Notes: Illustrated. At my lj. I hope it's a good visual companion to the piece. This chapter starts in the present but digresses to the past. Because canon is sort of vague and debatable and occasionally undermines itself, I improvised. Forgive me if our Michigan conceptions differ.(Another note: I should have RPF posted up soon so stop back at my journal in a few days if that is something that interests you.) If this is well received it will be more than four chapters.
Title from a Rolling Stones song. Thanks for reading! Feedback is greatly appreciated.
Dead Flowers
II. The Story with No Ending
Late, when Cuddy gets home from work, House––who avoided her outstandingly well the entire day––is sitting on her door step. The lost look turned contemplative has doubt written like a suicide note all over his face. This could be a colossal mistake. His backpack slung from his shoulder, a box beside him full of miscellany with his helmet on top, he can't help but feel like he's being readmitted into Mayfield.
She anticipated this and hands him his own key. He looks up to her, a little impressed and straining to rise to his feet. He lets her unlock the door and as they step into the foyer they see the babysitter sitting on the couch, watching some late night show a decibel above mute. Rachel's been put to bed. Cuddy yawns, letting her know she can leave.
"We're alone," House says low after the door closes. 'Déjà du,' he thinks and nothing overshadows the doubt.
"The bedroom is down the hall. First door on the left."
"If you want to start putting some things away," Cuddy clarifies.
He limps in that direction and she goes to check in on her sleeping kid. When she makes it back to her own bedroom, House isn't there. She searches to find him sitting at the bottom of the bed in the spare room.
"I said first door on the left."
"I know."
Cuddy hesitates, nonplussed.
"House, you don't have to––"
"I do."
Yet the futility in trying to articulate how desperately he wants to stay at this second start, unmarred, as long as they can is insurmountable. How much he wants her, how long it's been and the discipline it takes to resist undressing her the instant she's in within reach.
She steps closer, resolves to sit with him on the bottom of the bed.
"This is your place now."
"It's not even yours yet," he counters glibly.
Which is good because if the page is blank it might be easier for them to be on the same one.
She sighs, reaches for his hand.
"You're not some stray off the street to me. I'm not letting you live here out of pity, or only temporarily. Everything here is yours."
He nods and she sees it. Fear.
"I'm just as scared of messing this up as you are."
"But you're here," she starts. "We have to start somewhere."
We did, he thinks. Ann Arbor.
On the cue of Cuddy leaning in to kiss him, Rachel cries. He wonders if that's also his now, and how he's supposed to feel.
'Sorry,' segues into a soft recitation of a lullaby as Cuddy goes to coddle Rachel. House investigates the paraphernalia cluttering the corners of the spare room. The bookshelf is empty, save for a few new ones, but a box of dusty hardbacks is close enough. He sifts through it, scoffing at the chapter titles in the parenting manuals.
His expression's somber when he finds something he wasn't expecting: her first endocrinology textbook. The class they took together. He leafs through to see her notes in the margins, a diagram he drew––some metaphor to help her remember. The next page he turns and something falls out from between. He picks it up. A Polaroid. He can still see solace in her smile, the blue of his eyes faded black.
His canted gaze straightens; he blinks the pensive glimpse of who they used to be away. Leaving the book on the nighstand, House turns off the lamp and lies awake in the dark thinking of the room where they first made love, tore every page from the epilogue. There was no quietus, no finality.
Tomorrow was always a beginning.
Symmetry (pt 1)
expository deductions and other first impressions
Webster, J. K. Introduction to Endocrinology
The book was missing from the shelf but no out-of-stock sticker hung above the course title and label, the place where the book belonged.
Cuddy turned toward the counter and saw him, analyzing her. More interested than intimidating. The azure ingeniousness of his eyes was a lie, a souvenir from childhood. Really he was experienced and traveled, jaded as driven. The low painful fire of intelligence kindling, he was always searching for clues.
There was already a library in her arms and she struggled to hand him her syllabus.
"Do you have any more of the Endocrinology textbooks?"
She slammed her stack of books on the counter. He was chewing gum and ignoring her, scrutinizing the print in front of him.
"Cuddy, Lisa." He finally said.
"You are overly ambitious."
Only his eyes peeked out over the edge of the paper, his hidebound mouth was hidden.
"You have a chip on your shoulder."
Her flattered smile flatlined. He wasn't merely flirting, he was convinced his deductions served some greater purpose.
"And you know how to party."
"You're making that up," she said, trying not to shout as she tore the course list from his hand.
He shook his head.
"You're schedule is overloaded. You're taking Lamb instead of Segal––who's the easier grade. And you have no classes before eleven."
