Hello!
This drabble is set in 3.18 "Airborne". It is not another secret relationship AU! (One has to be reasonable sometimes)...
Thank you for the feedback you left last time! I hope you will enjoy this one as well.
58. Is your seatbelt on?
Cuddy nestled into the seat next to House. The flight had been… crazy so far. A sick passenger. A meningitis scare. Her getting sick – or thinking that she was sick. A lumbar puncture thirty-six thousand feet into the air. Them almost cutting into a passenger on board a plane.
And they wouldn't be landing for another six hours.
Jesus Christ.
The crises had all been averted, but this was going to be a long flight.
At least she'd managed to get a seat in first class.
She was exhausted – both mentally and physically from her apparently imaginary symptoms. A nap would do her some good, but the second she closed her eyes, she realised she would be too busy replaying the day's events in her head to even hope to get some sleep.
She sighed.
"Is your seatbelt on?" House asked her. She turned to him with a frown. "If you're going to sleep, you should fasten it before you're thrown out of your seat next time we hit turbulences."
She rolled her eyes. "And people say you have no bedside manner." But she still listened to him. "I can't sleep anyway."
"Want me to tuck you in?"
"God, no." Much to her dismay, he grabbed one of the airline's blankets and draped it over her. "I don't need you to treat me like a child."
"No. Right now, you need to relax." House grabbed the flight attendant's attention as she walked past them. "Can we get a tea?"
Cuddy observed him for a second. "I scared you."
"When you started screaming your head off?" He scoffed. "Get over yourself. I heard worse. You were mildly annoying at best."
"You thought I had meningitis," she stated quietly. "You thought I was gonna die."
The flight attendant handed her a steaming Styrofoam cup. Cuddy thanked her and cradled it between her hands. When she turned to House, he was staring out the window, apparently fascinated by the view. With a smirk, she quietly drank her tea, folded down his tray and set the empty cup there – just for the sake of annoying him.
As he still wouldn't turn back to her, she followed his advice and made herself comfortable, taking deep breaths to lure her body to sleep. She was out before she knew it.
When he didn't feel her fidget beside him anymore, House turned back to her. Just as he'd predicted, she was sound asleep, her face tilted towards the corridor and one of her hands holding the blanket up to her chest.
He couldn't resist the impulse to kiss her on the temple.