A/N - provided I'm not pulling a Dr. House today and wind up sober enough to write, expect another chapter of this and of An Old Married Couple later. But if I don't, enjoy this.
Cuddy hadn't seriously expected House to pick her up for dinner. So when she had finally made it home she relaxed into the couch with a warm cup of tea, wanting nothing more than to take a shower and go to sleep, she hadn't expected the knock on her door that came promptly at seven. She opened it to find House standing there, leather jacket on, helmet in hand. "What are you doing here?" She asked him, and he held out the spare helmet to her.
"We're going to dinner, to take care of that pesky Wilson problem."
"We are?" Cuddy asked, slightly shocked.
"Yes. Let's go." Cuddy stayed in her doorway, refusing to move.
"Even if I were to go, it wouldn't be on that." she pointed to the motorcycle sitting on the curb in front of her house.
"What's wrong with the bike?"
"Hmm, I don't know, maybe the fact that it's a giant death machine?" House sighed, and reached past her to set the spare helmet down on the table just inside her door that held all of her mail.
"Fine then. But this just confirms you're paying." Cuddy rolled her eyes, and pulled her keys from the key rack next to her.
"I thought it was common courtesy for the man to pay for dinner."
"This isn't a date, it's a plotting session. If it were a date I'd have dressed up and brought flowers, and actually picked the resteraunt, rather than dealing with whatever shitty place you're going to pick." Cuddy locked the door behind her as she stepped out of the house and down to her car, opening both doors and allowing him to slide into the passenger seat.
"Capuanos?" She suggested. It was the closest restaurant to her house, and she didn't feel like driving halfway across town to go eat something.
"Chinese?" House countered, and she glared at him.
"I thought I got to pick the restaurant?"
"You do, but if it doesn't start with Little, and end in Sezchuan, then we're going to be doing this plotting session in your house." Of course House would force her into driving someplace just because it was what he wanted. That was just the way House worked. Let someone think they had the upper hand, and then manipulate them from below. She pulled out of her street and headed down the road, secretly enjoying the fact that House was grabbing the handle above the door slightly harder than would look comfortable as she rocketed around a corner.
She walked in to the dimly lit rester aunt, not caring how long it took House, and started perusing the menu before he even limped in. The triple delight was looking awfully good, but then again, so was the sweet and sour chicken. She ignored his glare as he sat down, and poured herself a glass of green tea. "So, why exactly do you need to plan the downfall of my head of oncology?" She asked, munching on one of the fried noodles that sat on the table.
"Because he's prying that's why." House flagged down a nearby waiter before he even looked at the menu. He ordered General Tso's and a Pepsi, and she went with her choice of the triple delight, with an order of steamed dumplings that were intended to be shared. She had a feeling she'd be lucky if she managed to get one.
"He asked you a question about college. Isn't that what friends do, talk to each other about their pasts?"
"He knows all about my college days."
"But he didn't know that you knew me." Cuddy pointed out the giant glaring gap in what House had to have told Wilson.
"Well, you've been mentioned, just not by name. It was kind of hard to not mention the fact that the only girls that were ever at the house I practically lived at were the girlfriends of the two residents."
"You did live there, you just legally couldn't have your name on the lease." House nodded, she was right.
"And of course you got mentioned in the various and sundry stories that were told."
"Like?" Cuddy asked, slightly afraid of what would come up.
"The day that Harry from downstairs got kicked out for lighting the dumpster on fire. Or when we took the hammer to the drywall all over the kitchen. Or that time when we broke the banister off the stairs, or when you knocked an entire case of beer out the window-" Cuddy rolled her eyes. Of course the stories would be of druken, debauched nights. They were boys after all. "-The time when Nick's girlfiend decided to try pot for the first time and coughed so hard she puked-" Cuddy felt the first tinge of red creeping up her cheeks.
"If I recall correctly the unnamed third roommate nearly did the same thing, despite being experienced." House merely shrugged and poached a dumpling off the silver tray that sat in front of him.
"You've honestly never mentioned that you pretty much lived with me in college to anyone?"
