34.
"Well it's a nice way to spend a Friday night," she was saying, pausing to sip from her glass of sparkling mineral water and lime. "I suppose I need to enjoy my evenings out while I still can."
"Never underestimate the value of a decent babysitter," a woman to her left replied. "Worth their weight in gold."
"Well if you happen to find one," another said, "For god's sake give me her number. Lisa, I could tell you some horror stories -"
There were nods from all around the small circle and she forced a smile, knowing she was about to be bombarded with tales of babysitting terror for the foreseeable future.
Just then, however, her cell phone trilled discretely from inside her purse, set to low but still audible in this subdued setting. Smiling apologetically, she moved to a corner, taking it out to check who was calling. Then, once she saw who it was, she took herself and the phone out of the main room, down the hall, past the kitchen, to the back of the house and into what seemed to be a laundry room before finally answering.
"House," she began, looking around furtively to make sure no one had come after her.
"Hello," he replied amiably. "How are you?"
Oh god, she thought. "Just fine. Where are you?"
"Where do you think I am?"
"Oh god," she said it out loud this time. "I knew you'd do this, that's why I didn't tell you."
'"Tell me what?"
"I'm hanging up."
"How's the party?" he said as she took the phone away from her ear.
She sighed, and brought her hand back up. "It's fine. I know you have no interest in socialising with these people, but believe it or not, I do, so -"
"Still would have been nice to have been invited - no one likes to feel unwanted."
"Are you - here? Lurking in the bushes outside the window? Are you going to make a scene - just tell me now so I can brace myself."
"You know, the boob-to-belly ratio is even more obscene than usual in that dress. Maybe I will pop in - I hope there are some of those crab puffs left after you finished scarfing them down."
For a moment she panicked, looking frantically towards the window, convinced she would find him there, waving gleefully. Then she remembered he was an ass - just not that much of an ass. "I guess the cleavage was a safe bet."
"Only slightly better odds than the occurrence of crab puffs at a cocktail party, and the likelihood of you eating them all," he agreed.
"Just promise me you're at home."
"I promise. I didn't call to bug you, I called to rescue you. I'm sitting here on my couch with popcorn and hot cocoa. Mint-chocolate-chip ice cream in the freezer..."
"That sounds pretty good," she said, wondering if he could hear the smile in her voice. "But I can't leave yet, I've only been here an hour."
"So lie, say you're all tuckered out. No one keeps a mom-to-be out past curfew."
"Just how bored are you? Some of us have a life and are out enjoying it."
"Finger food's that good, huh?"
"Plus I got hit on. You know Stan Wentworth?"
"Rich old hypochondriac, always trying to corner me at all those functions you make me go to?"
She could have laughed at the idea of 'all those functions', which in reality amounted to approximately one a year if she was lucky. But instead she said, "He wasn't interested in my medical opinion when he cornered me outside the bathroom and propositioned me."
"But you're six months pregnant. Doesn't he know that's gross?"
"Apparently not."
"And what did you say?"
"That I only had time for a quickie, what do you think?"
"I think I have a sudden, inexplicable urge to come over there and make a scene."
"Don't even think about it. You've convinced me, Muhammad's coming to the mountain, all right? Just... give me a little while to get out of here."
"Of the two of us in this metaphor, which one of us is the mountain, again?"
She hung up with a laugh, and at the thought of returning to the party, immediately felt a little guilty at having enjoyed that short phone call more than an entire hour spent in the company of supposed friends and respected colleagues.
Slipping the phone back into her purse she prepared to go out and start making her excuses - while avoiding rich old hypochondriacs at all cost.
He let her in at her quiet knock, helping her out of her coat, making noises over her dress.
"No wonder the old guy decided to risk heart failure."
"This dress got a lot of compliments," she told him, as she leaned a hand on the closed front door and levered off her shoes.
"That would be because your boobs are..." He gestured in their general direction. "Not well contained?"
She took a step towards him, smoothing her hands down her hips. "Do you like it at all?"
"I definitely like how you take a simple concept like 'if you've got it, flaunt it', and just take it to a whole new level of shamelessness."
"I'll take that as a yes." Stretching up, she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I'm going to go change."
"I didn't say you should change," he said after her.
He liked the dress. She smiled to herself as she made her way down the hall to the bedroom, struck, not for the first time, by how easy this was. Not even two months since she'd let him have his way, and it wasn't what she had expected.
He was good at this in so many ways she wouldn't have guessed - how he had assimilated her into his life with such an easy acceptance, as if for him there was no divide between thought and practice. And there was something more to it now, since they'd come to a vague agreement - talking around the fact rather than to the point - that there was more to this thing between them than convenience.
It was strange - new and surprising, safe and familiar all at once. Strange, she thought, as she reached behind her back to lower the zipper on her dress.
