CHAPTER EIGHT

Cuddy was sitting at her desk, her phone pressed against her ear. "…I understand your issue Mr. Mitner, but you have to realize that this is a hospital, and we can't very well ask our patients to not get sick because you couldn't get us the antibiotics we ordered three weeks ago."

House walked past her quietly and sat down at his desk. She glanced up at him as he passed. He felt her eyes watching him as he went and sat down, then that feeling was gone, and he felt a chill at the loss.

"…No. I'm not paying for the shipment until we actually receive it…yes, I'm sure Mercy does things that way, but this isn't Mercy. We have standards."

House logged onto his computer and looked up D'Agostino's restaurant. It looked romantic. The webpage had a light gold background and the font was some frilly, swirly lettering that was hard to read. There was a photo of the candlelit dining room and a menu. He turned his attention to the menu, checking for the Fettuccini Alfredo he knew she would eat.

"…I'm taking my business to your competitor Mr. Mitner. Your last payment will be in the mail as soon as I get my shipment of antibiotics." She hung up in a huff.

"You tell 'em," House cheered her on quietly.

"How's Carly?" She had heard the page while she was on the phone.

"She'll be okay." House didn't see the Alfredo. Now what?

Cuddy was thinking about her words carefully, about whether she should say them or not. In the end, she felt it should be said. "I'm glad you stopped me from releasing her."

"I didn't do it for you," House replied snottily.

"This isn't working." She needed to get her work done. She got up and walked over to him slowly, almost seductively. He would have called it seductively if he didn't know her as well as he did.

"I agree. So why don't you leave?" House closed his browser quickly then leaned back and watched her move.

"Look, until Maintenance can find me another office, we're going to have to share this space, which means I'm going to use this as my office, and you're going to go spend some time getting to know your team better. Understood?" She leaned into his face and he looked down her drooping blouse.

"No."

"You're going in there." She pointed to the meeting room then pulled him out of his chair as well as she could. Unfortunately, House, anticipating her intentions, made himself a dead weight and rather than move him out of his chair, she moved herself into his lap. The effect was both maddening and exhilarating.

"Get off me woman!" House, after a lingering moment of pure, lascivious joy, pushed her off of himself, before he made a full and rather impressive salute which would only embarrass them both.

"Get out of that chair." She took a step back, straightening her skirt before pointing toward the door she wanted him to get hit in the ass with.

"No. It's my chair, and my office and I'm not leaving." House could be quite stubborn when he wanted to be, which seemed to be on any day ending in Y.

"I'm your boss and it's my office now. GO!" She was seconds away from stomping her foot in frustrated petulance.

"You go, you hang with the minions. Bet they could tell you some great stories about me, give you more ammo for when you finally get around to firing me."

"I don't need ammo House. If I wanted to fire you, the Board would get down on their knees and worship at my feet."

"Don't they already do that?" It was a well known fact that Cuddy had brought the hospital out of the red and made the elder members of the staff, also known as The Board, very wealthy doctors indeed. Since then, they had come to tolerate her seemingly blind devotion to one rather difficult diagnostician and his unorthodox procedures.

"They'd build me a shrine." Cuddy loved teasing House about the fact that she was the only reason he wasn't living in a cardboard box on a street corner in the bad part of town. She was the only administrator who was willing to take on such a liability, and the only chief of medicine who'd been able to get him to do his work for more than two days in a row.

What had helped was that she knew him better than almost anyone. She knew which cases would intrigue him and what aspect of a case she had to sell to him. She also knew that, in his own twisted way, he was loyal to her. When he knew it really mattered, he towed the line, and when she knew he was right, she let him get away with murder, no matter how unethical it might be. Together they'd worked out a delicate balance of push and pull that worked for them, until the kiss went and threw it all into a tailspin.

"Will there be virgin sacrifices?" It was so easy to get Cuddy off track. All House had to do was go off on one of his amusing little tangents, and she forgot why she was angry with him. It was a technique he'd mastered over the years. He knew it worked because, deep down, she envied him. She envied his brilliance and all the things it let him get away with. She envied his ability to not give a damn what anyone thought. She was so caught up in appearances, and politics, that she always worried what was being said of her. House wished she'd stop being that way and just let herself go. He bet that if she did, she'd be unstoppable.