This dissection at first sight was frustrating despite the residual charm in his accuracy, and his voice.
"Do you have any Endocrinology textbooks?" She repeated.
He nodded, stepped out from behind the counter, walked to the back of the store and lifted her desired book from the top shelf.
"Thank you," she said relieved after paying.
"You're welcome," he drawled, watching her walk away. The attraction was there though, born in the brevity of a first encounter, foredoomed as inescapable.
Following some academic maneuvering, they met again in what would someday be Cuddy's specialty. To veil her efforts, she feigned unattainability.
A little too well.
The first lecture that House arrived early enough to garner any proximity to her, she was being hit on by an athlete on the other side. They were talking tennis between intermittent silences in the lesson and by the end of class, he heard her answer yes to being free tonight. The broadshouldered linebacker leaned in to whisper the name of a bar in her ear, his hand grazing high on her thigh, House's face burning with anger and envy, having the moment to make his move intercepted.
It was not long before he devised a strategy to eliminate the opponent.
Cuddy considered not going. She'd been flaunting her assets as well as she could and House never acknowledged or approached. Maybe the availably hard-to-get act was too absurd to work. Tomorrow she would start a conversation, say something, say anything to let him know she existed.
Tonight was about bolstering her confidence, so that the plummet into rejection, if it came, wouldn't seem so bottomless.
She arrived early, ordered a drink. Ordered another when he was ten minutes late. At fifteen she knew the joke was on her, she'd been brushed off for a frat boy circle jerk. There was no harm in a third drink. She walked the mile to the bar and it was a warm humid night to walk home.
She lingered a little while longer and, as the place became more crowded with no familiar faces, decided to stagger off the stool, still tipsy, and drag her feet home.
The horizon had blackened, a burgundy shade of pitch.
Just as she stepped outside, the sound of the door slamming shut synchronized to an earsplitting clap of thunder. In seconds it was pouring. Cuddy looked up to the sky, feeling punished for her naivete. Closing her eyes, she stood discouraged, drenched, drunken apprehension quickly turning into a headache.
Out of the fog settling low to the ground, the rumble unnoticed, a motorcycle approached. She strained to see a heart-whole boy standing in front of her, rain running down the creases of his leather jacket, a slippery key ring spinning around a finger.
He was the right height to be the hunk who asked her out a few hours earlier, but his face was inscrutable beneath a curtain of wind and rain. Her first response was to inform him indignantly, "You're late."
"You're wet," he answered. His voice was different. He leaned closer, but gave nothing away. "And ebbing into a hangover."
She wiped her face, not disagreeing.
"Want to get a drink?"
"No," she quipped back sharp.
Their dithering was beginning to drown.
"Need a ride home?"
She looked up to him and nodded, less reluctant than she should have been. She could call a friend, she could still call a cab.
"We're going to have to wait out the storm."
Before Cuddy could sigh, he took her hand. That's when she knew who it was, his voice familiar, how it fit his cold palm and impetuous clasp. He was leading her behind the bar, running through the mud to the vacant deck. They sat on the least sodden benches, Cuddy catching her breath, House propping his mud spattered boots on the banister.
Through twisted webs of branches the highway was strobing, slow traffic and flickering headlights. In an instant, lightening split the sky and Cuddy flinched. She caught his silhouette in the flash, brooding and curious, and rubbed her arms, shivering.
He reached to cover her with his jacket and she asked,
"What are you doing here?"
House shrugged. He was in a trance. Since they met it had felt like a race against time. No words were right and time was winning.
He deflected eventually, blinking away the defeat.
"See that barn back there? Friday night there's going to be a party there. First decent one this semester. Mostly med students."
"Maybe I'll see you there." He tried to add, but the words were stifled by the last slow roll of thunder. Cuddy sat drowsy, warm now as the clouds drifted and the downpour diminished into a drizzle.
A fog had lifted, moonlight shone bright enough for her to see him, tall and trying and ready to go wherever the road leads. Maybe, she thought, wanting her with him.
"C'mon," he said, reaching out a hand to help her stand.
They trekked back to his bike, he gave her his helmet and didn't have to ask where she lived.
conduit caffeine
They wavered something less than strangers on her doorstep. Her head was clearer now, and his eyes were bright, gooseflesh rising on his exposed arms.
"Come in."
There she stood, face and form and smile against the light from inside. With a leap his heart went out of him, blood rushing torrid at the opportunity. This was what he wanted, all he wanted. His conscience was divided; he didn't budge. He ran his fingers through his hair, dripping wet, and was disconcerted by how the roles had been reversed or his indolence tested. It was his susceptibility meeting her gall, and a part of him wanted to turn and walk away, try patience in pursuit. Another part of him knew his days here were numbered.
