I'm really not happy with this chapter, but I couldn't think of any way to describe the past without the hated //FLASHBACK//, because flashbacks never flow well into a story.
Cuddy had long since changed out of the soaking wet clothes that she had been wearing, and was instead curled around a hot mug of tea as she sat on her couch, staring at, but not watching, the television, replaying the events of the night in her mind.
They'd had such a civilized dinner. He'd even paid. They'd come back to her house for desert and nothing more. No plans of more, and even the blatant pass hadn't been in much more than jest. And then she'd pushed, and he'd gotten defensive, and it had ended. And he'd manipulated her yet again. It was a chess match, and she was perpetually four moves behind. He was able to see the game as it was going to unfold, and she was stuck in using tried and true gambits that he knew how to outplay.
He knew that there was still something there, he had to have known. He knew it was why he could pull off things that would get him fired for blatant sexual harassment in other jobs, and she'd merely shrug it off. Why it was that he knew that a single hand could get her to let her guard down enough for him to spring to the attack. Why they both knew that flirtatious banter would lead to nothing but trouble. Why he kept pushing her away, because they both knew that it would end the same way it had the last time, and that this time ignoring each other for the months that followed would be impossible, as they were forced to work together.
This wasn't college, where he could find himself someone else with an endless supply of marijuana to buy, and she could bury herself in studying to forget about each other, and never have to see one another. She'd moved out soon after the "mistake" as he was so fond of calling it, and she honesty didn't know if he'd even returned to the place after the "mistake" had been called such. This wasn't twenty years in the past when they hadn't planned on ever seeing anyone they went to college with ever again. This wasn't college where they could blame the whole thing on being young and stupid-they were older now, and should know better.
Was that really all that there had been between them? Just the recklessness of youth? It had felt so right though. As though it was what really mattered. It had been a mistake, she supposed, to start whatever it was they had. She'd noticed him, from the moment he started hanging around. First looking for Dave, always slightly shifty just because of his purpose for being there. The casual eye over everyone in the house, to see if anyone was going to rat on the med student. Then the easy way he'd accepted when Nick had asked if he could pick up beer for the house.
And even when he had been looking slightly nervous, there was an arrogant swagger about him. What had started as him buying a few cases of beer when he'd stop by pretty much weekly, occasionally staying long enough to share his most recent purchases with the other men in the house-she'd almost always politely decline, she did have her studies to worry about after all, had slowly turned into him spending more and more time there. The occasional case of beer had turned into buying the beer for the rest of the house, had turned into him supplying parties, and bringing some of his med school friends along.
And she'd always noticed him. The bright blue eyes and the sandy colored hair, the cocksure attitude, and the indifference to what anyone thought. She'd had a boyfriend, she was happy with Nick, even if she didn't love him. He was good to her, and she was willing to deal with his drinking, if only because the worst he did when he drank was fall down the stairs, or punch holes in the wall for fun. He was a nice guy, and she hadn't pretended that it would ever be something that would last past her undergrad. But Greg-he hadn't been known as House then, he'd been the one to catch her eye from the first time he leaned against the top of the stairs, waiting for Dave to emerge with a sandwich bag full of green plant matter.
When Greg-it was weird to think of him that way, as he had become so ingrained in her mind as House-had pretty much moved in, she hadn't known what to think. He was challenging, always willing to debate with her, and she liked that. It was something that Nick had never been able to do. That, and Greg had been willing to mock her when she missed something on her homework, and continue mocking her until she got it right.
He kept a protective eye on her, when Nick found himself far too wasted to do it himself-taking up the role as the man of the house, forcing people away when they'd had too much, preventing as much damage as possible that wasn't inflicted by the people actually on the lease or himself, and she'd looked up to him as a role model and protector. Sure, he was unconventional. Sure, someone who spent most of his time with a pipe full of weed sitting in front of a typewriter knocking out papers wasn't a good role model, but he was what she wanted to be-a damn good med student destined to be a damn good doctor.
Nick hadn't even noticed them growing closer over the months, he just assumed that they were getting along, and was glad about it. It was only after Nick had been forcefully dragged to bed after falling down the stairs for the third time in the same night, and breaking his hand on the wall that she had finally kissed Greg. It hadn't been intended as what it was, it'd been intended as a 'thank-you-for-taking-care-of-my-boyfriend' kiss, but something happened, and it had turned into a 'much-more-than-that' kiss, had turned into the first night Greg had spent the night in his own house instead of the spare bedroom in over two months.
And they'd pointedly ignored each other for the next three weeks, with her and Nick drifting further and further apart, until finally it had all broken down, and she'd kissed Greg again. This time in thanks for him pointing out a glaring error in her chemistry homework, and fixing it for her, with no malice and no sarcastic comment about how she was wrong. She'd just been grateful to be spared the lecture that he usually gave when he checked her homework. Between Nick and school, she'd had a rough week. And that had turned into the second time they'd spent the night at his place.
Which had turned somehow into a semi-regular and then a regular thing. And just when she was starting to really feel comfortable around him, just when she was feeling as though she could open up to him in ways that she'd never felt comfortable with Nick, he'd pulled away, and completely ignored her. He'd found somewhere else to buy drugs from, citing better prices for better product, and stopped hanging around with them. They found someone else to buy beer, and she'd found herself back in her dorm, purposely avoiding everything and anything to do with that house, for fear of running into him again. Because she didn't know whether she'd hate him or miss him more.
There hadn't been much conversating between them then, just as there was little between them now. They had had the most frustrating relationship then, and it wasn't much better now. Every time she'd drop hints about something, he'd purposely ignore them. She knew that he got the hint loud and clear, and was doing everything but that. She'd make it very obvious that she'd want to actually go out to dinner with him, and he'd purposely avoid it. The flirtatious hostility had turned to frustration, as she pulled back in favor of her studies whenever he'd actually want to be affectionate. Both of them had just grown increasingly upset with each other until finally he just dropped her off at her dorm one day, told her to get out of the car, and drove off, ignoring all further attempts at contact.
It'd happened once already, she'd been stupid enough to think she was actually falling for someone like Greg-no, that was when he had started becoming House in her mind-it was easier to separate him as just another med student than it was for her to deal with him as a person. And they'd parted ways, avoiding each other for the next two months, before they'd accept that they were on the same campus, and that it was just polite to say hi to one another when they'd find themselves in the anatomy labs at the same time-him to mess with the corpses, her to actually learn something about them.
And then he'd graduated, and she'd gone on to med school, and they'd forgotten about each other, until she found herself with a department looking for a head, and he found himself desperate for someplace that would hire such a maverick. They'd never once mentioned it, but it had been understood that the past was just that, the past, and it would never be spoken of. He'd been the one to break that understanding, mentioning what they'd had in the midst of a heated argument. And she'd lied for him-because it was him not because it was one of her doctors. And now they were teetering on the edge of what would be very bad for both of them. They were teetering on the edge of making the same mistake again. Maybe he was right, what they had had been a mistake. It wasn't supposed to happen then, and it certainly wasn't supposed to happen now. That's what this night had confirmed, anything between them had always been, and always would be a mistake.