Evening, all! I hope all those in the Midwest are well with these nasty storms we've had over the last couple of days. Yeesh! Anywho, here's a new chapter for you... and it may be the longest individual chapter of any story I've ever written. So yay! And you're finally going to get a little action in this chapter, so put on a happy Huddy face :-D It's not enough to kick the rating up, but at some point this story will likely be bumped up to "M." (I'm sure all of you are crying despondently at that prospect.)
Shout-outs and Huddy hearts to all of my lovely chapter 10 reviewers, many of them faithfully leaving me feedback for each chapter: IHeartHouseCuddy, Abby, HuddyGirl, Alex, and my two guests :-D
As always... please, please, please review! It makes my day so much brighter :-D
11- The Ex-Factor
"Care to explain that?" ventured a liquidly courageous Chase.
"No… not really," House answered, attempting nonchalance and taking another sip of his nearly empty beer. As much as he hoped, though, he knew that his former and present fellows, along with his best friend, would never let him off the hook that easily.
"Did I just have an out of body experience or something? Anyone see four horsemen gallivanting around the bar? Because I certainly have no other explanations," Wilson scoffed.
House closed his eyes in annoyance and rubbed his forehead. "A little bit of ancient history repeating itself. It's not that unusual for familiar settings and a lot of alcohol to cause one teeny lapse in judgment between one very sexy doctor of a certain age and his menopausal long-time acquaintance."
"Oh please, House… you're way too young for menopause!" Forman cracked unexpectedly. He and Chase both laughed loudly at the joke, and the Aussie doctor started to mimic the hit-and-miss high five game with Forman, trying hard to hit the moving target.
"Cute," House sneered coldly, his mood doing an instant one-eighty. "You two can move along now… nothing to see here."
"Oooo, look who's all touchy about his girlfriend?" Chase teased flippantly. He and Forman only laughed harder, and Wilson could see his friend's level of irritation steadily escalating.
"Do I sound like I'm joking? BYE!" the now very grumpy doctor all but growled. The smiles left Chase and Forman's faces, and the two finally got the hint and went over to join their boss's more recent hires at one of their other tables.
Wilson sighed and took a seat on the stool next to House's. "Well, since you're taking the teasing from the other kids on the playground with such a grain of salt, it's obvious to me that your little exchange with Cuddy was completely insignificant and meant absolutely nothing to you at all."
"Oh, shut up," House retorted weakly.
"Seriously… what was that?"
The diagnostician exhaled heavily and looked absently at the ceiling for some kind of guidance that wouldn't come. "It was just this… thing… that she and I used to do in college. It started before we were even really together. She was singing in a different band when I first met her… a really crappy one. They mostly did bad pop covers, but they did well with all the wannabe yuppies on campus with bad taste. Anyway, we opened for them a lot of weekends… even though it should have really been the other way around. Cuddy was the one redeeming factor in that band, but…" House reminisced with an unconscious upturning of his lips.
"But…" Wilson prompted him, fascinated that the man who was often tight as a clam about his past was voluntarily sharing so much information.
"But… it was fun to give her shit about how she wouldn't look like such hot stuff up there if she tried to sing some real music."
"And being the shrinking violet that she is, I'm sure that Cuddy just smiled sweetly and let that challenge slide."
"Oh, you know her so well," House snarked back.
"So… I think I'm starting to get the picture here. Let me guess… 'Piece of My Heart' was her answer to your not-so-subtle mating call of over-the-top sexist and demeaning insults."
House glared at him, annoyed. "See, it's no wonder everyone thinks we're gay. I spend way too much time around you if you can accurately gain so much insight into a blip of a relationship I had that was over almost twenty years ago from that scant piece of information."
"What can I say, my powers of deduction are legendary," Wilson quipped with a raise of his glass. After he took another sip of his beer, a puzzled look crossed his face. "Wait… what do you mean everyone thinks we're gay?"
"That's when it started, though," House continued, ignoring Wilson's afterthought. "She walked up to me after she finished singing, so sure of herself… so damn confident… all I wanted to do was wipe that self-satisfied grin off her face. And grab her ass." Wilson rolled his eyes. "And… that was my compromise. I made her look like a moron when she was jumping around like a monkey trying to high-five me. And I got to grab her ass. And eventually… it kind of turned into a little 'thing' that we did once in a while after she sang."
"And then you asked her out?"
"No, then I informed her she was too good for the hacks she was playing with and told her that my band was looking for a chick singer."