"Warm up. Dry off at least."
Her persistence was due, he did come to her rescue. So he stepped inside, forgetting to wipe off his boots and unaware of even his own intentions.
"I'll make some coffee."
Sliding off his jacket, her tshirt was nearly translucent backlit incandescent by the lamp as she turned it on, pirouetting one leg at a time to peel off her chucks and wet socks.
"You live alone?" He asked.
"For now. " She struggled to separate the paper filters.
"The girl I was supposed to room with transferred after her first week here."
A strong pot started to brew. He turned on her TV, sinking into the couch. Her hopes rose as he channeled surfed.
"How do you take yours?" She asked after a minute.
"Black's fine"
She tiptoed over––all grace and overachievement, handing him his mug.
"Thanks," House muttered idly, trying to think of anything other than how her lips must taste, lingering alcohol and infinite hope glossing them.
He sipped, failing miserably. She curled up comfortable beside him, winsome, so close her breathing made the surface of his coffee ripple. Something at the center of him was preparing to implode if another second passed like this.
He spotted a prop in the nick of time.
"And what is this doing here?"
Her Endocrinology book had gotten kicked under the coffee table. He inched it out with the tips of his fingers.
"Abandoned under a piece of furniture. After I went out of my way to get this for you."
"You got it from the top shelf, not East Berlin."
Cuddy was wide awake now and he could feel her vertigo. He reached to push a wet strand of hair away from her eyes, their stares intersecting. His promised what words and actions could never prove: if you fall hard, I'll fall harder.
After a suspended second, his thumb crooked and withdrew. Breaking the silence was self preservation.
"First exam was Monday. I cheated off you, so I hope you know this stuff."
"I know."
House rubbed his chin, scruff burning the back of his hand. Abruptly he reached across her for a pen and spent several minutes sketching on the inside cover of her book, explaining an analogy to help her memorize something complex. Then he resolved to quiz her himself.
"All hormones secreted by the pituitary gland are…?"
"Peptide hormones."
"As are…?
"Leptin,"
"From...?"
"Adipocytes."
"And…?
"Ghrelin from the stomach, insulin from the pancreas."
His mind roamed a minute.
"Good to know I got an A," he said but the certainty had gone from his voice. His arm was around her by then, and magnetism kept it there. He could see her finishing top of her class, becoming surgeon general or chief of medicine or curing the incurable.
He could see her here too, yawning relaxed against him. A long intimate silence lapsed. Cuddy thought of touching him, initiating tentative as best she could. She tried to interpret that far away look in his eyes. Something came to her from an undergraduate lit class, the difference between sentimental and romantic but she couldn't resurrect the relevance. What was worth remembering more than the smell of his skin, clean sweat and cool rain, knowing that what they have now they'll never have again.
He sighed deep, a turning point.
"It's late," he finally said.
"And?"
"Some of us have classes before eleven."
"Skip it," she suggested casually, as if she hadn't plotted and prayed for
this chance.
A noise caught in his throat, the sound of him swallowing any excuse to not stay. Then panic, he stood, nervous and still holding the mug. She stood next, too close. A hand circled her waist but the tensile strength of his balance was gone. They were walking backwards to her bedroom, House unawares and trying for the front door.
When he realized where they were he slammed the mug down on the desk. One thing would lead to another but not like this. He didn't want to be disposable, the answer to her end of summer restlessness, some lover she didn't love at all.
"Don't!" She shouted before he could, a black ring settling into a puddle on the polished mahogany. "My parents just got me that desk."
"Sorry," it was a effort to apologize. As she went to wipe it up he started back to the living room.
"House."
He looked back, his hand on the doorknob. It would have been easy to lock the deadbolt instead, to take her here and now, admitting it was inevitable.
"Thank you. For the ride."
He scarcely knew why he felt compelled to resist kissing her, except for fear he wouldn't be able to stop. Not tonight, not ever.
"Goodnight."
The screen door slammed and Cuddy stood, smiling smitten and knowing she had to see him again.
Returning to his basement apartment, House lay awake that night staring at the ceiling, trying to count how many minutes had passed before they met and confounded by how what he'd initiated as a petty infatuation had fast become more. He had pegged her as the kind to quietly crush, not the straight A seductress it seemed she was.
The gutters rattled percussion against aluminum siding and lightening burst vivid a mile away. It came to him like an afterimage when he was only half awake, that what they just experienced was a spark, a match, ignited bright but destined to burn out fast.
