It was summer; that's really what was to blame. There was a restless shirking of inhibitions. There were endless evenings filled with shadows that stretched so slowly into night. There was skin, all that bare skin.
Cuddy was running hard, her feet pounding the stress of her day into the pavement. It was still hot and she felt the sweat trickle down between her shoulder blades. Her breath puffed out with a slow rhythm and she was proud of not being winded as she flew down the curbside. The tensing-relaxing pattern of her various muscles soothed her deeper psychic tensions, and the way she passed by everything in a blur made her feel powerful and invincible.
When she got to Wilson's building she hit the buzzer and leaned into the wall, stretching each calf as she waited for the response. "Hello?" Wilson asked, which was weird since he knew she was coming.
"Hey," she said, her voice full of breath as she recovered. She heard the loud buzz of the door being unlocked and let herself in, walking up the stairs two at a time to stretch her thigh muscles out. When she reached his door it was already ajar, so she let herself in and walked right to the bathroom to splash water on her face. "I need water before wine," she called out to Wilson. "Dammit, I'm hot."
"I was trying to think of a more clever way of putting it," she heard a low, gravely voice behind her say. She recognized House instantly and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She froze for a couple seconds, bent over the sink, wondering if she could fit down the drain and escape dealing with him with sweaty curls plastered to her head and tiny running shorts hugging her ass. Then she screwed up her courage and stood up, pressing a towel to her face as one last barrier before facing him. She met his piercing eyes and smirk, her chest still heaving a little, and felt totally exposed. "But if you're good with a simple 'Dammit, you're hot,' I'll agree."
"I'm sorry, Cuddy!" she heard Wilson call from the kitchen. "He… just… shows up when I least expect it. Like he knows when it's not good timing."
"Like an erection," House said to her, grinning.
"Or herpes," Cuddy replied, squeezing past him through the doorway. She walked into the kitchen and could feel his eyes running up and down her body. She could also feel herself straightening her posture, sticking out her ass, and tensing her muscles as she walked. For him. Wilson met her with a huge glass of ice water and a slightly-less-huge glass of wine.
"What's he doing here?" she asked him, even though she heard the thud of his cane easily within earshot behind her.
"I dunno. He gets bored. I'm some kind of hobby."
"If I knew you had regular visits from a glistening Cuddy, I'd have shirked piano and drinking alone long ago," House said, and she still felt like his voice actually touched her. She was so unprepared for him and she was trying to find a way to build up her defenses quickly, but it was difficult when she was three inches shorter and didn't have a big desk to sit behind. So instead she went to the counter and hopped up onto one of the barstools, her feet just grazing the metal footrest. She leaned forward and propped herself on her hands, looking only at Wilson.
Wilson's gaze bounced back and forth between House and Cuddy in the awkward silence. "It's so fascinating that my two best friends, the people I can hang out with and be completely uncensored, create a palpable awkwardness when they are in the same room."
"Because your other best friend is obnoxious," Cuddy said, but she was laughing a little. Somehow she was wresting back control of the situation because House was clearly trying to figure out this casual date between Wilson and Cuddy that implied its regularity. She decided to play up the intimacy, kicking her shoes off with two thunks and putting her feet up on the other nearby stool. She had chugged her water and now took a sip of wine and met House's gaze for the second time, this time smirking herself.
"I thought the awkwardness was because we can see through your shirt," he said. Cuddy refused to look down. She knew her white tank top was soaked and sticking to her body, but she had a sports bra on underneath, so there was still a lot left to the imagination.
"That's only awkward for adolescents," she informed him, snottily.
"And humans with testicles," he shot back. "Or ovaries and an Indigo Girls collection."
"How thoughtful and inclusive," Cuddy remarked. "I guess the sensitivity training wasn't a total waste."
"I skipped that training. Thirteen just told me she's hot for teacher, so I knew you were an equal-opportunity fantasy."
Cuddy felt flustered, so she rolled her eyes to buy time, which he instantly recognized for what it was, causing him to almost beam at her with delight.
"House," Wilson chided. "Just, be adult. For, like, an hour."
House walked over to the stool holding Cuddy's feet and went to sit, causing her to quickly remove them just in time. "Sure I can," he assured them. "So, 'adults,'" he said, making finger quotations, "what do you usually talk about during your grown-up club meetings of two?"