"You already get enough special treatment for being a damn good doctor no matter how insane you drive everyone else. I don't need anyone to think I give you special privileges just because we knew each other twenty years ago. The only one who knows that we knew each other at Michigan who knows you work for me now is my mother." House fought back the cold shudder at the thought of Mrs. Cuddy, who the first time the woman had met the boys that owned the house had torn them a new one for the state of their living accommodations.
Cuddy took that moment to poach another dumpling before House could eat them all. "Let me guess, she called you nuts for hiring me?"
"No, she said that she felt you were the most upstanding one from 312." House was trying very very hard not to laugh with food in his mouth, which instead caused him to double over in a sort of half-laughing, half-choking thing for a good five minutes before he finally managed to regain control of his own body.
"I was the most upstanding?"
"Well, you were in med school, your bedroom had the fewest amount of holes and the least amount of paraphernalia in it-"
"Only because all my damage and all my stash was in the living room." He cut his dumpling in half with his fork. "So, Wilson." He studied the pork and chicken filler inside for a long moment drizzling the sauce over top of it. "We need a unified front, so that he can't find the holes in both of our stories." Cuddy nodded. This was House the tactician, this was the House she hired. This was the man who in college had been able to spin up a completely believable story whenever the cops showed up that resulted in everyone walking away without any incident.
"Well, he knows we knew each other, and he knows that I know exactly what would happen if things were to progress."
"You've seen how my other relationships have gone. Use that as an excuse."
"The only outlier is Stacy." She pointed out, choosing to look at her plate rather than the look House always got whenever his ex was mentioned. "All the rest of them ended the same way." House nodded, taking a long sip of his drink. "But knowing Wilson he will find out that we pretty much lived in the same place. Even though your bed was technically down the road, and I technically lived in the dorm." Both of them traded knowing grins.
"Yes, because your parents couldn't bear to think you were actually living in the crackhouse." Cuddy couldn't help but laugh at the moniker given the apartment that had been shared.
"If it wasn't for Michelle and myself, the place would have never been cleaned-whenever we were there it wasn't nearly as bad." She paused as the main course came out. "If he asks, you were the cool grad student that used to buy us booze. But the question now is how did you come to know us?"
"The truth. You were dating my drug dealer's roommate."
"Yeah, because he'll honestly believe that I was living with someone who made their college tuition selling drugs."
"If he knew half of what you did in college, he'd have a heart attack."
"It'd get him off our back, now wouldn't it?" The rest of the meal was spent exchanging quips about their time spent in the company of the same people, pointing out what they knew everyone else had gone on to do. Nick had gone on to be a wrestling coach and biology teacher, just like he'd planned, and Dave had cleaned himself up after a stint for possession with intent to distribute just after college, now working in middle management for some firm out in the midwest.
The waiter asked if they wanted any desert and Cuddy declined, despite House's protests. "I have a cheesecake sitting in my freezer waiting for me." She pointed out, and House merely rolled his eyes, but pulled out his wallet anyway. Cuddy quirked a brow when it was his credit card, not hers sliding in with the bill.
"You came up with a decent plan. Give him enough to know that we knew each other, and hated each other then. You were the insufferable girlfriend of the man who's home I passed out in every night, you hated me because you'd always trip over me because I never actually made it to the spare bed, and always left the place trashed, I hated you because you were always on my back about the fact that I was always passed out in your house. The hatred hasn't changed."
"And we cleverly avoid mentioning whatever it was that we had."
"What we had was a mistake." The same words he'd used earlier, and they evoked the same amount of hurt this time around, even though she wouldn't let him see it. She had thought it was six months of...heaven was too strong of a word, but she'd loved it.
They were silent for the entire drive back, until Cuddy pulled her car up into the driveway. "I believe you said something about cheesecake?" House questioned as he followed her up the walk to her door.
"I believe it said it was calling my name."
"I paid for dinner, after making you think you were going to." Cuddy sighed. How was it that this man managed to worm under her skin, no matter how many times she tried to tell him no, no matter how many times she attempted to push him away. He was a goddamned parasite, is what he was. Every time you thought you got rid of it, another larvae would hatch, and repeat the infection all over again.