He had no idea it would take decades to spread into the wildfire they both wanted.
time waits for no one
Her long searching stare didn't catch his entrance but House saw her, eyes rolling as the jock he sabotaged a few nights before was trying to explain the incident that got him arrested, and how he was sure to be acquitted. House interrupted.
"Lise, I've been looking everywhere for you."
He reached for her hand and pulled her to him, lifting her arms over his shoulders and around his neck. His palm settled at the small of her back. The jock gawked. House could see out of the corner of his eye, it would take more than a waltz to repel him. In a sudden display of possession, House clutched her close, claiming her mouth with his. Their first kiss was blindsided by perfection, underscored to a song they'd always remember, sound and taste, the embrace like kismet at long last.
They opened their eyes to find they were alone again.
"I wasn't sure you'd show."
She choked a little, the unexpectedly sweet essence of him pervading permanent in her mouth, through her bloodstream. He smiled, the only recognizable feature. Clean shaven, his hair was combed; he was wearing a shirt with a collar. The incorrigible glint of an interesting lunatic was instead a boyish grin. She wasn't sure he was the same person, or if this was who she was making him. His lips still glistened with the sloppy warm spit of spontaneity.
"I'll always come for you, Cuddy."
A smile shaped. She savored the credulity of the double entendre. His hands glided lower and she let them, nestling her face in the shadow of his throat. He was even wearing aftershave.
There was a tear in the fabric of her white dress and he could already tell she was wearing nothing underneath. She caught him stealing glances even as they danced. Thighs tangent, their hips swayed and bumped and she could feel his trapped and eager lust begging to be satisfied. Cuddy struggled to banish the contradictions of what she was feeling but it was useless. He kissed her, faint, sincere at the end of the song and she loved him.
She could never help it.
She was still smiling when the ephemera of a camera flash captured them together, becoming who they are, who they'd never be again.
Then the darkness scattered and the mood was gone, and they'd been holding each other for an hour too long. The thrill of overture foreplay, grinding and squeezing and necking had waned.
"Let's get out of here," she whispered, the lure sultry in his ear.
Without a word he took her hand and they left the warm safety of the crowd, and the world as they knew it behind them.
A halcyon September day had become an unforgettable middle night. Outside the barn, House plucked a wildflower and handed it to her chivalrous, to hold for the ride home.
He drove thinking that last year she was barely legal, the kind who, when he saw wandering the campus he expected to see gaps in her mouth where she'd just lost baby teeth.
But now, on her porch as they stood in the footsteps of the other night, she was completely a woman, prying her hands out of the back pockets of his jeans to grope in her bag for the key.
The door slammed open and shut. They kissed hard, forsaking self restraint, his tongue plundering penetrative and portentous. Not until he felt lightheaded did he pull back, breathing her in.
She smelled like home and heaven and a thousand other things he never thought he'd have. House was trying to hold onto it, to her as they ambled left and right in the dark, his back finally hitting the bedroom door.
Starlight through thin drapes and he had to be James Dean, leaving Cuddy to contend with the stiff sleeves of his leather jacket until she sighed exasperated and shoved it to the floor. She let out a jagged murmur of a curse when he lifted her off her feet, carrying her to the corner and dropping her down on the desk. Pushing everything else off.
A lamp fell, the lightbulb shattering, books and binders and highlighters tumbling with it. The calendar followed; days ahead didn't matter. Alive in the moment, he was hiking up the hem of her dress until he couldn't resist pulling it apart, making the hopeless tear a tactile signature of his urgency.
There was no use trying to quell the dizzy readiness clouding his head. Knuckles were bending high on her thigh and Cuddy wished he wasn't wearing this shirt all of a sudden, there was too much between them. She twisted the row of buttons open and House plied his hands from her legs to fondle the straps of her dress, letting them fall from her shoulders. She leaned into him, her palm molding against the solid swell of denim. He broke the kiss to rub his cheek against the softness of hers, struggling to not erupt as she unzipped him agonizingly slow. He stood there like that, half naked and gloriously whole, his thumb spiraling around the ivory slope of her dangling ankle.
Caught up in the rush Cuddy stood, the dress pooling at her feet. She wanted to share herself like a secret. Strong arms under bent knees, he swept her up and took her to the bed, basking in the beauty of it all as he languorously eased out of his briefs.
A truth, almost chaste, was purling in the back of his throat.
He sprawled beside her, kissing her breathless for every syllable he couldn't say, letting their overheated frenzy subside into quiet affection.
There would never be enough time to do everything he wanted to do to her and with her and for her. Never enough time to give her body the attention it needed and deserved but he had to try, bending his head to kiss the tepid valley between her breasts, his tongue probing down into the moist opaque crevice they made.