House had a vast reserve of never-worn pyjama tops, she'd discovered, stashed away in the bottom of his dresser, and she retrieved one of them now, leaving her dress draped over the end of the bed and buttoning herself into warm flannel. Made to fit House's broad, lanky frame, it managed to accommodate her middle, and easily fell past the tops of her thighs. She added a pair of his socks and gathered up the throw from the bottom of the bed, and was settled in a corner of the sofa when he emerged from the kitchen. With a mug in each hand and a bowl pinned between arm and chest, he limped carefully over to deposit everything on the coffee table.
"Don't say I never do anything for you."
"I never say that," she protested reproachfully as he lowered himself down at the other end of the couch.
He passed her the bowl of popcorn. "You think it."
"Let me have the remote for once, and maybe I'll work on that."
"Yeah, that's going to happen," he assured her, reaching over to grab a handful of popcorn with one hand, while keeping the remote safe in the other.
She rolled her eyes as she settled into the yielding leather, not exactly surprised. Baby steps, she thought, blowing carefully on her cocoa.
One week later, she was the one calling him.
"Yes?"
"Hey," she said, undaunted by his unenthusiastic greeting. "I'm just working on getting out of here, where are you?"
"Where any self-respecting individual in possession of a life is on a Friday night."
She paused in the act of stuffing files into her bag. "Bar or strip club?"
"Conveniently, many strip clubs actually have bars in them these days."
"Forget I asked."
"Hey, don't blame me, Wilson needed a wingman."
She could hear a faint protest in the background, above the general din of a crowded room. "Well," she said, "I was thinking of having an early night..."
"So, screw Wilson, is what you're saying."
"It's up to you." She reached over to switch off her desk lamp. "I wouldn't want to ruin a good time."
"Am I too drunk for whatever sordid sexual shenanigans Cuddy has in store for me?" He was clearly not addressing her with that one. "I think I'm good to go."
"Let me talk to Wilson," she told him, not so convinced.
"Almost like she doesn't trust me or something," she heard, and then Wilson's voice came down the line.
"He was the one who dragged me here - I'm just the designated driver."
"So I'm not breaking up boy's night?"
"You're welcome to him."
"Uh-huh, and is he drunk? I don't want him if he's drunk."
"He should be fine, if he stops now. Cuddy says stop drinking."
"She's not the boss of me!" House contributed loudly, as if he was leaning over to shout right into the phone.
"He should be fine," Wilson said lightly.
She rolled her eyes as she reached for her coat. "All right, tell me where, and I'll come take him off your hands."
He wasn't drunk, but he clearly had a nice buzz going, she saw, as he slid into the passenger seat with more fluidity than she would expect from him at the tail end of a long week.
"Wilson leave already?"
"Still in there, met a pair of very charming, very drunk young ladies - he's going for a twofer. Speaking of charming ladies - maybe it's my beer goggles talking but has anyone ever told you, you bear a striking resemblance to Heidi Klum?"
Fairly certain that Heidi Klum was a six foot tall, blonde supermodel, she said, "Those are some beer goggles."
"I'm digging it."
She could tell, his arm stretched between their seats, his fingers playing in her hair as they pulled away from the curb.
At the first set of traffic lights they came to, his hand curved around her neck and pulled her over towards him. He tasted of beer and whiskey, strong and heady after so many months sobriety, and he kissed her so slowly and thoroughly she had to concentrate just to keep her foot from slipping off the brake pedal.
It was the blaring of a horn behind them that forced her away from him, to find a green light waiting for her, and an annoyed motorist in her rear-view mirror.
House sat back with a satisfied smirk, and she knew it was impossible to get drunk off a kiss - outside of bad romance novels, perhaps - but she was flushed and laughing as she hit the gas. The sooner they got home, the better.
Saturday, and she dozed through the early morning hours, getting up only to use the bathroom and then settle back beside House, who was sleeping off the previous night with great resolve.
When she woke for the final time it was well past nine. There was music playing, she could hear it faint and very close at hand. She was on her side, facing the middle of the bed - and House, who was lying diagonally across the mattress, legs hanging over the side, his face pressed up against her stomach. She blinked down at him for a moment, confused.
"What," she said, "The hell are you doing?"
"Shh," came the response. "You're screwing up the acoustics."
Pushing herself up onto an elbow, she could see better, and what she saw was House's iPod. One earphone was in his ear - the ear that wasn't pressed flat to her skin - the other earphone he was holding in place an inch from her belly button.
"That doesn't sound like Mozart," she commented dryly. Reaching over him for the iPod, she read the screen. "Magic Carpet Ride?"
"Steppenwolf," he said. "Part of any well-rounded education."
