A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews...I'd love to hear what more of you think after this one...enjoy!

Remember December

Chapter Three.

In the next weeks, House continued to appear outside her dorm in the early mornings, not every day but enough that it became a habit. Enough that she was disappointed on the days he didn't come. The semester dragged on and Cuddy didn't see much of anyone during this busy time. Her morning runs with House, sadly were the height of her social life. That and the occasional dinner with Jack and tussle at his house before getting up in the middle of the night and going home or back to the library. Jack was as romantic and attentive as ever, and Cuddy appreciated his willingness to give her space. It suggested that he was either wonderfully considerate, or that he was finding fulfillment elsewhere (damn House for putting that thought into her head)…but as it turned out, Cuddy didn't really care. She was twenty years old. It's not like she was planning on marrying him. It's not like she was even in love with him for that matter. He was a good guy, he just wasn't…House? She immediately shook the thought loose. Not even.

The Michigan weather was turning cold, and Cuddy pulled her coat tight around her and hurried into the warmth of the library and out of the wind gusts and the early December snowfall outside. Cuddy brushed snow off her coat and headed to the fifth floor and the quietest corner of the library. When she got there though, House was sitting at a table by the window, wearing glasses and concentrating intently on whatever medical text he was reading. She stared at him and when he glanced up and saw her standing there he smiled.

"Who's stalking who?" He said and gestured to an empty chair across from him. Cuddy frowned but walked over and sat down.

"I never thought you stepped foot in this place," she said, "I thought studying was beneath you and your genius."

House smiled. "Don't tell anyone, but I actually do read sometimes."

Cuddy pulled out a bio-chemistry text and opened a notebook in front of her. "Don't let me interrupt you," she said. House shifted in his seat as she bent down to grab a pen from her bag and her cleavage came into full view. He shook his head and wondered if she did that on purpose.

"Hey, you work at the hospital right?" He asked.

Cuddy nodded, "It's just an assistantship in the pathology lab."

"Can you tell me anything about the guy with the weird heart thing that was admitted yesterday?" He dropped his book and she eyed him suspiciously.

"Just that his blood work showed an elevated level of iron in his system. Everything else was normal. Why?"

"Hm. How high was it?"

"I don't remember. House, what are you up to?"

"Elevated iron has been linked to cardiovascular disease. That tracks, but this guy also has gastrointestinal problems."

Cuddy closed her text book and leaned into him. "Is this you trying to come up with another brilliant diagnosis and piss off your superiors?"

House smiled again. "I'm just interested. Dr. Reems uses current cases in his class to get us thinking like doctors working with real patients and high stakes. He thinks it puts pressure on us to find the right answer without there being any real pressure, since you know…none of us are doctors yet."

Cuddy nodded. "So they still don't know what's wrong with him?"

"They seem to be stumped, but I think I've read about these symptoms somewhere before. Or I thought I had but nothing seems to fit everything."

Cuddy tapped her pen against her lips. "Haemolytic anaemia?"

"That's just stupid. Anaemia typically presents with low iron levels…and that doesn't explain the heart. I'd say alcoholism but that would cause liver problems before it caused heart problems."

"The guy is only sixteen. I doubt he's an alcoholic. Maybe anemia is presenting in an atypical way, it's not unheard of."

House rolled his eyes. "Still doesn't explain the heart. You are gonna have to learn to listen if you're going to make it in this field, Cuddy."

They went on this way late into the night; Cuddy acting as a sounding board more than anything else. Her very limited view allowed her to acknowledge if an idea made sense or to reason why another idea didn't fit, but that's about it. In the end House dropped his head onto the table with an aggravate sigh.

"This sucks." He pushed a hand through his hair. Cuddy had long since given up on her own homework to humor him. She had kicked off her shoes and was leafing through yet another medical text and sipping on the coffee House had brought back with him when he left to use the bathroom.

"Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss a genetic abnormality—"

"Forget it." House lifted his head. He looked tired. "I need to sleep on it. Maybe then something will click." He looked at Cuddy, her hair let down and her feet in cute multi-colored socks propped up in the chair. "This was fun wasn't it?"

Cuddy laughed. "Of course your idea of fun is holding up in the library all night playing guess that sickness."

He feigned a wounded look, "You had a blast, admit it." She answered him with only a small smile and House stood up, stretching his arms over his head. "One of these days I'm going to talk you into playing strip differential with me." He winked at her and she laughed. "I'll see you later Cuddy." He risked planting a goodnight kiss on her but she turned at the last second and it landed on her cheek instead and she pushed him away.

"Goodnight House."

The next morning House missed their run, but came to the hospital around ten baring gifts. Coffee and a croissant. He found Cuddy in the lab taking an inventory, and watched her briefly without her knowing he was there then, "You were right."

Cuddy spun around and House walked over to the table in the center of the room and held up her coffee. "I was?"

"About the genetic abnormality. Inherited Hemochromatosis. I wrote it off before because of his age but it occurred to me this morning, TFR2 related would start to show signs in adolescence."

