Did tonight's episode leave you emotionally drained?
Lost your faith in the characters of everyone?
Wondering why the hell Cuddy decided it would be acceptable for her to leave House hanging on Thanksgiving when he was actually trying to be a good person for once? (Because it killed me)
Hopefully this chapter will cheer you up, because in all of the fantastical, emotional rollercoasterness of 'Ignorance Is Bliss', I seem to have lost my faith in Cuddy's integrity.
Maybe you'll like her better in my fic.
Cameron was in the doctor's lounge, sitting awkwardly with her ex-husband.
Wilson's suicide attempt had briefly knocked down the barriers that had separated them, but sitting on the old couch, sipping shitty coffee and trying to talk small with the man she believed wasn't who she had fallen in love with anymore was starting to become more tedious that she had expected.
But had she fallen in love with him?
Or had it been a gradual process, the caring that she felt for him, coupled with her physical needs, becoming what she mistook for romance?
Perhaps the only man she had ever really been in love with was Gregory House, for her first husband, while a wonderful man, had never really had a fiery effect on her like he had.
And Robert, he had just been a distraction at first, and then, when he finally became needy, an object for her affections.
Thinking about the many ways in which she had failed to find true romance, the thing that everyone seemed to be after, just made her even more miserable than she had been before everything had happened at once.
Sitting with Chase was growing more uncomfortable by the minute, as they had run out of things to say to each other, the grace period after such a tragic event gone as well.
So it was no surprise to her ex-husband that her face had lit up upon the entrance of House, not when Chase was sure that he would crack under the tension between them.
Somehow, even through all of the horrible things that House had done to him, the Australian had managed to retain his admiration of the man.
But he had no desire to be in the same room as him at the moment, not after Cameron had so candidly mentioned that they had slept together the night before.
He was sure that they would have another heated, meaningful conversation, like the one that had sparked their night together, and so, as soon as the older doctor sat himself down, he gave his condolences and walked off to go home for the night (though there wasn't much night left to go home to).
"Hi." Cameron said softly, as House sat down next to her, nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee.
He had just returned from showering at the apartment, and had visited Wilson's room briefly; upon finding him asleep, he had taken the elevator down to Cuddy's office to see if she had returned, but had come up empty, the Dean of Medicine was apparently still at home, with her family.
"Hi." he replied, and turned towards her.
"So, you and the Wombat sort things out yet? You coming back home tonight?"
"No," she answered, fixing him with her glare. "I'm still leaving; I booked a flight for next week."
"Wanting to keep an eye on out resident suicidal oncologist, are we?"
"I want to help him recover."
"Ah, of course. How ironic, the needy-eater being fed upon by his female counterpart. I don't know what you know about suicide though; something tells me you've never really come close to wanting to kill yourself."
"What makes you think that?"
"Oh, don't tell me that you've actually tried to kill yourself, that would totally mess with my mojo."
"No." she replied, looking up at him. She paused.
"But my father did."
House studied her face, looking for any clues that would give the answer away. She looked past him, wanting to avoid his searching glare, wanting to just move past the subject.
"He succeeded, didn't he?" the older doctor finally said.
"Yes." she whispered.
"Why?" His questioning wasn't mocking, not this time, it was simply curiousity. One of House's major faults was not properly recognizing where to draw the line, and more than once, his unrelenting quest for knowledge bit him in the ass.
"Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my mother couldn't stop drinking. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that his oldest daughter had become a prostitute. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had just lost his job. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he couldn't afford his anti-depressants. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the revolver in his bedside table looked oh-so-inviting." She looked at him angrily, obviously upset at the fact that he had so casually brought up a highly sensitive topic.
"So, that's what broke Allison Cameron. Not some traumatizing rape, not a message from God, but her father taking his own life, the coward's way out."
"My father wasn't a coward." she growled at him.
"He just couldn't keep up with the times, then? He didn't care enough about his family to stay alive to help them? He didn't think that everything would fall to pieces after his death?"
