Pictures at an Exhibition
Chapter 10
She was a better chess player than House had reckoned. President of the chess club, indeed, he thought puzzling through his next series of moves—and hers, his index finger perched atop his bishop. "Maybe we should have used a timer, House," she teased impatiently.
"Stop drumming your fingers on the board. It's not allowed."
"Hah! Right. By whose rules? Yours?" House removed his finger, satisfied, finalizing the move. The board looked like a battle zone after eight moves. Both were playing their most aggressive game. But neither had claimed an opposition piece. Cuddy smiled broadly.
"What?"
"You are so dead, House," she laughed evilly, taking his knight with her rook, a gold castle balanced atop a rampant ivory elephant. House cursed himself for his stupidity, falling into a novice trap. "I promise to not report you to the chess police, but you did set yourself up."
"Yeah, well, maybe I let you take that piece. You know, give the amateur a break."
"Yeah, right," she laughed. "Or maybe you were too distracted by my boobs. In any event. What was that wager? You do anything I say?"
"One thing. And not clinic duty. That's for the winner of the game."
"Fine." Cuddy considered the possibilities, pleased, watching House squirm. She reasoned that she could be satisfied endlessly watching him try to figure out what she had had in mind; worrying about the consequences of a lost rook.
"Bzzzt. Time's up. Thanks for playing." House examined the board, ready to resume the game. He picked up a pawn.
"No way time's up. There's no clock on this."
"Had your chance…" Cuddy shook her head, ignoring House.
"I want my feet massaged. And I want you to…"
"No, no. One thing," he warned smugly. "That sounded an awful lot like you were going to add a second component to that request. So request with care, since it's going to be your only opportunity."
"Feet, it is. Bare. Half an hour. Minimum."
"You drive a hard bargain, mysterious lady," sighed House in an unidentifiable foreign accent. House picked up a pawn.
"What are you doing?" Cuddy's Cheshire cat grin turned to a scowl.
"I figured we collect after…"
"There's no 'we' in this. I collect. Now." Her voice was hard, but her eyes were mirthful.
"Fine." House began to stand, using his left leg and the table for leverage. He tried to supress a grimace, biting his lower lip, a pained gasp escaping through his teeth. He mentally calculated how long it had been since his last vicodin. Too long, he figured.
"You OK?" Cuddy's eyes filled with concern as House fell back onto the sofa, vigorously massaging his thigh. She knew he hated this: not being able to cover quickly enough; being seen in pain; hurting and (in his eyes anyway) vulnerable. House nodded unsurely.
"I was just going to put on an album," he breathed, regaining himself. She gave him the time he needed, using the opportunity to get another beer. By the time she returned he was putting an old vinyl recording on the Sota turntable. The room filled with the resonant tone of Charlie Parker's saxophone. She watched as he took two vicodin, chasing them with a swig from the Grolsch bottle, his back to her. Cuddy wanted to tell him that it was OK. That she understood; she wasn't going to berate or belittle him for doing what he needed to for the pain. Not today; not anymore. She'd learned that lesson the hard way; and the cost was too high, especially for House.
Cuddy observed him for a moment, noting the heavier slouch to his shoulders; the more difficult gait to his step. When he turned, she caught his eyes, which seemed more melancholy these days; more guarded; more wary. "What?" he asked as she stared at him a moment too long. "I needed to take…" He started to explain, a defensive look darkening his features even more.
"No." She stopped him. "That's not it. Sorry…I can see that…" What could she say: that she approved of his taking the meds? The needed meds? Like he needed her approval? No. He had no need to explain himself: to her; to Wilson; to anyone. "Feet," she commanded randomly, changing the subject, ratcheting down the intensity of the moment.
House sat back in his corner of the sofa, inviting Cuddy to sit again at the opposite end. "Gimme." She smiled in anticipation, propping her ankles up on his left thigh. "Which is more tense, left or right?"
"Both."
"Yeah, well who told you to wear 'fuck-me' stilettos to work every day. One day someone's going to take them seriously, you know. Or maybe you'd like that."
