A/N and the relationship as told from House's point of view. Stacy and Cuddy bear too much of a resemblence for me NOT to point it out, after all.
The sound of a motorcycle was the only thing to break the otherwise still silence that had descended upon Clarksville Road. It's a treacherous path, but he knew it well, was intimately familiar with all its curves. A long lost lover, that no matter how long he was apart from it, he knew exactly where each bend in the road was. A brief pause at the corner, looking across at the pond, and the home purposely decorated to look like something from a bad Christmas movie, brown with white droopy trim that looked like icing.
He needed to clear his head, and the best way to do that was to just ride. Just get out and be one with the road. That was why he had a motorcycle. With nothing but the sound of the wind and the roar of his bike, he didn't have to worry about anyone or anything else. And at this hour of the night, there was no one else on the road.
There was a slight chill running through him from where the full can of beer had soaked through his clothes and into his skin, but the jacket made it somewhat easier to take. What had happened earlier? They had been a mistake-he had told her as such. He'd nearly lost two very good friends because he couldn't keep his hands off of one of their girlfriends. It had been a mistake to go after her, and it had been a mistake for her to respond. They were never supposed to have been anything.
It wasn't supposed to have been one night, much less six months of sleeping around with one another, always on the sly so that Nick would never get wind of it. Cuddy could have tried all she wanted to pretend that she was single, that she hadn't been dating Nick when she started seeing him, but they both knew it was a lie. Nick had been right for her, and she had known it.
He was the rebel, the one that someone like Cuddy should have looked at and promptly written off, but she hadn't. He did nothing to deserve her. He mocked her, scorned her, insulted her. He made snide comments about her mistakes in her work, and corrected them for her with an arrogant air. He challenged every one of her beliefs, shook her faith in herself and humanity, and rather than attempt to force him out of her life, she'd instead grown closer to him.
That was what puzzled him most about Lisa Cuddy. That no matter how much he tried to make her hate him, she continued to care. No matter how badly he tried to shove her away, she always stood her ground and refused to move. The complete opposite of Wilson in a sense. He forced Wilson away, and Wilson came back like a little lost puppy dog, wanting love and affection. He forced Cuddy away, and she refused to move.
The bigger difference between them was that he forced Cuddy away out of fear. Fear that things would get real between them, and he'd fuck up. Fear that he'd actually allow someone to get close to him, and they'd screw him over the same way Stacy had. That had been the last straw for him and relationships. Although he wasn't entire sure if that was really it. Stacy had made him happy, but she'd never felt like the one. It was why he'd never really gone out and bought a ring, despite endless prodding from all persons but Stacy. It was why he never really wanted to marry her-she'd never felt like the person he deserved to marry.
She'd been long legs, and dark hair, and a nice rack, and she'd challenged him and fought back, refusing to budge, but she had never felt like the one. He allowed himself to close his eyes as he pulled to a stop sign on some side road, not even knowing where he was. Somewhere near Cranbury, he knew that-at least he recognized the name of the road he was on, and recognized the intersection coming up. He hung a hard right onto Edinburgh road, knowing that it would lead him out behind the park, and he'd swing around that, cut through Hamilton, and return home. He plotted his route in a back corner of his mind so that he wouldn't have to think about where he was going. His body and his bike would eventually take him home, leaving his mind free to think of other things.
Even though he didn't want to think about other things. Like how Stacy had felt more like the next-best-thing than a proper relationship. He loved her, and she had loved him, but it was a weird feeling, knowing that the woman that you loved was a replacement for something that he couldn't have. What he didn't want to think about was who she was a replacement for. Because they simply weren't meant to be. Just because Stacy beared a resemblance to another leggy brunette with a nice rack that he knew, well, that was just because he had a type. He had a thing for brunettes with nice racks who were mentally challenging.