As they talked, Cuddy drank too much. She didn't know what it was about him that made her simultaneously so edgy, and so irritated with her own edginess. She was sipping away to calm her nerves, to fill the awkward moments, and, she had to admit, to have an excuse. Because she couldn't resist. House's leg would brush up against hers under the counter and she'd reflexively recoil, spinning her chair in the other direction, but then allowing a different reflex to spin it right back, bouncing gently off of his leg again. She was like someone who keeps dipping her toe into the pool to test the water temperature; testing the temperature of shark-infested water.
As the alcohol worked its magic, the awkwardness receded along with the golden sunlight that had been pouring in Wilson's huge windows. They were laughing and chatting and Wilson eventually left his perch on a kitchen counter to start turning on lamps in the living room. Cuddy spun on her stool to keep facing him across the open floor and when House followed suit his hand touched her thigh, -just for the briefest instant, but firm and intentional and wholly against her flesh. He removed it and plunked it in his lap, meeting her eyes.
"Sorry?" he said, like it was a question, as if he were asking if this required an apology. Cuddy narrowed her eyes at him, but felt the flirty upturn of her mouth and the way she hadn't recoiled this time. And she scolded herself for drinking too much and for entertaining the foggiest thought of this bad, bad man.
Wilson asked if they wanted to watch a movie. It was past ten. Usually Cuddy was getting ready to jog back home by now at the latest, but she was tipsy. Well, she was drunk. Her head was filled with warm confusion and lust and she was in no shape to run dimly lit streets, so she decided to indulge her inner college student and be easy-going. Wilson found a dark thriller on the menu and Cuddy walked to the couch, acting indifferent to whether or not House would stay. She curled against the armrest furthest from him and felt, again, him staring at her. He made no move to come in, but just stayed in his spot while the movie got started. Cuddy could see him in her peripheral vision, spending far less time looking at the movie and far more time staring past Wilson and his feet propped on the coffee table. Staring at her. She told herself it was the gentle summer breeze coming in the windows that gave her the goosebumps.
The movie eventually ended, but Cuddy felt drunker, paradoxically. The time had only allowed the glut of wine to further enter her bloodstream, and now she was sleepy on top of it. The inevitable question hung in the air now… How was Cuddy getting home? Wilson's sleepy face rolled in her direction on the couch, his eyebrows raised mischievously. "Wanna spend the night?" he asked, with a wry grin.
She grinned back at her friend who was messing with everybody in the room right now. "I better not," she answered.
"No," he agreed. "You better not." He cleared his throat dramatically. "House, will you give Cuddy a ride home?" he asked.
"I can't get on a motorcycle in shorts and no helmet!" she protested, though an embarrassingly large chunk of her brain was arguing with that claim.
"Bike's in the shop," House said coolly. "I can take you home in true Dynasty style."
Cuddy found herself grinning back at him. She stood, stretched and looked down at Wilson, who winked at her and gently kicked her leg with his foot. "How lucky can you get?" he asked, again with the eyebrows.
Cuddy narrowed her eyes at his playful expression. "Next week don't answer your door and sneak me in the fire escape, okay, Wilson?" She glanced quickly at House to watch her oblique insult land and saw only his smug smirk and his hands folded politely in his lap.
"Shall we?" he asked. Cuddy walked toward the door in response. She started down the stairs ahead of him and heard a muffled conversation between the men, ending with Wilson calling out "Not your strong suit, House," before slamming the door shut behind him, the click of his lock echoing in the stairwell. She felt bad, all of a sudden because she'd bounded to the bottom and House had to walk more slowly and carefully down the stairs. She turned and walked back up to meet him.
"Oooh, not the pity backtrack," he moaned in a mock lament. "Coming back for the poor cripple."
She smiled at him. "I had a head start," she reminded him.
"And two beautifully functioning legs." He didn't look at her, and his word choice was ambiguous, and they had reached the bottom by then so she didn't have to deflect. She just walked with him to his shitty car and waited by the passenger door. Suddenly he was right next to her, their bodies touching, his breath grazing her face. She was startled and turned-on in an instant, only to have the spell broken by the sound of him sliding a key into the lock. "Manual locks," he explained. But his body stayed there for a few seconds, pressed against hers. Then he began walking over to the driver's side as abruptly as he had appeared at hers. Cuddy opened the door and got in. She reached across the car and popped open his door lock.
