because you're acting a whole lot like a guy who wants to go back to jail."
"That's it!" House snarled. "You nailed it. I miss jail. It's a laugh riot! It's better than Cats!"
He'd been popping Vicodin like candy all day, but it wasn't making a dent on his misery. He figured a stiff drink, or several, would help, or at least numb him a little more.
And then fucking Sullivan's was closed for a private party.
The world hated him.
#####
A lot of people were surprised that Cuddy had stayed in Princeton after the incident. But as she saw it, he wasn't going to drive her away. She was the victim. If anyone should move, it should be him. Besides, there was no reason to disrupt Rachel's life even further.
The house was repaired—it took nearly five months, roughly half of House's jail sentence. Cuddy had gotten a job as the VP of Admin at Trenton General. It was a good job, it paid as well as her position at PPTH, although it had less prestige and power.
"But what if you run into him?" people asked her. She would just laugh: House's behavior was totally predictable. He went to work, he went to Sullivan's, sometimes he went to Off Track Betting. There was that one diner on Route 1 with the good onion rings he liked. ("How can you eat that shit?" she used to say. "How can you NOT?" he replied, smiling, his mouth full.) But mostly he stayed in his apartment.
There would be no accidentally running into him at the latest hotspot.
Except for…were her eyes playing tricks on her?
She was out with some colleagues after work—this one guy Cliff had been super flirty with her, begging her to join the gang at this new restaurant called Bistro de Coin, until she had finally relented. And now Gregory House, or his exact twin, was limping toward her table.
#####
"It felt creepy just sitting at the bar staring at you, so I thought I'd come over and say hi," he said, jangling his good leg nervously.
He looked terrible, even by his own poor standards: Borderline gaunt, hair and beard both overgrown, clothing that looked like it had come straight from the dirty hamper. The leg jangling made him look like a junkie.
"What are you doing here?" Cuddy said, shocked.
"I. . .Sullivan's was closed for a private party and I nee—was in the mood for a drink."
He was looking at her with a peculiar combination of hope and fear.
"Frankly, I was hoping I'd never have to see you again," Cuddy said, much to the shock of her tablemates.
"Is this him?" someone said.
Cuddy didn't reply. She just stared at him, bewildered.
"Dr. House, why don't you go back to the bar and leave us alone?" Cliff said, taking charge.
House gave a derisive snort.
"Stay out of it, Skippy. This is none of your business," he said.
"You're clearly bothering Dr. Cuddy."
"I'm sure your horrible aftershave is bothering her too," House said. "But you don't see me asking you to leave."
"I see you haven't changed a bit. . ." Cuddy said.
House gripped his cane a little tighter.
"Can I…talk to you for a second?" he said. It was clear that he was barely able to keep it together. His knuckles were white where he clutched his cane. His face was sweaty.
"No," Cuddy said.
"Please."
"Dr. House, if you continue bothering us, I'll have no choice but to call over the manager," Cliff said.
"Not…the manager!" House said. "What's he going to do? Give me a lousy table? Not accept my Groupon deal?"
"If you ever cared about Lisa at all, you'd leave her alone," another one of Cuddy's dinner companions said. They were all staring at House like he had two heads.
He turned to Cuddy, ignoring all their condemning eyes.
"I haven't tried to contact you," he said. "Not once. I have to get some credit for that."
"No," Cuddy said. "You don't."
"Let's just leave," Cliff said. "We can go to Dino's for dessert."
Cuddy nodded.
"Please Cuddy. Five minutes. You owe me that. Five minutes of your time."
"I don't owe you a thing," Cuddy said.
"You're right," House said, contritely. "But I'm asking. I'm asking for five minutes. Because I once meant something to you. A lifetime ago."
Cuddy swallowed hard, looked at House, and then her tablemates.
She inhaled.
"I'll meet you at Dino's," she said.
"You sure?" Cliff said, stunned.
"I'm positive," she said. "Go ahead. I'll catch up."
They all got up warily, cast some anxious looks in Cuddy's direction, and finally left.
He sat down across from her.
"You look . . .incredible," he said.
"You look like shit," she said.
"I know. I … rough day."
"Rough life," she replied, not kindly.