"Well, if they had, he wouldn't have known, would he? You're the one who constantly points out the ignorance of believing in God and an afterlife, why do you think it would matter to him?"
"It should have stopped him." he muttered, looking down.
"What should have stopped him?"
"Knowing that he would leave behind nothing but sorrow and anger. Knowing that his 'last resort' would destroy everything in his world. It should have stopped him from pulling the trigger. It should have stopped him from taking his own life simply because he didn't want to have to try anymore." he answered bitterly, looking away from her. He had seen enough people destroyed by death, there didn't need to be any intentional destruction, not when humans were fragile enough already.
"You've nearly killed yourself more times than I can count." she scoffed. He turned towards her, fixing her with a serious stare.
"There was always a point, a goal that I was working towards. A reward, at the end, if I survived. The… pleasure of blocking everything out with drugs. Knowing for sure that there really wasn't something after death. Figuring out… what was wrong with Amber. There was always a point."
"Was there?" she challenged, looking into his eyes. There was something hiding in his blue orbs, she could see it, just beneath the surface.
"I've never tried to kill myself." he said, with conviction. But she had learned to tell truth from lies from the man before her, and she knew the falsehood.
"Yes, you have." she said, just as sure. "I don't know when, but you can't know that much about not being able to pull the trigger if you hadn't been there yourself."
"Do you really want to know?" he asked, looking at her darkly.
"Yes." she answered, trying to keep the wobble out of her voice, but there was still a trace of it.
"Do you REALLY want to know? Are you going to try and comfort me, or tell me that there had been no reason for it? Because if you're going to do that, I don't want to tell you."
"I'm sure." She wasn't, but there was nothing more to lose, she couldn't sink any lower into her own misery.
He took a breath, and stared at her more intently, his eyes becoming darker still, all traces of happiness disappearing, a quickly moving cloud falling over.
"There will come a time in your life, Cameron, when you're sure that you've achieved all that you can." he began. She recognized the look in his eyes, the one that he got when he was going to say something that he really meant, that would hurt coming out but would be worth it in the end.
"There will come a time when there won't be any options, at least none that will remotely improve what your life has turned into. There will come a time, when you'll be so convinced that humanity has nothing going for it, that you're just another shining example of the failure of evolution, that you'll know that there isn't anything better for you than ending your own life." She felt the tell-tale signs of tears starting to form in her eyes, hiding just below the surface, but she couldn't turn away, once again, he had her stuck in his pull
"It happens to the best of us, and never to the worst of us. Because the best of us know, one day, that the hardship that follows us, the ripple that we create in the universe, is too much of a sacrifice for everyone else to let continue. We realize that our selfishness, and our greed, and our uncaring, callousness destroys not only what we don't want, but what we have worked out whole life to create, and we realize that in our arrogance, in the race to the top, that we missed what was good about the middle, and in those realizations, the best of us know what we must do to make things right. Unintelligent people consider to suicide to make their pain stop, intelligent, broken, flawed and crippled people want to end their life because they want other people's pain to go away. It is sinister," he paused again, looking at her still more intensely.
"And it is the truth of things."
Her eyes were teary, liquid brimming over and pooling onto her pretty face, and her expression conveyed so much sadness that House was unsure if he wanted to continue, to inflict more pain on her.
"And there came a time, in my life, that I knew I was too much for anyone. I had turned into a monster, someone who resembled my father too much to not have an effect on me. Stacy had left me, because of my savageness, because of my disregard for what she was going through, and it was all that Wilson could do to stay in the same room with me. I was slowly draining everyone around me. My infarction had taken not only the use of my leg, but everything that had ever been good about me. I couldn't work, I couldn't enjoy myself, I couldn't think, not with all of the pain. I felt that I had deserved all of it. But the effect that I had on Wilson was too much, and though he continued to try and move me past what had happened, I knew he was about ready to give up. Bonnie was giving him hell for spending so much time playing caretaker to poor, crippled Gregory House, and I knew that the sacrifices he was making for what had obviously a lost cause weren't worth it. So, yes, one day, I downed my entire bottle of Vicodin, and tried to go to sleep, forever. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave him with the burden of having a dead friend on his hands, because I knew, in my brilliant perceptiveness, that he would blame himself for not being able to help me enough. So I phoned an ambulance, and went to the hospital to get my stomach pumped. Obviously, I survived. And I didn't try to do something like that again, because when I saw Wilson, after I had woken up, the look on his face, the look on his stupid, overly-caring face wouldn't let me."