House opened the door and got in. "I guess you're not a selfish bitch," he proclaimed.
"Huh?"
"That's a test. Unlock the door for the girl and wait to see if she thinks to reach over and unlock your side before you get there. Selfish bitches don't."
Cuddy laughed. "So scientific."
"I'm thinking you might be an outlier, though," he said, running a hand over his jaw as he started the car.
She looked over at him and smirked. "Perhaps you've just had me pegged wrong, all these years," she teased. Then she leaned back into the seat feeling strangely comfortable.
"Perhaps," he said. "I'm occasionally wrong."
"Thank god for tests," she said, yawning.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, then House said, "Are you still drunk enough to let me pretend to accidentally touch your thigh?"
She felt that delicious startle again, her whole body pulled tight with arousal and self-consciousness. "Pretend to?" she asked, feigning shock. "I thought that was a genuine accident." House smirked at the windshield.
"Another test," he corrected.
She stared at his profile, the streetlights gliding over his features before he was cloaked in shadows again. "For what?" she asked, and it unintentionally came out as a whisper. He didn't answer for a while and it hung there, the tension between them seeming to settle low in her belly, making her fight the urge to open her legs and slide one of them toward him on the seat. They were on her block now, approaching her house. "A test for what?" she asked again, managing to get the playfulness back into her voice.
House reached out carefully and laid his hand on her bare thigh, his thumb moving slowly back and forth for the full ten seconds it took to turn into her driveway. He then removed it to shift into park, turning slightly toward her and answering "To see if I'm wrong."
They stared at each other across the small space between them and House kept his hand politely in his lap, as he had at Wilson's, post-grope. "Oh yeah? What do the results say?" Cuddy teased.
House moved a hand to the back of his head, scratching his hair in a fidgety way. "Inconclusive," he replied.
There was more silence and Cuddy bit her lip and turned to look out the windshield. "Looks like you'll have to run it again," she murmured before opening her door and slipping out of his car.
[H] [H] [H]
He'd totally wrecked it, and vastly improved it. She was running toward Wilson's, but instead of it clearing the week from her mind and relieving her stress, she found her mind bubbling over with thoughts, both logistical and primal, all about him. Her body didn't loosen, but tightened in anticipation of their impending encounter. Her week didn't end here anymore, but began.
They spent June, July, and the better part of August like that, meeting at Wilson's on Fridays and drinking and flirting, ending each night with a question - How on earth was Cuddy to get home? – which was answered with a casual shrug and a jingle of car keys. Wilson's smirks and mock chastising peppered the evenings and only served to build the tension for her. She felt him watch them like some kind of romantic comedy, shaking his head at the naïveté and artlessness of the two leads.
Each Friday House ogled her, and Cuddy twisted and flexed in premeditated ways. Each Friday she raced ahead of him down the stairs, then came back up to meet him, saying the cleverest things like "Hurry up, gimpy" and "Race ya," just to make him laugh. Each Friday he pressed their clothing together as he unlocked her door, and as the summer wore on she pressed back so that the hard matter of their bodies made connection through the fabric. Each Friday she reached over and unlocked his door, then slid back to her spot, sure he could see her body trembling. Each Friday, whether they were tossing barbs back and forth or riding in silence, he at some point reached over a put his hand on her thigh, letting it sit for longer each week, eventually moving it from knee to the bottom of her shorts and back again. Cuddy found she couldn't breathe anymore as soon as he made contact.
Then one night he pulled into the driveway and awkwardly reached his left hand over the steering column to shift into park, keeping the engine idling and his right hand pressed to her thigh, staring straight ahead. Cuddy's heart was thudding so hard against her ribs she knew he must hear it. Her eyes wanted to close, to concentrate on the sensation of his skin on her skin. Her body wanted to slide down on the seat and turn toward him. Her mind wanted to say tantalizingly dirty things to him. But she resisted, terrified of her own desire, her attachment to the next week's recurrence.
