CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

House moaned in his sleep. Anyone passing by might think he was having a very good dream when in fact he was in the middle of a nightmare. In his nightmare, brought on by some unpleasant ideas planted in his head by Wilson with the aide of a bottle of middle shelf bourbon, House was at a funeral.

At first he thought he was reliving Amber's funeral, a living nightmare in which his best friend wasn't speaking to him and Cuddy stood by the grieving Wilson's side, instead of his side, where she rightfully belonged, at least in his mind.

He looked for them in the crowd as he had done then and continued to do when haunted by the same dream. This time, however, he couldn't find them. There was no Wilson and no Cuddy amid the faceless grievers, all with their black clad backs turned toward him as he walked through them, searching.

A shining white casket stood over a freshly dug grave. It seemed to hover in mid air, but was really resting on a thin scaffolding that all but vanished into the grey pallor that hung over the day, or night, he wasn't sure which it was.

Amber's funeral had been during the day, a sunny day in early June; an otherwise perfect day; the kind of day young brides dreamed about for their wedding, the kind of day people fell in love. It was not the kind of day that people wanted to bury a vibrant young woman just starting her life.

This was not that day. It was dark and gloomy, the outer reflection of House's inner emotions. House didn't need to look in the coffin. He knew what he would see there, but this being his nightmare he was compelled by an unseen force who wished him great harm.

Wilson lay on his back, arms folded over his chest. He was in a nice black suit. House felt his breath catch in his throat as a hand reached out behind him and landed on his shoulder. He would have given anything in that moment for the hand to be Cuddy's, to turn and fall into her arms and have her brush this all away. Instead he faced Wilson's third wife, Julie.

"You killed him," she accused.

House stared at her, a stare of utter disbelief. He refused to accept what she was saying. Even when she was joined by Wilson's second wife Bonnie and his first wife Cindy, the three of them pointing at him and spitting their accusations at him as he tried to back away.

"You killed him. He's dead because of you." A crowd was forming now, all saying the same thing. House searched for Cuddy. He needed a familiar face to come to his aide. He needed her to save him, once again.

"No…" House tossed and then he turned. He thought he saw her, in the distance, walking away. "CUDDYYYYYY!" He called out to her, reaching his arm above the crowd that was slowly closing in on him.

He felt himself drowning. Drowning in a sea of accusations and the bitter realization that it didn't really matter if they were true, Julie and Bonnie and all the rest of the mob believed it, and that was truth enough for them. He felt himself being pulled under their oppressive weight. He felt himself descending into darkness. "CUDDDddyyyyyy," his voice faded as he called to her, hoping she would turn to him, hoping she would save him.

His eyes fluttered open as he felt something warm against his cheek. The warm, soft shushing sound calmed him enough to grasp where he was.

"Are you alright?" Cuddy was looking down at him. She was wearing one of his tee shirts. It was big on her, and yet just barely managed to hide the tops of her thighs from his view. She caught him looking at her. "I hope you don't mind." She blushed. She hadn't asked if she could borrow something to sleep in. He'd been passed out drunk by the time she realized she would need a change of clothes.

"Mind?" his mind was still trying to process what had been a dream and what was now real.

"I'll take that as a no." She slid her hand off his cheek and let it rest for a moment on his chest. She was checking his heartbeat for irregularities.

House went over the facts in his head. Wilson wasn't dead. Cuddy was right here with him. He wasn't being attacked by a faceless mob. Cuddy was wearing nothing but his tee shirt. He grinned sloppily. He was still reeling from the vast amount of alcohol still coursing through his veins. "You're pretty."

She smiled back at him, unable to stop herself. "Thank you. You're drunk."

"Wanna make out?" He wanted something happy to make him forget the sight of his best friend laying in that coffin.

Cuddy looked at him, stunned. "You just screamed out for me as though someone were murdering you. I thought something had happened to you. And now you want to make out?" She shook her head, hoping to get things to make sense. "What's going on with you House?"

She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, in the small hole caused by him pushing back against the sofa to accommodate his legs. She had a hand still resting on his chest gently. His hand was resting on her legs, not with any lascivious intentions but more because he had to feel her near him, the warmth of his skin reassured him that this wasn't just more dreaming.

"I had a bad dream." He wasn't sure how much he wanted to share with her, or how much she would want him to share.