Dense friction grew and pulsed and seeped between them, threatening to pull back or push in and suspense coiled at the core of her. She felt so empty. He kissed her mouth again, not an especially deep or definitive kiss, but Cuddy realized she'd waited her entire life for this moment, this connection, whatever it meant. Her arms around his back let go. The brave girl from minutes before froze shy. For the first time this felt real, final and fated and so fucking real.
"What is it?" His voice echoed in the stillness.
She knew there were no plans or promises, just the part each seemed to be playing in the other's incomprehensibly bright future.
Cuddy acquiesced to her heart––her whole body's desire with a roll of her hips––distracting herself with a kiss until he was there, an angled pivot then perfect inside her.
The pressure throttled him, made his eyes water and his breath falter. She was tight, too tight and House tried not to panic at the implication. He raised a hand to cradle her cheek, kissing her chin and forehead and eyes. The solicitude would be latent after that night but when he started to move and she gasped yielding, clinching at his shoulder, he knew this was more than either could have imagined.
His face sank into the space beside hers on the pillow. He pressed his lips to her temple and ear, the place where her neck ended and shoulder began before he relented and shifted and arched into her, immersed and stretching. She was wet and swollen so that after the initial sting he felt like silk.
A long smooth stroke and her voice rose. Cuddy's cries muffled on the expiring sigh, he could only hear god and oh and don't, don't, dont ever let me go. Shallow pushes drove their pubic bones into rhythmic collision. Then she was keening, eyes closed, her leg twining around his calf. Her fingers dipped into the dint of his bare back, smearing sweat. Against his will House groaned. He felt her muscles catching him, pulling him in and clenching, felt Cuddy's entire frame trembling as his name escaped a sob on the inhalation.
He slowed and shuddered, not wanting to ever stop, just stay swathed, wrapped up in her. He was high, high on the adrenaline, the emotion, the brink of something that might break him and remake him.
Her tongue traced the line of his lips and he tried to thrust faster but the motion was less finite, there was no end in sight. They clung to each other, flushed, gasping. Cuddy's fingers tunneled frantic through his hair and his tongue was rough, the edges of his teeth grazing her skin––each refusing to let the other give in.
Eternity ensued. Hushed ecstasy rising, doubling, rushed consummate and all-consuming. Suddenly they saw how accidental destinies were made and could only hope that the invincibility was no illusion. His biceps flexed, straining. Under his weight Cuddy came, a long seizing internal flutter. Her hands behind him goaded him deeper, holding him there. House finally let go, let her take him with her until they were so far gone that there was no going back, and he loved her for that. Fleeting oblivion transmuted into something unending. This much was on his lips but his lips were bound by hers and it felt like they always were, that they always would be.
A beat of awkward vulnerability, some sigh of relief. They were open wounds, hearts hemorrhaging, ears ringing. Braced on his elbows, House was still hard, still inside her. He wanted to stay, steep in the release that almost felt like completion, change yesterday so that he could still have this tomorrow.
Cuddy lay willing to spill her soul's elation, every exceeded expectation, how much she loved him here and now and no matter what. But his breathing was even, his heartbeat had fused with hers and their achingly tender goodnight kisses were lulling her to sleep. There would be time enough later, tomorrow, next week. She believed it was just beginning.
Silhouetted by predawn light and thinking she was still asleep, House crept out of bed. Cuddy listened to him dress and listened to him leave, like she knew he would. She waited to hear his bike pull away then moved to the door and locked it, finding the wildflower trampled dead on carpet.
She picked up the pedals, rearranging what still had color on her mantle, making nothing of the melancholic metaphor.
The day passed in a haze. The world seemed to think it was Saturday, but to Cuddy it was still last night. Sunday passed the same. No call, no clue.
Monday he wasn't in class. When she'd confirmed he wasn't coming back, Cuddy tracked down the amateur photographer from the night of the party, cornered him and made him sift through six boxes of snapshots for the one of her and House.
For too long it would be all she had. Their time together was too brief but this one tangible thing was proof, relief. She nursed no hopes of ever seeing him again. The legend in Michigan might have been love of her life but the scope of their affair was reduced to one night.
House wandered nomadic, yearning stolid for what they should have had. He never regretted what went unsaid. The morning he got the call it wasn't only pointless to tell her of his expulsion, but to leave their collegiate chronicle incomplete left some possibility, some vague unreasonable opportunity of one day picking up where they left off.
So he did not quarrel or sulk or despair, didn't make a religion of what he found only to watch it fall away from him. He knew that whatever happened to him, whatever happened to her, they would always be a story with no ending.