"I don't know if this test isn't right or if I'm just misreading the results," House said quietly, his hand turning a little so that his fingers wrapped over her inner thigh, his thumb circling around to the outer. He slowly slid it upward.
She stuttered, dammit. She actually stuttered. "Wha-, what are the results supposed to look like?" she asked. Her chest rose and fell like she'd run home.
"Usually they're clear. A slap or a verbal thrashing are clear negatives," he explained. The tips of his fingers played with the bottom of her running shorts, sneaking a millimeter at a time under the border. "But I'm not sure I know what a positive result is," he continued. He turned his face to her. "I thought it would involve equal amounts of physical contact or loud exclamations." He looked in her eyes and he wasn't smirking or grinning or teasing her. He was asking.
"Maybe you need to run a different test," she suggested. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned toward him a little. She reached over and pushed the button on his seatbelt and he removed his hand from her thigh to unhook himself and returned it immediately, to her relief.
"Door lock and seatbelt," he said. "Definitely not a selfish bitch."
"Thanks, Cyrano," she teased.
House leaned toward her a little and she shifted in her ambiguous way, her body turning to him, but also scooting away from him, backing against her door. She was both further from him, but more seductively positioned, one foot now up on the seat. He paused, surveying her, and she felt herself waiting for his next move with the patience of a two-year-old. Every square inch of her skin was tingling, begging to be touched, hoping it was chosen. But he didn't touch her. Instead he spoke. "You're so fucking beautiful it hurts to look at you," he said in the dark. What little breath she had left caught in her throat and she made a little gasp. "That's what I wanted to say that first Friday," he told her, "instead of 'Dammit, you're hot.'"
"Why didn't you?" she whispered.
House grinned and shook his head at her silly question. "Same reason I didn't do this," he said and he leaned over to her and kissed her, hard at first, their tongues immediately mingling like they did this all the time, then softening, his hand finding her cheek and his mouth pausing to close over each lip in turn, then skating to the corners, her chin, her neck.
Cuddy's hands were on the back of his head, urging him to continue in whatever direction he was headed. Her legs parted and he was settled between them for a mere second before she had one hooked over his torso, his hand caressing the length of it from sweaty sock to perfect ass. She was arching up into him and fighting the writhing that her body wanted to do because she was slightly embarrassed by how fast she was ready for this, but as her breasts pressed up against his body and he continued kissing down past her neck she couldn't stifle the moan that she needed to make to release some of the pent-up lust that was pooling inside of her.
"That's the kind of thing I was looking for," he said, his teasing muffled by her clothing as he buried his face against her body and used his hand to inch things up or down. His hands circled her waist under her running clothes, pulling her closer to him as his tongue licked salt from her skin. Then he slid her tank top over her head.
"Do you wanna go inside?" she asked breathlessly.
"I wanna go wherever you want me to go," he answered, his face now against her stomach, hands splayed on the bare expanse of her back.
Cuddy moaned again, overwhelmed by how much she wanted him. She didn't want to stop this trajectory, to change anything, but she was concerned about the cramped quarters for his tall frame and his bum leg. "Your leg," she said simply to the ceiling of his car.
He paused for a moment and looked up at her. "I only go down the stairs so slowly so that I can stare at you going down, then coming back up," he told her, defending his leg's honor. He grinned. Then "Tell me where you want me."
"Fuck," she said immediately because her brain wasn't functioning. Her body was dry humping him on autopilot now.
He grinned wickedly. "Yeah, I know," he said. "Where?" He kissed her stomach again and she made a high-pitch sort of sound, like a goddamn tea kettle. She would have felt embarrassed if it didn't cause him to groan into her skin and bite her lightly.
"Here," she answered finally. "Just right here." She leveraged one shoe against the seat base and kicked it off, but forgot about the other one as his hands guided her lower, laying her on the seat, his weight pressing down on her. She helped him wiggle her out of her sports bra and noted the awe in his face as he looked over her half naked body. His mouth met her nipples and his hands pressed and moved the weight of her breasts while he took her still higher, beyond sex-crazed. She wasn't even conscious of needing to strip him because she was obsessed with the way he was making her body feel. She was high and craving more already, but House was as meticulous and methodical as he was in his thought process, escalating things slowly, leaving her to bask in each new sensation for a while before presenting a new one. His mouth and hand were everywhere above the waist, but the urge coiling below was insistent and she found her own hand slipping into her shorts, finding her sex and pushing against her need. He pulled back a little and looked down at her hand, then sat back and slid her shorts and panties down with a smooth tug, tossing them somewhere in the car. Then he was on top of her again, propped on one elbow and running his free hand over her dips and rises.
