A/N Yeah, I'm working on An Old Married Couple, but I got bitten hard by the Huddy bug, so I figured I might as well write it while I plot out to write myself out of the corner I wrote myself into.
"You know exactly how it would go. It'd start off exciting, we'd get caught up in the novelty and the hostility and the forbiddeness, and then flirtatious hosility would just be hostility and the inability to open up and it's no longer exciting it's just frustrating and the inevitable blow up and the recriminations and we don't talk for two months..."
"You and Cuddy went to college together, didn't you?" House looked up from his Gameboy to see Wilson lurking in his doorway.
"I was in med school, she was an undergrad."
"But you knew each other." House put his Gameboy down. Wilson had that tone of voice that meant his friend was up to something, and House wasn't entirely sure what.
"In passing." Sort of. Kind of. Not really.
"Didn't run in the same circles?" No, they ran in exactly the same circles, that had been the problem.
"Like I said, I was already in med school, she was an undergrad." Wilson had been to college, he would know that the graduate circles were often different from those working on their bachelors.
"So you two never really talked-"
"If you're trying to get any information about any sort of a history we've had together, there is none." Wilson had been pushing them since Cuddy had mentioned that she'd 'never thought of House in that way.' Because from her candid admission, he knew that there was something more there. And it wasn't something that either party was blind to. Simply one that they chose to ignore.
"I don't believe it."
"Believe what you want. There's nothing there." Wilson sighed, walking back out the door, leaving House staring aimlessly at what had been an intense round of Mr. Driller, now just a single pixelated character being crushed under piles of bricks. He sighed, and got up from his desk, making it down to the bottom floor.
He shoved the door to Cuddy's office open, and barged in, collapsing in the desk across from her.
They sat there, staring at one another for a long minute before she finally broke the silence. "What are you doing here?"
"What exactly have you been saying to Wilson?"
"What?" Cuddy asked, genuinely confused as to why House was asking.
"Wilson doesn't just show up asking about our days in Michigan for no reason." He cocked an eyebrow at her, and glared, waiting for her to cave. "What did you say to him?"
"I didn't say anything to him."
"You had to say something to get him questioning whether we knew each other in college."
"What did you tell him?" Cuddy countered and he shrugged.
"That I was a med student, you were in undergrad, we knew who the other one was, that was about it." Cuddy sighed, and rubbed her eyes, looking rather tired. "What did you tell him?" She thought back, trying to remember everything that she had told Wilson, and her face fell. "What?"
"He asked if I had ever considered a relationship with you. I said that it would end badly."
"And from that he managed to infer that we knew each other twenty some odd years ago?"
"I said that it would go from flirtatious to flirtatious hostility to just hostility and frustration, and things would end, and we would wind up not speaking to each other for two months-"
"Great, so you told him everything he needs to know to continue bugging us about this-" He gestured to the space between them "For the next two decades. Way to keep your mouth shut."
"And what does it matter if he knows?"
"It matters because I'm never going to hear the end of it. You know how Wilson gets when he decides something is in my best interests. Whether or not it actually is in my best interests becomes entirely irrelevant. And now he's going to assume we had a thing in college." Cuddy rolled her her eyes.
"And we didn't?" She didn't think she'd ever seen the level of emotion in House before, but whatever it was-it wasn't anger or rage, she was used to those-and this new emotion scared her.
"What we had was a mistake. And I believe one of your terms and conditions for hiring me was that that mistake was ignored." He could see the flash of something on her face-he wasn't sure if it was hurt, or anger, or what.
"A mistake? That's what you call six months of-"
"Sleeping around behind your boyfriend's back?" House suggested, and she glared at him.
"I broke up with Nick before anything-"
"Which is why you were insisting on the only time I ever spent in my house was when you were in my bed." Cuddy opened her mouth, before she shut it again.
"Can we have this conversation another time, like when there aren't donors standing outside my office door?"
"Great. Dinner tonight? That way we can scream at each other over a four course meal."
"House-"
"I'll pick you up at seven."
"House!" The tone was much sharper.
"Well, we obviously need to plot how to keep Wilson out of both of our private lives. And I don't know about you but I do my best plotting when I have food in me. You're buying, you pick the place." Cuddy sighed, and went back to working, hoping that House wasn't serious.