"And then he tries to kill himself." she finished for him.
"You have no idea, how much he lectured me. It had to have been at least a hundred hours, over a two week period. He stayed with me, nearly twenty-four hours a day, he took time off from his job, and when his boss found out why he was missing work, to take care of a hopeless charity case of a bad-boy doctor, he fired him. It was a long fucking journey, trying to get better, move past my old life and what I had had before, but I went through it with him. Cuddy hired us around the New Year, Wilson before me, and, when he had assured her that I was stable enough to throw myself into my work as a distraction, I got the department."
"House…"
"You don't need to say anything. Worse things have happened to other people." he muttered.
"Do you realize how much you've been through? Child abuse, medical school, getting kicked out of medical school, several times, the infarction, a suicide attempt, Stacy coming back again, an attempt on your life by a gun-waving lunatic, the failure of the ketamine treatment, nearly being sent to prison for a decade for drug possession, the death of your best friend's girlfriend, the suicide of a colleague, a mental breakdown, not to mention all of the personal drama that seems to surround this hospital like a particularly vicious swarm of vultures."
"It's not that much, not in a half-century." he replied.
"Yes, it is! And that's just the stuff that I've heard about. You have every right to be miserable."
"I thought that I didn't."
"No, you don't have the right to take your misery out on other people. But with everything that you've been through, it's no surprise that you're depressed."
House was silent.
"House, you're still a remarkable person, even through you can be a heartless bastard. I've seen you care; I've seen you be human. Don't let anything that anyone's said to you tell you otherwise."
"Even something that you've said? What about how I ruined Chase?"
"You did." she said sadly. "And you ruined me. But a little dose of reality, a little pull out of the clouds, either harms or helps you. I'm not sure that you helped him, because he killed a man. And I know that at the end of the day, it was wrong. But you made me stronger, and for that, I'm grateful."
He looked at her carefully, and she continued on.
"There is no black and white, not anymore. There are just endless shades of grey, some so strong that you're convinced of the ultimate truth. But as you've learned, even something that you're sure you've experienced can deceive you, make you do things that you shouldn't have done. Reality can corrupt you, as surely as fantasy can. And it's all that we can do to try and do what we think is right, and make sure that other people do the same. At the end of the day, we're all trying to save lives, be us doctors or priests, lawyers or florists, lovers or fighters. We're ALL trying to make life a little more bearable, because there's nothing less bearable than life. And nothing more beautiful, more real, more worth it, than what we experience through our senses, everyday. Our mistakes, we learn from them, and though we may not want to believe it, we DO change. We lie, and cheat, but we also give each other the truth, the purest and most sacred thing that there is. Through our experiences, we grow, and try to give ourselves what we think will make things a little more bearable. We are selfish, and we are dirty, and that's how it's always going to be. We can try to change reality, but non-reality never gives us anything concrete to work with. You've taught me all of these things, through patients and insults and everything else that I've experienced. You are the most powerful and most destructive force in my life, and one of the most beautiful. Because you are human, through and through, and I now know that having it any other way would never satisfy me."
He looked at her, the whole picture, Cameron, who had grown into a woman far beyond what she had been when he had first met him, Cameron, eyes filled with tears, voice trembling at the magnitude of the truths she had just spoken.
"I'm proud of you." he said to her, for the second time in his life, and she cried, as he awkwardly drew her into his arms.
It was raw, it was dangerous, and it was beauty, in its purest form.
It was not only emotion, but the outcome of everything that they had been through together, the next logical step, what they thought was right.