He shrugged in agreement.
"How are you?" he said.
"Is there something specific you wanted to say to me?" she said. "Otherwise I'm going to go."
"What I want to say is: I'm sorry," he said. "I've tried to think of a more eloquent way to put that. But there it is: I'm sorry."
"Fine. You're sorry. Can I go now?" She began to get up.
"No. Wait! Please. . . Do you know how many times I wanted to call you? Knock on your door? Do you know how many letters I wrote and didn't send? I stayed away because I knew you didn't want to hear from me."
"Still true."
"But seeing you tonight. It feels like…fate."
"You don't believe in fate."
"I didn't. Until tonight."
She snorted.
"Come back to my place with me," he said. "So we can be alone. To talk."
"I'm not going anywhere with you!"
"Please."
"If you think I'm going to your place, you're mad."
"I am mad. I think we've already established that fact."
"And dangerous."
"I'm only a danger to myself."
She squinted at him.
"Is that a threat? Go back to your place or you'll hurt yourself?"
"I didn't mean like that. But if that'll get you to come home with me…" he said, with a sad smile.
"It won't."
"Cuddy, I would never hurt you again. You know that, right? That wasn't me. You know me."
"I thought I knew you. And I've been beating myself up over how wrong I was."
"You weren't wrong. Please come back to my place so I can explain. . .I hate myself for what I did."
Cuddy looked down.
"I have to meet my friends…" she said, haltingly—and he knew he had her.
"Call them. Tell them you're tired. It was an emotional night. You're turning in early. Please just give me this one chance."
She had once told him she could never resist his eyes, so he looked at her now, intensely, imploringly.
She looked back—and for a moment their eyes locked and they were communicating in that old, nearly telepathic way they used to.
She pulled out her phone and dialed.
"Cliff, I'm exhausted," she said. "I'm going to have to skip dessert and call it a night."
#####
If he had known she was coming over, he would've straightened up. There was a half drained bottle of scotch on the table, a few dirty dishes in the sink, a pair of gym socks bunched up on the floor.
"I can't believe you're really here," he said, hastily shoving the socks under the couch.
"Neither can I," she admitted.
"You have no idea how good it is to see you."
"House. . ."
"Can I get you a drink?"
"I'm fine," she said.
He ignored her. Poured himself some scotch and her a glass of white wine. "Just in case," he said, sliding it her way. "Spending time with me usually drives people to drink."
He chuckled nervously at his own joke, then rubbed his hands on his pants legs.
"I had a lot of time in prison to think about what I did," he said. "Especially when they put me in solitary."
"Solitary?" Concern in her voice. Concern was good.
"Yeah, mostly for my own protection. Turns out, my anti-establishment streak isn't that popular with neo-Nazi types."
"House, did they hurt you?"
"Got roughed up a few times," he said, trying to keep his voice casual. "Nothing I couldn't handle."
He glanced at her, to see if she was buying his stoic routine.
The look on her face said no.
"Anyway, when I was in solitary it gave me a lot of time to…reflect. And I think this is why I got so upset the night of the, uh, accident."
"Because you thought I had lied to you," she said, matter-of-factly. "You thought I was seeing Jerry. It was, in fact, an informal dinner to even see if I wanted to date him. . ." She gave a bitter laugh. "Needless to say, he never called."
"That was part of it," House said. "But that wasn't the real reason."
"I'm all ears."
"The real reason was because I looked in your window and saw that dinner party and everyone was laughing and drinking wine and being…normal. And I felt like a freak. I had never felt like such a freak in my entire life. I was Golum. I was the fucking Hunchback of Notre Dame, with a limp instead of a hump. I had just spent a week in a hospital bed because I took a drug that hadn't even been through safety trials. I sat in a fucking bathtub and tried to remove tumors from my own leg. And you were having witty repartee and . . .coq au vin."
"Duck breast," Cuddy said, looking down.
"And in that moment, looking through that window, you felt so far away. And I felt like the all the good things in life—you, happiness, normalcy—were not for me. That I didn't deserve them. And I felt an overwhelming sense of …shame. I just kind of snapped."
Cuddy closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry you felt that way, House. I truly am."