Cuddy took the coffee from him. "That would mean his organs were turning to stone. Have you told Dr. Reems?"

House nodded. "He thinks if it were Hemochromatosis there would be symptoms in his liver."

"He's right."

"He's an idiot. We need to run a genetic screen."

Her mouth dropped open slightly. "We? No House."

"Come on Cuddy, it's just a test what will it hurt?"

"I am just an assistant in this lab. I run errands and file paperwork, that's it."

"But you know how."

"I'm not going to do it. If Reems thought—"

"Reems just wants me to be wrong." He took her arm when she started to walk away from him. "It could save his life, Cuddy."

She pulled her arm away. "Don't try to manipulate me, House. Even if your right there's no cure for—"

"It can be managed. I'm sure about this; I just need the test as proof to take to Reems."

Cuddy closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her forehead. "Even if I wanted to help you, there's no more of his blood left to run the screen, you'd have to get another sample."

House frowned then turned and walked out of the lab. He took the stairs down to the third floor where the patient's room was and watched his door for about ten minutes. A nurse House didn't know walked in and adjusted his IV, then left. He spotted a girl he did know, named Roxanne at the nurse's station answering the phones. Never mind the fact that he had slept with her and then never called her again, even if he could charm her into helping him, she wasn't a nurse, she was just a receptionist, so she would be no help in the drawing blood department. The floor temporarily cleared out and House saw his shot. He walked over to the nurse's station.

"Hey there beautiful," he smiled at Roxanne, as innocently as he could manage.

When it registered who he was, the girl's lip twisted into an ugly shape and she crossed her arms. "What do you want?" She asked him in a thick Jersey accent.

House held the smile in place, "I was just thinking about you and thought maybe—"

"Cut the crap Greg."

His smile vanished. "Fine. I need to get into that patient's room over there and I need you to keep an eye out and whistle or something if someone starts to come in there."

"Why? What are you gonna do to him?'

"Nothing that any doctor wouldn't do."

"You're not a doctor."

He glanced around and grabbed a lab coat that was hanging in the corner and slipped it over his shoulders. "You don't know that." He turned and headed toward the room, while Roxanne rolled her eyes but then walked over to the other side of the desk and glanced down the empty hallway.

House grabbed two test tubes from a drawer in the patient's room and crept over to his IV. The patient was asleep, thankfully, or he would've had to put on a bit of a show. House twisted one tube and then the other into the IV and waited for them to fill with blood.

From the desk House heard Roxanne go into a coughing fit. Crap. He slipped the vials in his pocket and peaked through the door. A nurse had just stepped off the elevator. House cursed under his breath and then quickly opened the door and slipped out walking away from the nurse's station and toward the stairwell.

Back in the lab, House placed the vials of blood on the counter in front of Cuddy. She shook her head when she saw him in the lab coat. "I don't even want to know how you got those."

He raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure, it was pretty cleaver?"

She reached for the vials. "And what are you going to say when Reems ask how you got the results?"

"I'll just tell him I'm sleeping with one of the lab techs." Cuddy smiled down at the tubes in her hands.

"They're all guys," she said.

House grimaced. "Well, I can still tell him I'm sleeping with one of them."

Cuddy laughed. "I'll call when I've got something."

"Okay. Oh, and can you also check her iron again?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Don't push it House."

"Thanks for doing this." He smiled at her and then dropped the pilfered lab coat over a chair before leaving.

When House returned several hours later Cuddy held up a printout for him to see. "I couldn't believe it," she said. "He was positive, it's Genetic Hemochromatosis. You were right."

House smiled and let out a brief laugh. "Seriously?" She nodded and smiled.

"Yeah, but there's no time to celebrate." She pointed to a series of numbers on the sheet she had handed him. "Iron saturation is at 71%. Yesterday it was at 64%."

"Which means he's getting worse. Fast." House's eyes glazed over the test results.

"You have to take this to Dr. Reems so they can get him on a treatment regimen and do a transfusion."

"Hm." House mumbled without looking up at her.

"House?"

"Starting treatment would be faster."

"No, House." She pulled the paper out of his hands, forcing him to look at her. "We need to take this to Reems."

"He won't trust the results because we did the test. If we treat and he starts to get better, then we'll know we were right."

"We aren't going to do anything. They make you finish medical school before you can treat patients on your own for a reason House."

He nodded and took the paper away from her. "You're right." He grabbed the lab coat he had borrowed from the nurse's station earlier that day and headed out of the lab. Cuddy followed close behind him.

"What are you doing, I just said—"

"You're right. I shouldn't involve you anymore. Thanks for helping me." He kept walking toward the elevator without looking at her. She followed him in and they rode down to the pharmacy.

"This is insane. There is no reason—" House stopped her at the pharmacy door.

"Stay here," he said. Several minutes later House emerged from the hospital pharmacy carrying a plastic cup with three pills inside and a bag used for collecting blood donations.