"All we need now is a lava lamp and a couple of joints." He shifted and she winced, pushing his head away from her. "If this is going to be a habit, you're going to have to start shaving." She rubbed where his prickly face had been resting, rolling away from him onto her other side. As if she wasn't itchy enough already.
"Someone needs to show him the finer things in life," he said from somewhere by her shoulder. "You'll be stuffing him into a blazer and knee socks, sending him off to preschool for privileged ponces - that's where it starts. They'll suck all the fun out of him."
"So he'll need a corrupting influence, which is where you come in?"
"Duh," he said, and settled back against her, chin resting where the curve of her waist had once been, his arm wrapped over her hips. "This kid has a trust fund, but no name. How does that work exactly?"
"Probably has something to do with not having chosen a name, yet."
He appeared to think about that for a few seconds. "How do you feel about Steven?"
"Steven?" She shrugged. "I guess that's -" She stopped talking abruptly. "House."
"Cuddy."
"We are not naming the baby after your pet rat."
"Joe it is, then."
"Or your goldfish."
He heaved a very heavy, very fake sigh. "There's a word for people like you - specist."
"That's not a word."
"I'll not have you spewing your hate speech with my innocent child present."
She snorted, shifting her head onto the crook of her arm, trying to get comfortable again. "Tell you what, how about I name the baby, then if we ever get a goldfish, you can name that."
"You'll just pick something girly, like Francis, or James."
"I suppose you have a more manly name in mind?"
"Brutus? Jim-Bob? I'm still pulling for Joe." She ignored that. "Joe is sensible. Short for Joseph, a decent Jewish name if I ever heard one. Your mother will love it."
"Why do I get the impression you don't care about the name so much as you just want to get your own way?"
"Don't see you coming up with anything."
She sighed. "I kind of like Bradley."
"Girly," he said in a high-pitched, appropriately girly tone of voice.
"Or Adrian," she tried, glaring down at the top of his head, which was all she could see of it from this angle. He remained silent. "Matthew?"
"Sure, means 'God's gift'. You can thank me any time."
"Okay," she muttered. "That one's out."
"Joe is still our best candidate."
"You can keep saying it all you want..."
"Would it help if I told you I never actually had a goldfish, named Joe or otherwise?" She raised a sceptical eyebrow as he leaned over her side to look at her. "Call my mom, ask her - I never had any pets other than the occasional ant farm, we moved around too much."
"Really," she said neutrally. He so rarely mentioned his childhood, she didn't know whether he was being serious or not.
"You should let the kid have a dog when he's older. Or a cat, or a llama if that's what he wants. Yes, you'll end up walking it at five AM and cleaning out gross food dishes - you should do it anyway."
She really hated hormones. She couldn't believe she was suddenly blinking back tears in her eyes, sympathy welling up at the slightly wistful tone he was using. Even though she knew he was a manipulative bastard who was probably doing it just to get to her.
"All right," she said grudgingly. "Joseph can go on the short list."
He accepted it as if it was a foregone conclusion. "Our short list is... short."
Reaching over to the nightstand she pulled a notepad and pen out from under the clutter of books and files, lotion and kleenex, flipping over the top sheet to write. "I'm putting Adrian down."
"Adrian sucks."
"So does Joseph, but it's on the list, too." She sighed. "We need to find something we can agree on."
He pushed himself up so he was looming over her shoulder and snatched the pen out of her hand. He wrote a third name down. Then added 'Jr' after it.
She laughed. "Over my dead body." Taking the pen back she crossed it out emphatically. "One of you is more than enough."
Another week, another Friday evening.
It was one of the slowest times of any week in a hospital - anyone who could possibly escape was gone already - but the diagnostics department was a hive of activity. As she passed the lounge, Cuddy could see Foreman pacing, open file in one hand, coffee cup in the other, while Chase, a marker lodged in his teeth, was staring at the white board which was a mess of words and connecting lines. Cameron was seated, hunched intently over a laptop.
House, she found next door at his desk, brooding over a pile of journals several inches thick, spread out in front of him, one overlapping another.
He didn't look up, just grunted at her. "What."
"I'm going home."
"No wild parties tonight?"
"No sleazy strip clubs?"
"Some of us have actual work to do."
"I know." She stepped closer to the desk. "I just came to say good night."
"And?" He finally looked up at her. "I know I heard an 'and' in there. Or was it a 'but'?" He craned his head slightly in an attempt to check out hers.
"And," she said with an exasperated roll of her eyes, "Don't do anything stupid or crazy that for whatever reason requires my immediate presence in the middle of the night? That sound about right?"
"I never plan on doing any of those things. Somehow they just happen." His expression was one of baffled innocence.
"My plans for tonight include a long, hot shower and sitting around in my pyjamas for a while - please don't mess that up."
