Pictures at an Exhibition
Chapter 12
"What, do you have some sort of scar fetish, Cuddy? 'Cause if you do, I wish you would have told me years ago and I would have…" He was stopped mid-sentence by an abrupt, but playful, slap to his upper arm, which was wrapped lightly around Cuddy's shoulders; his thumb absently stroking concentric circles on her back. "Ow."
She had kissed his most hated place. And while she had not made it better, as he believed she would have wished, she had done much, much more. She had shown him that it simply and finally didn't matter to her. "It's just a damn leg." Stacy's words from so long ago came fleeting back to him from some random corner of his memory. She had advocated amputation, an option he refused to accept when he knew that simply waiting it out would be the best option. Full recovery, or nearly. That was his self-described prognosis if only she had listened to him. Dying would have preferable, he believed, than life lived with the sort of pain he only imagined, but intrinsically knew, was on the horizon. Incurable, intractable, constant and for a lifetime. Even had they amputated, he knew that the location of the amputation would almost certainly mean phantom limb pain: as bad or worse than he now experienced even so many years later. "It's just a damn leg," she had said.
And then the choice was removed from him entirely, and outside the warm, cottony cocoon of a chemically-induced coma, she, with her good intentions to keep him alive, planned his death. A long and painful death—trapped between a never-ending pain that on most mornings sucked the soul from him—and an addiction to opiates that kept the pain at bay, but threatened everything else.
And then there was the scar: the constant reminder of who he was and who he no longer could be. A scar that ruined him for anyone but the occasional hooker who, if he paid her enough, would ignore it, not recoil from it; not be repulsed enough by it to have sex with him. And Cuddy made it not matter. And, in his own way, he loved her for it. Cherished her for it.
The chess pieces lay on the floor, an orgy of Bengal warriers and princesses in competing colors; and neither House nor Cuddy remembered, or even cared, who was winning at that point. Cuddy's kisses and caresses had moved from his thigh to regions slightly higher – sensual touches, encouraged by what they were doing to him as she felt him grow beneath her touch. He was out of his mind with arousal and could no longer stand to not be touching her in return.
House had solved the problem by pulling her up onto the sofa with him: what his leg lacked in strength, his muscled arms had in abundance. Cuddy straddled his lap, falling against his chest, continuing her kissing: his neck, his jawline and finally, ending his exquisite torture, his mouth.
House was frantically hungry for her mouth, but willed himself to take it slowly—to tantalizingly savor the taste of her lips, her cheekbones; her neck. When ultimately he made contact with her tongue he nearly melted from the barrage of sensation. "Bedroom! Now!" He rasped barely above a whisper.
House had no idea where he had put his cane down, or where it was now. He would have loved to carry her; she was light as a feather, but some things would never again be possible. Cuddy reluctantly got up from his lap, immediately missing the contact, but understanding that sex with a very tall man afflicted with a bad leg was better accomplished in a bed and not on a narrow sofa—no matter how comfortable. She looked into House's eyes and saw into him in a way she never had before; his eyes no longer ice blue masks but luminous windows, so transparent that she could see into his soul. She took his hand and helped him from the sofa, and he let her do it.
Their lovemaking was giving and accepting; passionate and comfortable; new and yet somehow familiar. They had been here before, but only that one time; that terrible night when he cried in her arms; the night of the blood bank. It seemed to last forever, if you counted from the beginning of the chess game—now hours ago; but it was over before either of them wanted it to end. It had been too long for both of them.
House's thumb continued to stroke her shoulder mindlessly. His thoughts were far away. The rational part of his brain lazily fired random thoughts concerning the future: the "what nows?" that would certainly increase in frequency as the hours ticked by.
There had been no "what now?" after the last time with Cuddy. It had been pretty straightforward then: a mistake fueled by her guilt and her compassion when faced with the pathetic form of the wreck he had become. "I hired you because you were a good doctor who couldn't get himself hired by a blood bank," she had told him not so long ago. "I got you cheap," she had reminded him coldly. House shivered at the memory of that night; his apartment dark and damp—hell on his leg—with a mattress set on the floor under a mountain of blankets.
Cuddy looked more like an angel than a doctor: wearing a white sweater and illuminating the dinginess: a beacon calling to him in the dark. He had never believed in God or in heaven, but had never come closer to becoming a believer that night with her. And had his faith not been rocked, pounded, mutilated and destroyed by the time he was eight years old, he might have.
His tears that night had been more from pain than anything else; he had been without medication of any sort for three days and he was strung out and hurting inside and out. He could barely pay the rent, much less the pharmacy bill…and food…well, he had always liked peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He had been at the end of his emotional rope; and even that was fraying fast. He'd sat on the mattress in the corner of his apartment, watching through wary eyes as Cuddy made soup and instant coffee. She brought the cup to him; his hands were shaking from the cold and withdrawal, so she held it for him, bringing it to his lips, as if her were a small, sick child. He let her; long past any sense of pride.
"Let me help you. Let me bring you back to Princeton. I have an idea." She had said to him, her hands gentle; brushing the hair from his forehead; peering up into them; wanting to help; wanting him. Needing the redemption from having failed him. He nodded, defeated and miserable, surrendering to her; becoming lost within the compassion of her eyes. Their lovemaking that night was so different then than on this night, when he was confident and playful; serene and attentive; alive, not half dead.
They fell asleep in each other's arms, tomorrow would be time enough for the inevitable "what now?" to come.