It was love, and hate, and everything in between the black and white that was supposed to define the world that they lived in.
And, it was what made Cuddy fall in love with him all over again.
Because standing in the doorway, out of sight and out of mind, she realized how futile it was to pretend that Lucas was close to what she needed, because she couldn't find such uninhibited passion anywhere else, no, nowhere would she find such a fantastically complicated, tortured, insightful and raw mind for her to wrestle with, nowhere would she feel that much emotion, nowhere but with House at her side, challenging everything that she did.
And it had taken Cameron's beautiful words on life to make her realize that.
Her time, for contemplations of her worthiness in the world she lived in, it hadn't come yet, not with someone so wonderfully new and pure in her life, but if she kept the façade of happiness up, if she kept denying herself what she really needed, in order to avoid disappointment and regret, the end would come sooner than she wanted it to.
***
She came in through the front door, just as she had always done; taking her winter jacket off, discarding her gloves, scarf and hat in the bin she had set aside for the purpose of orderliness, but felt like she had just woken up from a dream.
She didn't belong in this world, not anymore, not when she had finally realized the agonizing truth of everything.
The light kiss and smile that she got from her boyfriend, it didn't seem to be so genuine anymore, not when she knew someone more dangerously beautiful than him.
But holding her child in her arms, she knew what she had to do.
Because in order to give this child a good life, her mother had to be happy.
And happiness wasn't found in mere contentment, no, not when there was the truth waiting out beyond the comfort of the reliable.
She set Rachael down in her crib, and set out towards the dining room, where Lucas sat waiting, a full breakfast ready for her.
The gesture was so sweet, but now she knew that sweet wasn't what she really wanted.
"Now, I know that you have odd hours, being the boss lady and all, but five in the morning? Did Wilson have a heart attack or something? Not that that's the only good reason for going to the hospital so early. There could have been an emergency, but I probably would have heard about an emergency on the morning news. Or not. I don't really know what you need to go in for… and I should stop babbling. Sorry. I was just worried. Your note… wasn't that specific. But I fed Rachael; she woke up again at four. Yeah. Breakfast is ready."
Cuddy sat down, grateful for the food that she desperately needed, but couldn't help feeling guilty. He had been so good to her, trying to keep their relationship going, and it had been nice, having someone whose motives she always knew to be pure. But maybe she needed the guesswork, the thrill of having someone so fantastically complicated and unpredictable and yet so utterly familiar in her life.
"Lucas…" she started, not knowing where she was going with it.
"Yeah, I know, I didn't have to do this. You could have made better food, I'm sure, but you didn't need the extra work. You've had suicidal friends, and… House to deal with. It's really wearing you out. Maybe I'll get you over to the spa later; you look like you need a massage. You're still beautiful, but you need to relax. I can get you in at three, I know a guy."
"Lucas, it's okay."
"You sure? It's really no problem, I'm sure he won't mind, I saved his life once, back in-"
"Lucas!"
"Right, sorry. You talk."
She looked at him, every trace of sadness and longing and regret visible in her eyes, and he sighed.
"I thought we'd be having this conversation someday. I get it, I'm not the guy for you, I'm out of town all the time, I'm not reliable or romantic-"
"You're all of those things." she said, taking his hand. "But that's not enough. I need someone who can challenge me, who's not afraid to point out what I'm doing wrong, who's…"
"House?" She nodded sadly.
"I was never in love with you. You're a wonderful person, and you've always been there for me, and you've been sweet and reliable and great with Rachael, but I can't keep leading you on like this. I never did intend for this to go on longer than a few weeks, and when it did, I though that maybe it was because it was actually something that would work in the long run. But I still have feelings, strong feelings for House, and I can't let go of them. I know he's disgustingly unreliable, and he's never going to be the one that I can count on to be home for me every night, but that stuff doesn't have to matter. I need his passion, and everything that comes with his insanity."
Lucas nodded.
"I've been trying to convince you that you'd be better off with me, but that's just because I think I've fallen in love with you. But it's stupid to be with someone who's not happy with you. I've been there before, actually. It was a case in-"
She looked at him.