"Was your band looking for a chick singer?"
"No, not exactly. But as you've come to learn over the years, my powers of persuasion tend to be pretty convincing. I told the guys that if we brought her along when we were out hunting down gigs that the bar owners would take one look at her and book us. They bought it."
"I have a hard time believing that Cuddy would go along with that," Wilson countered, shaking his head.
"She didn't have to. Well, not out-rightly at least. Did she happen to come along when we were out looking for gigs? Sure. Did I tell her that's why I asked her to come along? Of course not," House explained, becoming uncharacteristically quiet for a minute or two after he finished speaking. Wilson continued to finish his drink and watched his friend, puzzled by this knew information about a person he assumed he had completely figured out long ago.
"So… what else?"
"Nothing else."
"What do you mean, 'nothing else?' How did you two end up… hooking up?"
House grabbed his cane and appeared to head for the bar. "Nice try, Jimmy boy," he tossed over his shoulder. "I'm still not that drunk. Check back with me in a few hours." Wilson shrugged as he watched his best friend walk away, knowing full well that House's psyche would be closed for questions for the next while.
Looking around for Amber, he eventually spotted her by the bar with Cuddy and Cameron. He knew that his boss was even less likely to divulge any juicy information regarding the mostly extinguished romance than House, and laughed a bit to himself at the futility of his girlfriend's venture. Noticing that the rest of the PPTH crew seemed occupied in their own conversations or dancing, Wilson shrugged and decided it was as good a time as any to put in his selection for karaoke.
H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C-
While Wilson was giving House the third degree at the table, Cuddy had her own troubles fending off the nosy inquiries of her newest gal-pals at the bar. When Amber and Cameron finally caught up to her through the bustling peak of the Saturday night crowd, they found their boss with her forehead resting on the polished wooden surface and her right hand around a newly mixed Mojito. The two younger doctors shared a questioning glance, and the more genuinely worried Cameron was the first one to break the ice.
"Cuddy…" she prodded gently, tapping the other woman on the shoulder. No response. "Cuddy… are you ok?"
She sighed heavily. "I'm fine."
"Um… ok…" Cameron started, shrugging her shoulders at Amber. For the most part, House's only long-lasting female fellow had always gotten along well with Cuddy. Before that night, however, the two had hardly been bosom buddies, and Cameron wasn't sure it was her place to force her boss's hand to share in that particular instance. Since Amber displayed a minimal understanding of a need for boundaries in most situations, though, she was happy to push Cuddy without a second thought.
"Hey," Amber said more loudly, sitting down at the empty stool next to her and poking Cuddy's shoulder with an insistent index finger. Finally Cuddy raised her head from its prostrate position and met Amber's glance warily. "Care to explain that little tableau? We're dying of curiosity over here."
"I'm sure you are," the administrator answered guardedly. "But there isn't really much to tell."
"Oh yeah. Because we observe you and House voluntarily in each other's very personal space… touching…and laughing… without arguing, on a regular basis," she the red-head returned sarcastically.
"Ugh. I knew this was a bad idea," Cuddy muttered to herself while she dramatically replaced her head back on the bar. "Just give me a few minutes, ladies, and I'll come back to the table."
Cameron widened her eyes and jerked her head in the general direction of their tables, silently willing Amber to take the hint and follow her back to join the group. Earning her nickname from House for the hundredth time over since arriving on the scene at PPTH, Cutthroat Bitch merely snorted noiselessly at the much nicer doctor's suggestion and resolutely stayed put.
"So it must be true what they say around the hospital then…" Amber cast out her figurative line, but initially the fish didn't bite. "You two are having sex!"
Cuddy shot upright instantly. "We absolutely are not!" she insisted.
"That's not what House said," Amber replied with artificial sweetness. It was true, after all. In all the time she had worked with House, he had actually never commented on the state of his relationship, past, present, or lack thereof, with Cuddy one way or another.
"I'm going to kill him!" the dean practically spat. "I thought we agreed a long time ago that we would never let anyone at the hospital know about our history."
"Wait… your history?" Cameron practically squeaked, honestly shocked at the involuntary revelation on the part of her boss. "You two actually did have sex?" She knew that she had no right to sound or be jealous, but she just couldn't help it. Even if the feeling wasn't at the forefront of her heart currently, House had been her number one crush for long enough that the response came automatically.