Cuddy was bucking up against her hand, pressed between them. He was watching her face and her eyes flickered open and she sighed, "You could do this for me."
He raised an eyebrow. "Don't wanna mess with your Friday night tradition," he teased, and she couldn't help smiling at his accurate insinuation that their encounters had ended with this for weeks now, just miles apart. "Besides," he said, still watching her face as her eyes clenched and lips pursed, "I want you to feel how much better it will be when I do it for you."
That was it. Naked beneath him, unabashedly touching herself, and him enjoying the sight and insinuating that there was only more pleasure in her future made her crazy and she came beneath him, shuddering and sighing and crying out while he watched her. She wasn't embarrassed about her blatant desire anymore; she saw it only made him want her more. She lay there, sweat layering over sweat as she tried to catch her breath. He kissed her again, slowly, luxuriously, and she alternated between kissing back and gasping against his mouth. She got her bearings enough to start tearing clothing from his torso, but was stopped short when she felt his fingers slide along her wetness, kindling the heat inside of her all over again. And he was right. The familiarity of her own touch had been effective, but overly-efficient, providing her with a release that built and fell so quickly, it was like the scratching of an itch. His touch, on the other hand, was the quenching of a thirst, her need for satisfaction layering and weaving together as his fingers probed her, teased her, found what she liked only to stop doing it for moments and make her squirm. This continued until she was crying his name and pleading with him to make her come while he whispered dirty things in her ear, asking, "Isn't this better?" And when he finally did, showing her a whole new stroke of her heat that she liked and had neglected, she threw her head back, gulping the sweet release with abandon and shaking in his arms.
"Jesus," she gasped. "Why the hell haven't we been doing that for weeks?" she asked rhetorically.
"Because I'm obnoxious," he teased her.
She shook her head weakly. "Nope," she said, still trying to breathe. "That's an obnoxiousness test and you are definitely not obnoxious," she said.
He smiled. "So you can be wrong too, huh?"
"Thank God," she said, finding his pants and fumbling to open them. She felt his stubble against her neck again and realized what he already knew – that someone's evident desire for you is anything but a turn-off. Feeling his hardness as he helped her by kicking his jeans down his body, and feeling his animalistic urge to press into her as he licked and bit her neck, she was conscious of holding the power to give him pleasure and it was intoxicating. She threw a leg around his waist again and lifted the other to hook over his shoulder. He raised his head and looked at her, eyes clouded with lust. She laughed and said, "My shoe's still on," but he simply reached behind him and yanked it off, then slid inside of her in the next moment, staring into her eyes so that her smile became her mouth open and moaning with the sensation of him filling her. They moved and groped and twisted and slid, enjoying certain angles and then trying to show the other an even better one. Cuddy felt his hand on the back of her thigh, pushing her leg back to enter her still more deeply. She clenched around him and he moaned his approval. Her hands pressed against his bare chest and she could feel the pounding of his heart. She saw him look out the window above her head and knew he was trying his damndest to wait for her, so when she was there, she cried out her permission, scratching her nails lightly down his back and saying "Fuck me, House," into his ear. His speed and pressure became selfish and delirious and her orgasm was extended by the sound and feeling of him losing control above her, echoing her moans with his own and answering his name with hers. It was endless, hot, and obsessed… just as their summer had been.
He collapsed on her and their hands found each other and intertwined, separating moments later to touch more skin. Eventually House sat up and pulled her onto his lap. She leaned back against the steering wheel and he looked over her body slowly. She smirked at him. "Sorry it hurts so much."
His eyes snapped up to meet hers, twinkling. "I'm good with pain," he joked.
She broke into a smile. "You sure? Cuz this might have to be chronic," she said, taking his hands and sliding them over her body again.
"I hope so." He leaned in and gently bit her bottom lip. "I don't think I could tolerate it otherwise."