Trapped
Hello lovely readers! Thank you everyone who´s reviewed or/and put my story on alert – I love it! Big hugs to all of you!
This chapter is a bit different: more talk, less smut. Sorry, dirty lovers…But hey, give it a try, you might like it! Please let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I could own them. In an infinite universe everything happens somewhere! So sure, they´re not mine here and now but in another time and place…:)
Thanks to: my poor stressed-out, but still sweet and dedicated, beta bones4life!
A month passes, and then another one. They´ve established a routine. He calls her, they have sex at her place, he leaves. She hardly ever talks anymore. It´s what he wants and he should be satisfied, but he´s not and it´s making him frustrated.
Monday morning. He comes in to work earlier than usual which earns him glares from Foreman and Chase. She´s busy going through his mail and greets him with a short professional smile before returning her eyes to the screen. He observes her small frame, her lackluster hair, her too big eyes.
He left her apartment only a few hours ago and he knows full well what she looks like naked. She´s lost weight and she wasn´t that big to begin with. None of it´s his business but it disturbs him. He finds himself distracted, his thoughts turning away from the current case to her, and for the millionth time during the last two months, he thinks he needs to end things with her. But he doesn´t. It´s a deadlock.
"Can I talk to you?" Cuddy enters his office with an expression on her face he can´t interpret.
"Sure." He pushes his chair away from the table and waits.
She closes the door and turns to face him.
"I don´t really know if this is anything…" she starts but her voice trails off. She tries again.
"I´m sure it´s nothing and I said I wouldn´t talk to you, but…" and she trails off again.
Silence. She looks awkward and he´s amused. He likes her this way, so much more fun than militant all-mighty robo-Cuddy. And besides, she´s gotten him interested with all that confusion. This is obviously important to her.
"If this is going to be one of those two-way communication thingies, you´re going to have to give me more to work with." He looks extremely content and leans back, resting in his chair.
She sighs, her shoulders rising as she finally figures the best way to say this is just to say it.
"Okay. Foreman came to see me. He´s worried about Cameron. Apparently he seems to think she´s lost some weight…Too much weight. He thinks she might have problems, and I…I´ve watched her and I think she looks tired but otherwise, I don´t know. But then again, Foreman wouldn´t come to me about it if he wasn´t really worried so… Well, you´re the master when it comes to picking up on details so tell me. Should I worry or is this all Foreman´s imagination?"
Her hands are clasped in front of her chest and he watches her unclasp them, fiddle with her necklace, clasp them again. He honestly doesn´t know what to say. Before the silence is too awkwardly stretched out, he gives her his most neutral look and clears his voice.
"Aum, I don´t know. I´m not really paying attention."
"Well, could you? I´m sure it´s nothing but I don´t want to dismiss it just like that since Foreman is obviously concerned."
She tilts her head, looking calm and professional, but when he agrees with a nod, relief washes over her face for a brief moment and he knows she´s concerned too.
"Thanks, House. I appreciate it."
He listens to the clicking sound of her heels as she leaves. This is a mess. No, it´s worse than a mess, it´s a monstrously fated debacle. He knew it would come to something like this, nothing is ever uncomplicated. He´s going to have to talk to her and he feels trapped.
"Fuck!" he yells as he throws his ball, hard and precise, hitting the door at a spot that would have been between Cuddy´s shoulder blades had she still been there.
That evening he seeks her out before leaving work. She´s in the lab running some tests. She doesn´t look up as he enters and he stops right inside the door, tapping his cane.
"Hey, time to call it a night."
"I´m not done yet." She seems glued to the microscope.
"I´d rather have you do me." He goes for cute, thinking maybe that´ll soften her up but reaction defaults.
"Come by my place later." Her reply is fast and unemotional. Still no eye contact.
"Could do that, or…" He stops tapping and watches her, waiting.
Finally she looks up but her expression is blank and she hardly moves her lips as she asks:
"What?"
He wants some kind of reaction out of her. His pride wants enthusiasm, his self-loathing wants anger, as a doctor he wants her to cry and heal. Then he could leave her with comforting people and she would be fine and this would all end. But she´s indifferent and he knows that for someone like her, always caring and loving, that´s a dangerous diagnosis.
"Or you could come with me now. To my place."
He can see the exact moment when she loses balance. It´s all in those tell-tale eyes of hers. He´s broken through her barriers and now she´s lost in an emotional quagmire.
"What…What do you mean?"