Cuddy said nothing in response, ignoring the teasing, choosing instead to lose herself in the sensation of House's warm, strong hands manipulating the instep of her left foot. Closing her eyes, she saw them anyway—his hands. They were large, not unexpectedly so, considering his height; but gentle and steady. She imagined him playing his guitar, which hung on the wall near the piano: all grace and precision; or doing a procedure on a patient… She gasped involuntarily as he encountered a particularly tight knot, her gasp only serving to egg him on; increase the intensity of his kneading. He prodded the area just in front of her toes with the pad of his thumb, causing her to sigh. And suddenly his motions turned gentle, becoming more caressing strokes, before, just as suddenly, he switched to the other foot.
House jumped slightly, disturbing the mantle of feeling that had lulled Cuddy into a pool of sensation. She opened her eyes at the movement, regarding him, observing. His own eyes were closed; his face, she noted, was so beautiful when he was in repose like this. Cuddy realized that her foot must have brushed his right thigh, causing him to startle, move it out of harm's way reflexively. "Did I kick you?"
"No," he responded almost groggily. "It's fine…I…" He looked embarrassed, almost, at having been caught enjoying his task nearly as much as she was. Cuddy regretted having said anything; the moment broken. His hands stopped their motion and Cuddy instantly missed their warmth and gentle pressure. As if reading her thoughts, his massage resumed.
The Charlie Parker side had long since ended when House eased Cuddy's ankles from his lap. "You stopped." The massage left her as relaxed as a bubble bath would have and twice as aroused. She had wanted him never to stop.
"It's been well over 30 minutes…and you have a game to lose." His voice was quiet and husky.
"Sounds like it was quite a burden for you," she teased, feeling certain that it quite the opposite.
"Just wait till I capture your queen."
"If. Big 'if.' I liked this way too much to let you take my queen." The seductiveness in which Cuddy enfolded her words did nothing to suppress House's own arousal. Her feet planted in his lap; the smoothness of them on his calloused fingers sent signals to every pleasure center in his brain. In truth, he really had not wanted to stop. It was something he had to do—for his own preservation. At this point he wasn't even sure that he could concentrate enough to play chess, let alone win the damn game.
The beer, the vicodin, the company, all conspired to make House feel more than a little buzzed. Cuddy was ahead by one beer, however, which made her sloppy in her play. Three moves until he took her queen with his knight. "Ha! You did that on purpose," he chided. "Only a novice leaves their queen unprotected like that."
Cuddy actually hadn't seen it coming, her own concentration waning, focusing instead on how wonderful House's hands had felt on her skin; how they made her shiver and made every nerve ending in her body come alive.
House rubbed his hands together in exaggerated delight. "It is so my turn, Cuddy. And I get two wishes."
"Tasks."
"Tomato, tomahto. For task number one, I also want a massage, but not my feet." He looked away from her, unexpectedly shy, to a spot on the carpet. His voice turned grave, nearly a whisper. "My leg. I…"
"Of course," she interrupted. She knew what he was asking; he didn't need to say it. "You'll need to remove…" she added with no hesitation, putting as much "full doctor mode" behind the words as she could gather. "I'll get a sheet. Or we could go…" She gestured towards his bedroom. "Your choice."
"Offering to take me to bed. Who could resist that?"
"It's a massage."
"Like I said."
"In your dreams, House."
"Every night." They welcomed the easy bantering, but both knew how difficult it would be to stay lighthearted once House removed his jeans and revealed his leg. He had known it was asking a lot of her—that seeing it would rekindle her feelings of guilt—that his badly scarred thigh would be the elephant in the room that always would stand between them. "Give me a minute." House retreated into his bedroom down the hall, closing the door.
"I have seen you in your boxers before, House!" she called to him from the hallway. House emerged a minute or two later dressed in a baggy tee-shirt and knee-length jersey work-out shorts. "Where are you going? I thought…"
"In your dreams, Cuddy. Sofa's fine." House had considered the two venues, opting for the living room when he realized that his bed was, at this particular moment, the most dangerous place in his apartment. He was still aroused enough from giving the foot massage, that he would not easily be able to control his feelings, or anything else, once she began touching his leg—therapeutically or not.
"Where do you want me to start?" Cuddy inquired as House made himself comfortable, his head propped on the arm of the sofa, an old blanket draped across his middle.
"Tip of my toes," he sighed closing his eyes in blissful anticipation. Cuddy sat on a floor pillow next to the sofa and began to work his toes, one at a time. She knew that his entire leg was probably a mass of knots, tense and overworked as it compensated for missing muscle and damaged nerve endings. House made no secret of the fact that he was in constant pain, but one could only guess at what it was like for him to live like that—knowing that no matter what he did; what drugs he tried; what procedures he experimented with, the horrible truth was that every morning for the rest of his life would be agony.