"It's no excuse for what I did," he said, blinking at her. "I'm not saying it was. I'm just asking. . .Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"
"I don't know," Cuddy admitted. "I can try."
House sighed in relief.
"Trying is much more than I deserve," he said.
There was a long silence.
"Can I ask you something else?" he said finally.
"I guess so."
"Was it all in my imagination? Were were happy? Did you ever really love me?"
Cuddy finally sipped from her glass.
"Of course I loved you," she said quietly. "And yes, we were happy."
"I miss you so much," he said. "It feels like a physical ache. It hurts worse than my leg."
"I miss you too," she admitted. "I…haven't been with another man since we dated. How lame is that? Nobody measures up."
"It's not lame at all," he said, smiling softly. "I don't want any other woman. Only you."
She sighed.
"House, what are we going to do with each other?"
He stood.
"Come here," he said.
And, much to his surprise and delight, she went to him. They held each other closely. He breathed her in, smelled her hair, her skin, felt the wonderful pressure of her tiny, strong body against his.
"I miss the way you touch me," she admitted when they parted.
"I miss touching you," he said.
"So touch me now."
He knew that voice. Throaty. Turned on.
He licked his lips.
"Where?"
"Anywhere you want."
She had unmistakable lust in her eyes. She was wearing tight black jeans. He took his palm and rubbed it against the crotch of her jeans.
Her legs buckled a bit.
"I didn't think you were going to touch me…there," she said, flushing a bit.
"You said anywhere I wanted," he said, looking at her hungrily.
"Now touch me someplace else," she ordered.
She was wearing a cream-colored silk blouse. He reached over the fabric, for her breasts, cupped her weight, fingered her nipples until they were hard.
They both began breathing heavily.
"Kiss me," she said.
"Where?" he said hoarsely.
"Anywhere you want."
He hesitated.
Then found her mouth with his own, so relieved and aroused when her tongue swirled inside him, and her hands caressed his face, he almost came on the spot.
"Cuddy," he said. "I want you so badly."
"I want you, too," she said.
So he picked her up, carried to the bedroom, just like that first time.
And everything reminded him of that night—his own eagerness, and his thrill over how responsive she was: How wet she got, how her purrs turned into moans, how her legs spread widely and then her back arched, inviting him deeper and deeper inside her.
She came first, a loud gasp, almost a sob, and he was right behind her, his whole body shuddering, convulsing and he wanted to cry but he didn't, just held her tightly, not wanting to ever let go.
#####
In the morning, she was gone.
He hadn't remembered her leaving. Had she snuck out after sex, when he fell asleep? Had she said goodbye?
He wandered into the living room. Her wine glass was still there, but barely touched. He looked for a note. There was none.
Still, he couldn't help but to smile to himself. She had been there. In his apartment, in his bed. She had forgiven him. Everything was going to get better. From this moment on.
He was impatient all day long, expecting a phone call, an email, anything. But it never came.
"You okay?" Wilson said over lunch. "You seem…distracted."
"Still thinking about that patient," House said.
"Right," Wilson said. "Of course."
When he got home, he paced—which was an exceedingly dumb thing for a guy with a bum leg to do, but he couldn't stay still.
By 9 pm, he couldn't take it anymore. He hopped on his bike and knocked on her door.
She looked stunned, and bit angry to see him.
"What are you doing here?"
"Why did you leave so abruptly last night?" he said.
"House, you know why I left."
"We could've had breakfast together."
"I don't think Bistro de Coin even serves breakfast," she said.
"No," he said. "I meant at my place."
"Why on earth would I have breakfast at your place?" she said, baffled.
"I thought after last night, after the…intimacy we shared."
"What the hell are you talking about?" she said, her face a mask of confusion.
He stared at her.
Was she messing with him? She looked totally serious. Still a little pissed. His heart began pounding loudly in his chest.
"You came home with me last night. . . .Right?"
Her face fell.
"Oh House. Oh. . .no. Not again."
She touched his arm.
He suddenly felt weak, dizzy. He felt like he was about to pass out.
"But we…" he started.
"We didn't do anything last night. I went to Dino's for dessert with my friends. I never went anywhere with you."
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