"Sorry. So, do you want me to get my things and be out of your hair?"
"I think that would be best." Cuddy answered.
"I'll, I'll see you around sometime. Or not. I don't know if you actually like me, or if I was just convenient and it all fell into a spiral or something-"
"I like you." she said. "And… and if you want to visit Rachael, you can."
"I'd like that." And with that, he got up, and walked over to the room he had been staying in, and began to pack up his things.
Tears came unwillingly to Cuddy's eyes, despite that fact that she knew what she was doing was right, because it still hurt to let go of something that had given her great comfort through the hardship that House's mental breakdown had been.
But she was happy, for at last, she had finally acknowledged something that had been gnawing at her for a long time.
***
House woke up to the sight of Cameron's annoyingly blonde hair.
He had never really liked her blonde, his comment about her looking like a hooker more than a little serious.
Perhaps she had wanted to change, though, bleach all traces of the pathetic, devil-worshipping existence that she had been living before from her life.
Of course, it hadn't worked.
Though she had moved on, to a different section of the hospital, the burden of her time in the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital Department of Diagnostics still weighed heavily on her.
Thoughts of moving on were quickly shoved to the side as members of his new 'team' came to her for advice; it seemed like she could never be washed clean of the life she had been living before.
Maybe that hadn't been such a bad thing.
She had changed, and definitely for the better, but would she have grown up so well if she hadn't landed the spot on his team?
She certainly wouldn't have been packed full of so much unrelenting, uncensored reality.
House didn't regret how he had treated her, for any weakness could only be fixed through exposure to the thing that it feared.
He was happy that he hadn't let her cling to him, like a small child to its teddy-bear in a thunderstorm, because he knew that it wouldn't have been good for either of them.
It hadn't only been a schoolgirl crush, not when she could admit so freely how much of an impact he had made on her life.
Nor was it anything close to true love, for they were born too far apart, too separated by life not lived, neither one good for the other.
And yet, they had helped each other, her, with his morality, him, with her need for a dose of cold, hard truth.
It was neither a fleeting, unaffecting relationship, nor a love affair.
So, it hurt that she was leaving, a little bit.
But he felt no need to make her stay.
She had to do what was good for her, and Robert Chase had to do what was good for him.
And House was happy that the latter was on his team.
And he was happy that he had finally proven that he could have real passion and act upon it, even though it was illegal and had far-reaching consequences, because it hadn't been a cowardly, self-serving act like the ones he had been used to seeing from the blonde doctor, but something that was good for the rest of the world.
He was proud of him too.
Though he wasn't good with change, when true progression happened, he observed it with a small, knowing smile.
He couldn't change, not really, not anymore, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel proud of the people he saw grow up.
Now if only Foreman would become less boring and self-righteous.
That, House thought, had to be impossible.
He heard the door to the lounge open, and wondered briefly what time it was.
He had fallen asleep, just as Cameron's little sobs had died down, but as for how much sleep he had gotten, he had no idea.
He lifted his head out of Cameron's hair, and looked up to see Cuddy.
She caught his eye, but he quickly looked down, not wanting to deal with her, not at that moment.
He was tired of all the mixed signals, the promises of goodness that she had given him so righteously then taken away.
It had felt so right, so good, when they had held hands at Wilson's bedside, but perhaps it was merely a need for comfort.
It had also felt right, when they had kissed in the kitchen, but she had run away from that too.
He wasn't ready to just be a shoulder to lean on; he would only sacrifice if he knew that she was willing to do the same for him.
And with her actions, running away from him at every hint of the connection that so scared her and made him feel alive, maybe there really wasn't anything left between them after all.
But how could she have just gotten rid of all their history, their years of banter and sexual tension, just because she had decided that her daughter needed a stable, reliable father figure?
Perhaps she wasn't the woman he had slowly fallen in love with anymore, perhaps she really was a shadow of her former self.
Perhaps she really couldn't see the good in him anymore.
Perhaps she never had.