Cuddy understood too well that drugs only dulled the pain, or made him not care about it. He said that the opiates allowed him to do his job, to focus on something other than how "it" felt. Without them, there was only pain, eradicating all other rational thought. But she also knew they were poison for him: dulling the pain of a harsh life as well as the pain. People knew him as hard, cynical and indifferent to anything but himself. She knew better: that his cynicism was borne of a disillusioned idealism, crushed at too young an age; his seeming indifference an armor against caring too much for anything or anybody; his hardness a shield against too many and too intense feelings.
In a lot of ways, Cuddy thought, she had helped condemn him to this life so long ago. Like Wilson--who had encouraged Stacy argue with House; to go against his wishes; to save his life when he was certainly throwing it away--her friendship with House was an ethical responsibility. She had kept him here; kept him alive, betrayed him; saved him. She didn't want to lose him; neither had Wilson. Was that so very wrong? House had no survival instincts, and maybe there was a reason for that; some people would call it a death wish; House would call it just not giving a fuck. And maybe what she wanted was selfish and not fair to House: to keep him safe; to keep him…here.
She remembered the last time she had rescued him. Fed up, Stacy had vanished and in her wake, House had blazed through four hospitals, pissing off four deans of medicine; four CEOs. He was a liability. Life sucked and had done his best to let everyone who entered his orbit know it in no uncertain terms. He had pushed everyone away until they stopped caring altogether, throwing up their hands in frustration or disgust—or both. And suddenly everyone was gone; no job, private practice a shambles; his reputation: a case of "what have you done for me lately."
He had been working in a New York blood bank for $10.00 an hour doing exams; screening for AIDS and other disqualifying diseases. Gigging in seedy, smoke-filled bars on piano, guitar or any other instrument needed to fill in for a night. The blood bank clients were as sullen and silent as he was; and House was fine with that.
There had been an incident with a female patient; Cuddy didn't know much more about her than that she was schizophrenic and homeless. An ludicrous and obviously untrue accusation had been made and a friend of the woman came after House with a lead pipe, catching him unawares, and in the right leg. By the time the fog of pain had cleared from House's senses, he had been fired by the blood bank with no chance of appeal. He'd had nowhere else to turn; so he called Cuddy, his voice weak, nearly unrecognizable. It was 11:00 p.m. when he had called; she reached him nearly two hours later as he sat against the building's rotting wall, legs drawn up to his chest, barely conscious.
Somehow, Cuddy had gotten him back to his flat: a one-room, first-floor hovel in a tenement neighborhood. She had cursed him for refusing to accept PPTH's settlement offer, throwing it back in all of their faces—his pride never a less attractive trait. "How long has it been?" she had asked, as he had huddled himself into a fetal position on the ratty couch. "How many hours since your last pain meds?" He had shrugged in response.
"Ran out," he added simply, brokenly. "No cash. No pills." His eyes had had the vestiges of defiance somewhere within the despair and pain. His words tinged with a sarcasm that had taken far too much effort. Cuddy had brought him back to Princeton, the next morning, caring for him, once again bringing him back to life. Convincing the board that they should take a chance on this broken genius. They, all of them, owed it to him.
Cuddy observed him now, a peaceful smile on his ruggedly handsome features, grateful that he had phoned her that bleak night. Cuddy worked his leg now, not noticing the tears that had formed in her eyes at the memory; she had reached his calf muscles—taut and knotted. House grimaced as she prodded a particularly sensitive spot.
"I thought you had fallen asleep."
"With all the pain you're causing me? Who could sleep?"
"I could stop," she suggested with affection.
"You're only at the calf. I wasn't asleep anyway. Just enjoying the spoils of victory."
"You weren't victorious, you only got my queen. The victory is still to be determined." Her deliberate kneading became more gentle strokes as she reached the knee.
"Keep that up and we'll never find out who wins the match," he growled sexily. She continued, running the back of her hand over the hardness of his knee, the soft auburn fur that covered his lower leg, causing him to adjust his position. He was far from relaxed at her change of pace, causing her to smile. He sighed as she now alternated caresses with pokes and prods into the tight muscles. "Never mind task two. Just keep doing this…three or four hours should suffice." And then she arrived at his thigh.