She was puzzled for a moment as she let it sink in. "I never really thought of you as the dreaming type."

"I dream about you all the time," he said, trying to be sexy but not really feeling it with the onset of a hangover and knowing he smelled of vomit and alcohol. "But this wasn't one of those dreams."

She searched his face for a clue as to how much he wanted to tell her. "What kind of dream was it?"

"I dreamed that Wilson was dead and I was being accused of killing him." He looked at his hand on her leg, the long, masculine fingers against her delicate porcelain skin was a beautiful study in contrast. He became mesmerized by the image.

"Oh, that's awful." She leaned over him, wrapping her arms around him in a tender embrace. "Why would you dream of that?" She didn't pull away. Instead her body weight slowly pressed on top of him as she settled in.

"I…Wilson said something to me today. We were talking about Amber." It was part of the truth at least.

"Why don't you come sleep in the bed?" She finally pulled herself off him after a bit of a silence.

"You mean MY bed?" He teased, trying to put the nightmare behind him.

"Come on." She opted to pull him to his feet instead of bickering with him over semantics.

"I smell like crap." House was self conscious about it. He didn't want her associating that stench with sleeping with him.

"You look like crap too." She hoisted his arm over her shoulders and began to head for the bedroom.

"That was helpful."

"I'll run you a bath."

"I might drown."

"I won't let you drown House." She had no idea how strongly those words had impacted him. She didn't know about the nightmare, about the feeling of drowning that had come over him or about how desperately he was searching for her, wanting her to come and save him.

"Good to know." He felt her lower him to the bed and began to undo his pants. "Aren't you going to run the water first? Or can't you wait to get me undressed?" He craned his head up to look at her and wiggle his eyebrows suggestively, but the room started spinning wildly when he did, so he let his head fall back against the mattress.

"Fine." She left his jeans unzipped but still covering his long legs and headed for the bathroom.

House fumbled to finish the work she had started. It wasn't easy in a room spinning around at the speed this one was. He was far worse off than he'd thought. Usually he could sleep a bender off fairly quickly, but this one had gotten hold of him and wasn't going to go without a fight.

He felt something gurgling in his stomach, threatening to shoot its way up his esophagus. He choked it back with a grimace and shimmied the pants down his long legs.

Cuddy heard a thud and rushed back into the bedroom. She fought hard not to laugh at House, sprawled on the floor with his pants around one ankle and his head swaying back and forth. She knew he was hurting, but it was a funny image of the man she admired so greatly and often thought infallible. "You should have let me finish that." She came over and knelt beside him. House could see up his tee shirt for just a second. It was enough to make him smile like an adolescent idiot.

"You're not wearing panties," he said observantly.

"No." She pulled the jeans off his left ankle and tossed them aside. There was a stain where he had thrown up on them. "Lift your arms," she instructed as she pulled his even more stained shirt over his head.

At the same moment they both looked down at his shorts. They'd have to come off. "No way!" House grabbed his manhood protectively.

"What's wrong? I've seen you naked before." She tried to push his hands aside but he was stronger and would not budge.

"Not like this!" He was flaccid. She had always seen him at full mast.

She rolled her eyes. "Oh grow up. I've seen a man when he's not aroused. I'm sure yours is nothing special." She cringed when she realized how that had come out.

"Mine is VERY special. Too special for someone who's going to treat it like that." He was pouting.

"Come on House." She tugged at his elastic, but he would not budge.

"No."

She stopped and looked at him with a sigh. "You've got to get cleaned up. You can't take a bath in your underwear."

"No." He shifted himself further against the bed, away from her.

She breathed in deeply, pondering her options. "Fine. You won't let me see you…like this, then I'll just have to fix that." Her hands slid up the bottoms of his boxers.

"What are you doing?" He gulped nervously. He was in no condition for sex.

"I've seen you aroused before and you seem to have no problem with that. So…" she let his imagination fill in the blank.

"Fine! You win!" He let go of his death grip on his shorts and began to slip them off.

"Good boy." She smiled and helped the now naked man to his feet.

He swayed a little and she had to grab him to keep him from falling over.

Somehow, and it surprised them both, she managed to get him into the tub with only a large splash of water overflowing the side. House leaned back against the tub and watched her run the soap around and around in her hands, building up a lather. He swooned as her hands began to rub his chest gently, pushing the soap into his dirty flesh.