Perhaps he really was just an asset, perhaps, that night, when they had kissed, she had just been needy, and he had just been, for once in his life, perceptive to that.
Perhaps she had just wanted something with him because it was the only thing that she could latch onto.
The thought made him sadder than he had ever been in his life.
Because if he really had misinterpreted everything, messed up every chance he had ever had with her, then he had just wasted years of his life on something that would never happen.
He loved her.
Or had.
And being a thinking, rather than a feeling, person, he didn't want to deal with her, not now; he didn't want to shout out more painful truths.
She sat next to him, trying not to look at the sleeping blonde woman next to him.
"Cuddy." he said, coldly, emotionlessly. It was what he knew how to do; he could hide behind his ability to be a bastard.
"House." she said, and there was a hint of regret, longing, maybe even desire.
But he didn't believe it anymore, he couldn't.
He was tired of hoping and hoping and hoping for things that obviously weren't meant for him.
"What do you want?" he asked bitterly. "Come to tell me how Wilson's doing, or maybe you want to tell me how fucking perfect your life with your goddamn happy family is. I don't want to hear any of it. You don't need to crush me more; I've already fallen to the bottom."
His voice broke her heart, because she had obviously broken his.
"I'm not going to do that." she said softly, trying to catch his eye.
But he wouldn't let her.
"I don't see why you're here, then. There's nothing more to say, no more empty apologies, no more half-felt assurances that you're still my friend. The tables have turned, Cuddy. You're the one in denial, and I'm the one making an utter fool of myself trying to get you to fall into my arms."
"House…"
"I'm done. You want something good for yourself, go and find it somewhere else! I don't want to have to wait for you to realize that I was willing to try for you, that I was willing to be there, every stupid step of the way, because I loved you."
The past tense nearly broke her.
"Loved…?"
"Yeah, Cuddy, LOVED! I was delusional, because I had obviously fallen in love with someone else, not the woman who's been hiding behind her position over me. You have been lying to me, every damn step of the way! Was it even your hand, that day, when I had finally figured out the façade I had created for myself, or had I invented that too? At that point, well, it would be foolish to try and sort out fact from fiction, because everything that I had been doing had been based on a lie, the story that I had made up. Well, maybe everything I've been doing to try and get you has also been based on a lie, because nothing that you've done since I've gotten back has suggested that you've EVER been in love with me. You've been petty, and destructive, and never ONCE have you believed that I've changed! Do you know what I went through, in there? Of course you don't, because you've never ONCE tried to have a proper conversation with me because you're too damn scared! Scared of what we've become, what we could be! CAMERON knows more about my life that you do right now, because she's made the effort to care. I don't know if you're capable of that anymore. I don't think I want to know, because I don't want you to put in that final nail in my coffin. I'll do it myself."
Cameron was lying on the couch, but she had heard it all, and her eyes had started to stream again. Was this what Lisa Cuddy had turned House into? A lovesick, passionate fool trying to get something that he could no longer be sure was even an option?
"I came back here to tell you that I've ended things with Lucas. But if you feel so strongly-"
"Oh, finally started to take pity on me? Finally realized that I might try to do what Wilson had done, what with all of the disappointments I've been dealing with lately? I don't need your goddamn pity Cuddy, not now, not ever again. You were right. I'll go back to being the asshole employee; you can go back to being my hard-ass boss."
"I don't want that!" she screamed at him, startling Cameron so much that she jumped in her position on the couch.
House noticed, and got up, and Cuddy did as well.
"Yeah?" he shouted into her face, throwing all of the emotions he had been feeling into it. "Well what do you want?"
"I want YOU!" she shrieked. He looked at her, eyes wide open, and Cameron slowly slipped out of the room, wanting no part in whatever was to happen later.