Cuddy simply had fit into that type. So of course he'd noticed her when he'd dropped by to see Dave for some business dealings. She fit his type, and he couldn't resist pointing out that she'd mixed up the steps of mitosis. Biology had always been her weak point, she'd always complained about the amounts of memorization of things that had no point to her-like the different classes of plants. Fungi and bacteria, and living breathing organisms concerned her-and fungi only in the sense that it had a bad habit of multiplying in the body if allowed to.
And of course he looked after her on nights when Nick was so blindingly drunk he couldn't even remember his own name. She was a lady of the house after all, and seeing as he had moved in without even asking to, he felt it was something of a responsibility of his. Making sure that he took care of Nick whenever the man would fall down the stairs and pop his knee out, screaming in pain that someone needed to do something because he was in agony, and whimpering on the bed. And then making sure that Nick's girlfriend didn't find herself manhandled by any of the other drunks in the party.
It wasn't because he cared about her, but because he cared about his friends.
When she'd kissed him after he had tucked Nick away into bed one night-no different from any of the others, when they happened to party, it was always hard-he'd been surprised. But he was also a college-aged male, and anyone with tits that nice kissing him would cause him to kiss back regardless of who those tits belonged to. He hadn't meant to ignore the rest of the party and drag her down the stairs with him and down the street to where he technically had a name on a lease and a mattress, it had just happened.
And they had woken up the next morning, both of them swearing that it wouldn't happen again, that it had been a foolish mistake. Even she had admitted that it was a mistake. The first time at least. And they'd avoided each other, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, refusing to talk beyond what would make things look normal. He refused to stop hanging out at Nick and Dave's, because he had a good thing going with his friends.
Yes, it had been a mistake. That had led to another mistake-this time on her homework-and his mistake of correcting without his usual scathing comments. Which had led to the mistake of her kissing him, and his mistake of suggesting they go back to his place, again. Which had turned into a giant six-month long mistake, where she claimed that she and Nick were through, and he was willing to believe it, because it was easier than accepting that he was sleeping with his best friend's girlfriend. Not just sleeping with, but developing a relationship with.
They'd fight, they'd banter, they'd snap at each other, and point out each other's flaws. But he refused to admit that they had a thing. A thing implied taking her out to dinner-which she would always hint that she wanted, but he always refused to attend. He liked whatever it was that they had-and changing it would jeopardize it. It was flirtatious hostility-they hated each other, but loved the sex. At least that was how he had tried to rationalize it. And somewhere he had just snapped, because he knew that if it continued that it wouldn't be flirtatious hostility, it would be flirtatious caring, and that was something he never wanted to get into. Because whenever he actually attempted to give her what he thought she wanted, whenever he actually tried to show affection, although he wasn't very good at it, she'd dive further into her textbooks.
And she had grown frustrated at it-like he'd wanted her to. The same frustration that he felt when he tried to do something sweet and she ignored it. He had pushed her away, and this time she hadn't stood her ground. He had simply gotten out of the car one morning when she had driven her to class, said goodbye in a very firm tone that had meant that he wasn't just saying that he was going to class, but that he was going to class and whatever it was between them was over, and waked off leaving her behind.
He'd told Dave that there was someone in one of his lectures that had stuff that was far better than what he was getting, for the same price, and he'd put them in contact if Dave wanted it, claimed that he never really got any work done when there was a fridge full of beer and a house full of potheads, and threw his few possessions back into his bag, and left the place before she'd gotten back from class. And ignored anything to do with her for the next few months until they were forced to be on decent terms. And by decent, it was only meant that they weren't supposed to kill each other.
He'd made a mistake, and he'd fixed it in the best way that he knew how. He ignored it and pretended as though it never happened. He didn't solve problems, he made mistakes and covered them up. He was a bureaucrat at heart-whenever he fucked up he swept it under the rug and hoped that it wouldn't be noticed. He didn't have any problems in his life, he simply acted as though the few things he really, truly, fucked up simply hadn't been intended to be and ignored them.
Which was precisely what he was going to do now. Because now was the same as twenty years ago. And he'd already made the mistake once, he most certainly wasn't going to make the same mistake again. He ignored his mistakes, but always swore never to repeat them. And he wouldn't.