"Now you're just rubbing it in - I've seen your idea of... pyjamas..." He had trailed off as he spoke and was now staring into the space between them, seeing something she couldn't.
Mere seconds later he was up and bursting through the connecting door, expounding on his revelation for the benefit of his suddenly rapt audience of three. She smiled, watching him, knowing that someone was going to be saved tonight.
That, or she was going to be getting a phone call.
She had no idea what time it was, just that it was either very late or very early, and someone was moving around in her bedroom. A mysterious intruder who shuffled past the end of the bed, throwing clothes off left and right before lifting the covers and climbing in on the other side.
She didn't know how he could think she had slept through that entrance, but he didn't say anything, just lay there for a moment. Then, in a sudden flurry of movement, he rolled over and wrapped himself around her like an octopus.
She only half-muffled the resulting shriek. "House! You're freezing! And wet."
"It's raining," he mumbled, his cold face buried in the side of her neck, hair damp against the side of her face. It was nothing compared to the icy hands under her t-shirt, or the feet pressed against her legs.
She struggled to move away but he just held on tighter until she relaxed. Then she tried to reason with him. "I'm just going to get another blanket for the bed, let me up."
"Like I'm going to fall for that."
"If you let me up, you can have my spot."
He let her up, shifting over into the warmth left by her body the second she moved. She hurried to the hall closet and back in the dark, dropping a towel on his head as she spread the extra blanket out over the bed. He rubbed cursorily at his hair before dropping it to the floor and burrowing deeper under the covers as she made her way round to his side of the bed - his usual side of the bed anyway.
Strange, how she hadn't actually realised they'd worked up to having sides until just now, when they had swapped over and the difference became apparent.
It was too late - or too early, she still hadn't decided - to mark the occasion with more than a fleeting thought, however, allowing House to draw her over against him once more. His hands were still cold as they found their way back up under her shirt, one tucking under her waist, the other resting under her breasts. His nose touched the back of her neck, her hair stirring with his breath. She dozed off.
Until the phone started ringing, what felt like only a split second after closing her eyes.
She grabbed for it blindly, acting on auto-pilot while House stirred behind her. "Hello?" she rasped out, blinking in the darkness as she tried to wake up fully.
A shape moved past her eyes - House's arm, she realised, as he reached to switch on the lamp, and then she was covering her eyes against the sudden light and at the same time wondering why the caller hadn't said anything yet.
"Hello, this is Dr Cuddy," she managed more clearly.
"Dr Cuddy?" came a voice uncertainly in her ear.
Slowly, she removed the hand shielding her eyes and looked up at House, who was propped on his side, watching her with interest. Just as slowly, she brought the phone away from her ear and held it out to him. "It's for you," she said.
Then she rolled over and pulled the covers over her head.
"Cameron," House said, far more cheerfully than he had ever greeted her on the phone after being woken in the middle of the night. "Just wait till you hear the perfectly good explanation for Cuddy answering my phone just now. It involves me being in her bed and - well, that's it, actually."
"You answered my phone," came his disembodied voice from somewhere across the room.
She still hadn't emerged. He meanwhile had gotten up and was, she assumed, starting to get dressed.
The bed dipped suddenly right next to her. She warily lowered the covers a few inches, and watched him pull on his socks.
"You know what's fun about this?" he said conversationally, and then answered himself promptly. "Better question would be, what isn't fun about this."
"What happened to the Macarena?"
"Wilson has no sense of humour," came the cryptic response to that as he manoeuvred his feet into his sneakers.
"It sounded just like mine. Did you plan this?"
"That you would mother me over onto the other side of the bed, away from where I left my cell phone, on a night when I knew Cameron would call, and that you would mistake my cell phone for yours, even though it's a different make and opens a completely different way and somehow manage to answer it anyway?" He paused. "Of course, I am that diabolical, so..."
She frowned suspiciously. Of course it sounded stupid when he said it like that - she still wouldn't put it past him, though, but she let it drop for now. "It's - god, it's three AM, why are you even here?" she demanded. "Why didn't you just go home?"
"Your place is closer."
"No it's not."
"As the crow flies." She stared at him till he added, "In opposites land."
She smiled tightly. "You just wanted to be here. That's so sweet. And now my entire staff can think so too."
He rolled his eyes and pushed himself up to stand. "Nobody cares who you sleep with. I sure don't."
"I'll just give Dr Chase a call next hormonal swing, then."
"About time the boy became a man. If anyone could get the job done, it's you," he said as he swung out of the room, stopping only to lift his cane from the edge of the nightstand.
With a small groan, she turned off the lamp and pulled the covers back over her head. It was too early - definitely too early - to deal with this now. Thank god it was Saturday.