So she still gives a damn. He´s confident he´s got her hooked now. Nodding for her to follow him, he turns and heads out of the lab.
He arrives before her, leaves his bike and waits for her to park her car. He´s nervous. He´s sure he´s going to screw up. She joins him and they enter his apartment in silence.
Once in she drops her jacket, kneels in front of him and unzips his fly. He yelps in surprise when she puts her lips between his legs and expertly starts moving them in that way she knows he likes.
Yeez, when did this become a battle? He pulls her hair, forcing her to stop while silently cursing his treacherous body that is already responding to her ministrations.
"What? I´m doing you. It´s what I´m here for, right?"
It´s a childish remark and she´s disappointed with herself for making it. She´s promised herself to act like him, feel nothing, show nothing, stay silent. But now, by bringing her here, he´s changed the stakes and she´s on edge, feeling all of her old insecurities wash right back over her. She doesn´t know what to do and as usual he´s in control. She feels trapped.
"It´s not what you´re here for." He pauses and when he continues his words are forced out through gritted teeth. "We need to talk."
She moves to the other side of the couch and when she faces him her arms are folded in front of her, defensively.
"No, we don´t. We have an agreement and it works." Her voice is intense and persuasive, the voice she uses when she wants to manipulate him into agreeing with her on a diagnosis or letting her do some meaningless tests on a patient. It´s never worked.
"Just cut the crap, will you? If this worked you would be giving me a blow-job."
"I was, and you stopped me, so what´s wrong?" A part of her is curious, this is so unlike him and she wonders where it´s going.
He zips his fly and takes off his jacket, then moves to sit on the couch.
"Sit down," he says. She does and he sighs.
"You´ve lost a lot of weight and you´re now frighteningly thin. You have a problem." His voice is soft, so soft she could easily melt and mistake it for caring, but she doesn´t like it. It´s an adult talking to a child.
So she behaves like a child, she looks away and doesn´t talk. She wants to provoke him. She needs him to lose control and finally admit this means something to him.
"Fine, have it your way. Don´t eat, you´ll make a pretty corpse, but don´t expect me to turn up at the funeral!" He´s annoyed, but she´s the one that snaps.
"Fuck you!" she stands and yells. "What´s it to you whether I eat or not? You´re not my doctor and you´ve made it perfectly clear you´re not my boyfriend. Your job is to fuck me, I thought at least that was obvious!"
"You´ve changed the rules!" he´s standing in front of her, shouting back at her, and she´s pleased, at least he sees her now.
"I´m not doing this if you´re offing yourself! Why, why are you doing this? This…" he´s waving one hand randomly between them "This is not a relationship, hell, it´s not even an affair! This is you being hot and me having a normal sexual appetite. This is you being damaged beyond all point of ordinary weirdness and me being an asshole and taking advantage of that, which by the way, seriously shouldn´t surprise you!"
He limps over to the window, but turns to face her again before she can answer.
"You´re going to eat or this ends here and now."
"Do you really think it´s that simple?" She´s back on the couch, feeling overwhelmingly tired. Right now, she almost likes the idea of breaking things off with him, she´s so completely drained of energy.
"Well, " he says, his eyes fixed on some nonexistent point in the darkness outside the window. "It seems to me part of your problem might be the fact that you´re allowing me to power over you. I just thought I might exercise that power to make you eat."
She sighs. She feels a deep need to be honest with him for once, to speak freely without having to worry about him pulling away.
"I´m not good with rejection, " she says, shrugging her shoulders almost apologetically.
"You´re not good with rejection as in you´re going to cry, or as in you´re going to boil my rabbit?"
She scoffs, hesitates and turns away her face as she answers.
"As in I´ve lost my appetite, I suppose."
A sweet smile softens her features and a weaker man would have let her off the hook there and then, but he will show her no sympathy.
"Not good enough. Why are you doing this? Why settle for this?"
Now he´s towering over her, staring at her with that penetrating, never-ending gaze that makes her unable to move and she loses her courage.
"I needed something uncomplicated," she replies and the words fall out of her mouth,deceitful and easy. "It´s not like you´d care. You never get involved."
"You´re lying."
He´s locked her gaze with his own and she knows he´ll never settle for anything less than the truth. She´s as pale as a ghost, frozen in a position that gives her a strange resemblance to a broken doll. She barely moves her lips when she answers.
"Don´t make me say it."
And with that, without so much as a sound, she faints.