"I want every annoying, idiotic, egotistical, unpredictable, brilliant, narcissistic, damaged, insightful, awful, uncensored, stupid, arrogant, crippled, beautiful bit of you! I want to stop with the games we've been playing, I want to wake up with your stupid face in my bed every morning, I want to kiss you until the world ends, I want to hold on to you and never let go! I want to scream at you for every stupid thing that you've ever done and will do, I want to thank you for everything that you've done for me; I want to love you for the rest of my damn life! I want every last part of you, I want to soak you in until I can't take in any more, I want to make love to you until I can't move, I want to-"
She was stopped by his mouth on hers, his hands on her waist, the feel of his long, lanky body pressed against her own.
She kissed back with everything she had, trying to memorize every nook and cranny in that deliciously acerbic mouth of his, and they moved with such speed and passion that it was dizzying.
He pressed her against the wall and gripped her so strongly that it should have hurt, but it didn't, it felt right, like it was supposed to feel that intense, that raw and uninhibited.
Her hands roamed all over him, from his chest, to his biceps, to his hips, he ground into her, wanting to touch every bit of Lisa Cuddy that he could.
His hands flew through her hair, tracing patterns on her scalp, her beck, her back, her breasts.
She moaned, breaking the kiss, and his lips moved to her neck, marking his territory, and everything that he did felt fantastic, like a little part of the reckless, passion-filled life that she was supposed to be living.
She gasped as he sucked on her soft skin, hard, and knew that the mark that would be there in the morning wouldn't matter, because the only thing that did matter was the real of the situation, how everything was in technicolour, sounds were muted and amplified at the same time, the sensations and emotions flowing together seamlessly, creating an experience that she knew she wanted to feel again and again and again.
She was aware of hands, reaching up the blouse that she was wearing, and she let them roam, moaning and whimpering at the feel of his pianist's fingers touching her so gently and so roughly at the same time.
It was bliss, it was like being on fire, and it was everything that she had never felt with a man before.
The fell onto the couch, and she was vaguely aware of the sound of spilled coffee, but that didn't matter anymore, not when she could feel him, everything, his lips, his chest, his hands, his legs, his arousal, all around her, the roughness of his stubble on her chest, kissing every inch of skin that he could get to (which, of course, was quite a lot).
Her hands tried to reach everywhere at the same time, but even in their passion, they couldn't defy physics.
She couldn't fully immerse herself in him, not when there were limits to how far her tongue could go into his mouth, to how much they could do in the doctor's lounge with the possibility of anyone coming in, to see their boss making out with an insane man.
But feeling, it was too much for her, and his hands, they were like music to her, beautiful in their capacity to convey emotion.
She gasped, again, and again, as he made his way down with his mouth, her shirt was lifted and he teased her stomach with his lips, leaving feather light kisses on the soft skin he found there.
He lifted the hem of her skirt up, licking a trail down to her panty-line.
"House…" she half gasped, half moaned. "Someone's going to see us."
"Doesn't matter." he muttered, already too far gone in the experience of her.
Chase thought that that was the moment to interrupt them.
"Too late." came a suspiciously Australian accented voice from the door way.
They both looked up to see House's oldest duckling watching them with an amused (and slightly turned-on) look on his face.
"Dr. Chase… I, oh my god…" Cuddy sputtered, getting up off the couch.
"Don't worry about it. My lips are sealed." the younger doctor said, making the motion with his hands. "About time, too."
"Yeah, yeah, screw off, Chase." House said. The intensivist left without another word, and Cuddy looked back at House with a red face.
"We shouldn't have done that." she said, out of breath.
"There are a lot of things that we shouldn't have done." he replied. "But that wasn't one of them."
She looked at him, still completely aroused and yet aware of what they had just been doing.
"Back to my place?" he asked, winking at her.
"Let's hope Wilson doesn't barge in on my fun again." he said seriously. "That sure screwed things up. Oh wait, he's in a hospital bed."
"Ass." she muttered, slapping his arm lightly.
"Cold-hearted bitch." he retorted, slapping her right back.
"Don't I know it." she muttered, and leant into him. "You're a real bastard, you know that?"
"Yeah." House said, smiling down at her. "But you still love me, right?"
Her only answer was to kiss him, long and hard, and that was all the response he needed.