"No." She had sat down at her desk, aware she would never get him to leave and that she had a lot of work to do that day. She began shuffling papers, making sure House hadn't 'accidentally' thrown out some important document that might disrupt his way of life.

The silence became deafening after about an hour and House, feeling some odd swell of confidence blurted out the words before he had time to think about their consequences. "Have you ever been to D'Agostino's?"

Cuddy was only paying half attention. "No. I hear it's nice."

"I was thinking of going to check it out."

She narrowed her eyes. "Do you have a date?" Her tone was teasing, but there was a glimmer of disappointment in her eyes, or was he just seeing what he wanted to see?

"I suppose you could come if you want." He shrugged trying so hard to seem like it didn't matter if she said no.

"Are you asking me out?" Why was it that a guy couldn't just come out and say 'do you want to go out with me?' anymore? They all had to beat so far around the bush she practically had to run to keep up.

"NO!" In an instant he'd changed his mind.

"Then what are you doing House?" She leaned her elbows on her desk, crossed tightly and holding the weight of her upper body on them.

"Forget it." He felt backed into a corner. He hated that feeling.

"No." She saw him moving to rise and moved faster, blocking his way. "We need to deal with this."

"There's nothing to deal with." He looked into her eyes challengingly.

She felt something wash over her, as though he were pushing his pain toward her, trying to knock her over with it. Still, she soldiered on. She had to. She didn't want to lose him. "There is something to deal with you, and if we don't deal with it soon…" it could be too late, she said in her head, unable to say it to him.

"We won't have to deal with it ever." He finished her thought in a way she hadn't intended. He tried to step around her but she cut him off again. "I have to go check on my patient."

"No you don't." She wasn't letting him go this time. Time to take the plunge. "We kissed and now everything has changed between us. You…"

"Things change…"

"No!" She held up her hand to stop him speaking. "Don't you dare tell me things change! You never change House. You…"

"I have changed Cuddy!" He was yelling now. It came on suddenly, more suddenly than he'd expected and it startled him, but he didn't stop. "I'm not the same man you met twenty years ago. I'm not the same man I was ten years ago. I've changed, you've changed. Things change." There was pain in his voice. "I'm not the man you think I am."

Fire flashed in her eyes. Did he think she was stupid? "I know you're not the same House. I wouldn't want you to be. You've grown, but you haven't changed. You're still brilliant, you still care about the puzzle above all else, you still have standards too high for anyone to ever reach and you still get under my skin every chance you get."

"You have an idealized view of me Cuddy. You always have."

"Don't tell me what I think House. You lost that right a long time ago."

"I never should have had it." He spoke softly, certain his words would only provoke her further.

She bit her lip, wanting to scream, wanting to tell him how he'd broken her heart all those years ago, but she couldn't. The balance of their relationship had always been so fragile. One move his way or hers and the whole thing threatened to shatter into a million pieces.

And now here they were, watching as it fell in slow motion, each waiting for the other to try and catch it, to save what little they had left of what could have been wonderful.

"I'm not like you House. I put my trust in people. I try to see the best in them."

"You're an idiot," he stated flatly.

"No House. You're the idiot. You've shut yourself off from the world. You think you're so much better than everyone else because you've convinced yourself that you don't need anyone. But that doesn't make you better than the rest of us. It just makes you a lonely, miserable bastard."

The words hurt her to say almost as much as they hurt him to hear. It was the cold hard truth, given voice and floating in the air between them. House fought off a thousand horrible things he could say. He was searching for the one thing that would hurt her as much as she'd just hurt him.

He snorted a sarcastic little laugh. "And you're not lonely? You go home to your big empty house every night and dream about the perfect life you're never going to have. Does that make you less miserable than me?"

She blanched as his words cut her like a knife. "At least I'm trying. I'm putting myself out there…"

"And getting hurt."