He closed his eyes and moaned, letting the experience wash away thoughts of anything else.

"I heard about Henry." Clearly Cuddy didn't want to shut out the rest of the world.

"Who?" House looked at her as he let the real world sink back into his mind. "Oh, the patient. Psychosomatic coma. Not my field."

"What do you mean it's not your field? You're his doctor." She lathered up her hands again then slid them along his arms, raising each one in turn to get at him from all angles.

"He should be in psych. I don't deal with delusional patients." House was trying to dismiss Henry as quickly as he could. He couldn't deal with mental cases.

"You're going to deal with this one." She wasn't willing to let him off the hook that easily. "He was relatively fine when he was admitted."

"He had a cyst." House protested.

"A benign cyst. And now he's in a coma. I know your bedside manner isn't up to par, but you're now putting your patients into self induced comas?" She didn't believe the company line; that Henry had put himself in the coma, but she was willing to play along for now.

"I didn't do that to him," House declared as he leaned forward, giving her access to his back.

"Did your drinking tonight have anything to do with your patient's condition?" She could feel his strong, well defined muscles under his taut skin. She lingered longer than was necessary on his strong shoulders and the gentile curve of his back.

"No," he lied.

"Really?" She didn't believe him.

House leaned back again, now that she was done with his back, and placed one of his legs up over the side of the tub.

"This isn't about him talking to his dead wife?" She wasn't sure what House really thought of it all, but she knew that kind of thing would unnerve him, especially if what Kutner said about the coma was true.

"Nope." House squirmed a little as her fingers tickled down the inside of his leg. "Don't do that."

"Sorry." She wasn't really, and she did it again on the other leg.

"I don't know what voodoo Kutner is trying to sell you, but Henry Rose did not slip into a coma just because I told him his wife was dead."

"It's not voodoo House. You know perfectly well that stress cardiomyopathy is a valid…"

"Broken heart syndrome?" House couldn't believe she'd gone there. "That's not what happened."

"No, but this could be something similar." He saw her hand vanish under the soapy water and waited with anticipation to see where on his body it would land. He gasped despite himself as he felt the fingers gently gliding up his thigh, over his scar.

"I expected more from you Cuddy." He shook his head in disappointment.

"No you didn't." Her fingers slipped under his manhood, which hovered slightly in the buoyant water.

She had a point, but it was lost as he closed his eyes and willed her to take him in her hand. She didn't, and the desire that her abstention left was deafening. He ignored whatever it was she was saying and lost himself in the warm water.

The memory of his nightmare was slowly being washed away by Cuddy's gentle hands and hushed words. She had stopped talking to him about the case, realizing she was only banging her head against his stubborn brick wall. Instead she had begun to tell him about her day, knowing he wasn't really listening, but aware that he didn't want her to stop.

"We should go away for the weekend," he pronounced as she helped him to his feet, careful that he didn't fall on the slippery porcelain of the tub.

"What?" Had she heard him correctly?

"Isn't that what couples do? They go away for the weekend. We should do that." He didn't want to have a long, drawn out discussion about it. He just wanted to do it.

"Did you have some place in mind?" She was willing, if he was.

"How about I surprise you?" A grin flashed across his now mostly sober face. The bath had worked wonders, as had her tender touch and he was feeling more like himself.

She cringed. She wasn't sure she could handle House's idea of a surprise, but he seemed to be taking this relationship more seriously than she'd ever hoped, and she didn't want to do anything to make him run back into his self protective shell. "Great." She smiled like someone had just given her a gift of dog crap in a bag.

The look was not lost on House. "It will be." He had no idea what the surprise would be but he was sure Wilson would think of something good. "Shall we go to bed?"

The twinkle in her eye told him his answer. House, still as naked as the day he was born swaggered toward the bed, ignorant of Cuddy's smirk as she watched his ass swishing back and forth with a limp.

"Are you going to try to take advantage of me Dr. House?" She teased; almost certain she would let him if he did try.

"Always," he replied, though his lids became heavy and his muscles protested with fatigue.

In less than fifteen minutes House was motionless and snoring. Cuddy curled up against him with a smile on her lips. Life with House wasn't turning out as bad as she'd feared.