"How did you—"

"I can be a pretty smooth operator when I need to be." He smiled at her but she wasn't laughing. "Treatment," he said. "Medication for the Hemochromatosis, and loss of blood will lead to a drop in iron saturation."

"You are going to get kicked out of school," she said, her voice firm and angry.

"Kicked out for what? Saving some kids life?" They were headed toward the stairs and back up to the third floor. As they stepped out of the stairwell and approached the patient's room, Dr. Reems and a nurse stepped in front of them.

"What do you two think you're doing?"

An hour later House and Cuddy were called in. Dr. Reems paced around the room and the dean, Dr. Grey sat at his desk rubbing his temples with knobby fingers.

"I don't even know where to begin," Dr. Grey said.

Reems stepped over to House, "Let's start with you taking it upon yourself to perform medical procedures on a patient, performing tests without getting my consent or the patients, lying to a pharmacist, attempting to—"

Dr. Grey stood up. "Alright Michal, calm down." He walked around the desk and leaned against the edge. He looked pointedly at Cuddy. "Miss Cuddy, I'm not sure how you managed to become involved in all of this, but your participation was irresponsible and you completely overstepped you're boundaries as an assistant in the laboratory."

Cuddy's eyes hit the floor. "I know that sir."

"That being said, I would hate to see your record tarnished with a formal reprimand, so I am ordering a temporary probationary period set for your assistantship, and assuming you can make it 60 days without further incident, we can put this behind us."

Cuddy looked up in surprise. "But," Grey continued, "I hope you will use better discretion in the future with who you chose to associate yourself with." Cuddy glanced over at House who was scowling at Dr. Reems. He looked over at her briefly and shook his head. "That's all Miss Cuddy. You're excused." Cuddy nodded slowly and then left the room leaving House and the two angry men to decide what deserved to happen to him.

Cuddy walked outside of the hospital's side entrance defeated. She stood in the cold and waited. She had her coat wrapped tight around her, and her bag slung over one shoulder, when about an hour later House appeared pushed open the door and stepped into the cold. "Well?" she asked him.

House shrugged, he was angry but deflecting. "Slap on the wrist, no biggie." He stepped past her and started the trek back to his motorcycle parked at the rear of the building.

Cuddy shook her head, furious. "You do this on purpose. It's not enough for you to get noticed by doing good work. You're not happy unless you've broken a rule or pushed the limits and pissed someone off."

House stopped walking and turned to face her. "Was I wrong?"

"Yes! Yes, you were wrong to draw blood from the patient yourself, you were wrong to think you could treat her yourself instead of just handing over the results to her doctors. You didn't have to do all of that. Even if they would have questioned the accuracy of the test I ran, it would have forced them to retest when and they would've gotten the same result and had to treat her. You wanted to be the one to do it, because being right wasn't enough. You put your career at risk and mine. And now you're wrong for not acknowledging that what you did was wrong." She had worked herself up and her breathing had become ragged in the cold wind. "This is why I could never…"

"Could never what?"

Cuddy shook her head. She was angry that she let herself be dragged into this. "Forget it."

"No, finish what you started. This is why you could never, what?" House had stepped close to her. He was pissed at Reems and the others because Cuddy was wrong: being right was all that mattered. What he did probably saved that guys life but they refused to acknowledge it, and now Cuddy standing in front of him was saying the same thing. And not only was she condemning what he did, she was using it as a reason not to be with him.

Her face softened and she put a hand on his arm. He recognized that in the few months they had known each other this was the first time she had touched him, on her own volition without pretext or reason. His eyes wandered down to where her fingers clinched his elbow. "House, I understand why you did what you did. You made the right call. You saved him. But sometimes you have to know when to step back because I don't care how brilliant you are, you won't always be right and one of these days you'll get one wrong and you will kill someone."

He stared at her for a moment. His hot breath mixing with the cold air, and he moved his arm so that he could grasp her hand. "Are you…trying to protect me?"

"I am trying to get you to understand that there are some lines you can't cross."

"Yeah I get that. You don't want me crossing lines." House nodded as he stared at her, tiny bits of snow sticking to her coat and clinging to her hair. She didn't break his stare though she felt the conversation had ended, and she didn't wretch away when his hand moved up her arm to her neck and his fingers sunk into her hair pulling her toward him. His lips crashed down on hers in a viral assault and she did not fight back. Her mind dazed as he feasted on her lips and slipped his tongue out to taste her. She dropped her bag in the snow at her feet and wrapped her arms around him pulling herself closer still. Time had stopped and Cuddy's mind was not working. She moved her hands into his hair, damp from the snow and parted her lips to let him inside. Her breath was hot on his. He raked his hands over her back, pressing her to his chest, unwilling to release her. Even when he tipped his head away and broke the kiss he crushed her against him. Cuddy kept her eyes closed and her mouth inches from engulfing him again. But she waited a micro-second too long and her senses took over. She gripped his upper arms and extracted herself from his grasp.

"I need to go." Was all she said before stepping away and leaving him standing in the cold yet again, his eyes still closed and head tipped to his chest.