"Yes, House, I'm getting hurt, but at least I'm alive."

"Life is overrated," House spat bitterly. His life was far from what he'd imagined, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. No amount of sugar coating was going to make the pain in his leg go away. No amount of positive attitude was going to change the fact that Stacy left him.

"No House, it's not." She wasn't going to let him slip into that self deluded misery he held close like a security blanket. "I know the man you can be House, if you'd only give up this grudge you've got against the world." Her voice had gone from angry to pleading. "I know you can be more than you are and it breaks my heart to see you settle for the life you have."

"I can't be the man you want me to be Cuddy!" He snapped at her, pushing her away from him physically and verbally. "Stop trying to pretend I'm still the legend you knew in school. That man is gone. He died ten years ago. And he started dying long before that. He doesn't exist except in your school girl fantasies.

"This is me Cuddy." He waved his arms up and down before his old, haggard exterior. "And this." He waved his cane at her, almost hitting her with it. "And no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that."

"I don't want to change you." She felt defeated. "I just want you to be…happy." Even as she said it she knew how ridiculous it would sound to him.

"It's a good thing you're used to disappointment."

"Why did you kiss me House?" She had to know. She couldn't stand any more sleepless nights, lying in her bed thinking of every conceivable reason, and knowing that none of them could be right.

"Why do you care?"

She stumbled on her words. "Because I care about you House, and I don't want to lose…whatever it is that we have."

"I kissed you because you looked vulnerable and I knew you wouldn't pull away." That was part of it, anyhow.

She looked deep into his eyes for a long, breathless moment. There was truth looking back at her, and pain, and something more, hidden deep beyond her reach.

"This isn't about the kiss and you know it." House had already opened up more than he had intended. Why not go for it now, before he chickened out again?

"What is it about House?" She pleaded with him to enlighten her.

"It's about…" he tried, he really tried, he formed the words in his mouth and tried to push them out, but he couldn't say it. It was one simple word, two letters, and he couldn't say it.

She waited for what seemed an eternity. She had been waiting for longer than that. "Forget it." She turned half way around, about to walk out on him, but turned back and looked at him sadly. "I can't wait for you forever House. I need to move on with my life."

"I know." He said the words so softly even he couldn't hear them.

She waited, hoping he'd say more. It took all her will to turn around and walk out, but she had to stay true to her word. She had put her life on hold for too long, not intentionally, it wasn't that clear cut, but if she thought about it, she'd realize that she had been waiting for him to be ready for her. But while she'd been waiting, her life had slipped by.

She walked toward the door slowly, each step taking a great effort. She was walking out on a long and often painful chapter in her life. It wasn't an easy walk to make.

"Cuddy?" House's voice called to her, stopping her in her tracks. She turned back, hopeful. He hobbled toward her, wanting to reach out and touch her, hold her hand, stroke her hair. Instead he bared his soul to her in the only way he could. "Would you like to have dinner with me?"

Had a strong wind blown by at that moment, it would have knocked her straight off her feet. She wanted to be angry, and part of her was, because as usual House waited until she was very nearly free then pulled her back into his orbit, but she wasn't angry. She was elated.

She looked over her shoulder, pushed a smile onto her face and said "I'd love to" in a way that indicated she wasn't really sure this was happening, but had decided to hope it was. "Thank you," she said as she left uncertainly.

House waited until he was certain she wasn't coming back then finally let out his breath. He had never actually asked a woman out before. He'd tried once, in high school, Mary Sue Parker, sweet girl next door type. He'd gotten as far as telling her she had nice hair when the star of the baseball team came over and put his arm around her. That ended that.

He didn't have to ask hookers out. Just flash them some cash and that was that. It was a business deal. No threat of rejection there. He'd yet to meet a hooker that turned down the going rate.

Stacy had asked him out. His only real significant relationship hadn't been his idea at all. She had made the first moves on him, and hadn't let go until he made it impossible for her to stay. What if he did that to Cuddy? He was going to screw this up somehow. He just knew it. He was suddenly terrified.