"It was…. college. A hundred years ago… not anything recent," Cuddy acquiesced, finally picking up her Mojito and begging for the renewed effects of alcohol to make her care just a little bit less about everything that was happening. "I never should have agreed to this band thing. Such a bad idea to revisit that… and especially with him," she chided herself.
"Oh wooow. You guys were in the same band, weren't you? That's what that little high-five thing was about, wasn't it?" Cameron wondered. Cuddy nodded reluctantly. "Wow," she repeated.
"So was it just a one-time hookup, or were you and House, like, an item?" Amber continued to probe.
Being the shrewd and educated woman that she was, Cuddy began to recover from her initial shock at her employees' questions and quickly became suspicious. She realized that Amber and Cameron really didn't seem to know many specifics of her history with House at all. Indeed, the dean started to internally question whether or not she had walked into one of Amber's well-documented verbal traps with her admissions in the first place.
"Well, this heart to heart was fun, girls. But these drinks are getting to me again… need to make another visit to the washroom," Cuddy suddenly declared and briskly extricated herself from their company before they had a chance to ask any more questions.
"Well that was unexpected," Cameron muttered, still perplexed at the new information.
"Oh, please… you can't be thatsurprised. The way those two go at it? It would be almost impossible for them not to have 'gone at it' at some point."
"I'm surprised you're not trying to follow her," Cameron mused, arching an eyebrow.
"Cuddy's not stupid. She was on to my little game… that was her way of politely shutting me down. I'll have to be patient and play my cards right if I want to wheedle any more information out of her in the future," explained Amber casually. "Besides… it looks like she already has company waiting for her over there."
Sure enough, House was visible in the shadows of the little hallway that contained the washrooms, and he and Cuddy were already in the throes of what appeared to be a very interesting discussion.
H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C-
"Visiting the little girls' room again soon?" House asked Cuddy as indifferently as possible when she passed him in the shadows the small alcove leading to her destination.
"Jesus, House!" she bit out breathlessly, placing a startled hand on her chest. "You scared the shit out of me, I didn't even see you."
"That was the idea."
"Well, excuse me then…" Cuddy began, trying to move past him. But he stood in her way just enough that she couldn't have gotten past him without touching him.
"You don't really have to go to the bathroom, do you?" queried House curiously.
"Well, I can't think of any other reasons why I would be over here. I certainly didn't come to hang out with you."
"Oh, I can think of at least two… and they're both standing over by the bar, trying very hard to figure out what you and I are discussing," he explained, indicating the rubbernecking Cameron and Amber with his head. Cuddy turned around, and as soon as she caught the other two doctors' eyes, they both pretended to be talking with each other or watching the latest unfortunate sap singing on the stage.
"Yeah, and that whole thing is completely your fault!" she whispered loudly with ire. "How dare you tell your team that you and I had sex!"
"What?" asked her employee, immediately confounded by her accusation. "I never told them anything of the kind. I do routinely make completely inappropriate comments about your body and your wardrobe in front of them. But aside from that… it's nothing I don't say to your face anyway."
Cuddy narrowed her eyes at him. In spite of his heinous track record for sexual harassment where she was concerned, he seemed to be telling the truth. She couldn't always tell when the diagnostician was lying, but the dean usually at least had an inkling.
"Really?" she asked him suspiciously.
"Yeah. I've never told anyone," he began, but then paused, "Well, until tonight. I sort of told Wilson, because as usual he had to stick his nose where it didn't belong and psychoanalyze my detailed knowledge of your musicianship."
"Ok," Cuddy conceded tersely. If someone had to know specifics, she was glad it was her friend the oncologist and not one of her employees that truly viewed her as an authority figure.
"Now it's my turn for a question, though… who told you that I was telling my fellows that we had sex?"
"Amber."
House sneered coldly, remarking, "Shocking. Cutthroat Bitch is behaving… exactly like a Cutthroat Bitch."
"Great," Cuddy muttered, covering her head in her hands.
"So you walked right into her trap?"
"Apparently. Shit. This is going to be all over the hospital next week, isn't it?"
"I don't know," House said uneasily, halting their conversation when some women going to the bathroom eyed their intense conversation skeptically. He briefly looked around and then grabbed Cuddy's hand. "C'mon," he said quickly, pulling her out of the back door at the end of the hallway and into the cool night air of spring.
"We won't be out here long, will we?" she asked him once they were outside, extricating her hand from his. "I don't care if it is April, it's cold, and I don't have my jacket."
"That cold thing… I might have a solution for that," House answered glibly. Allowing his cane to drop unceremoniously to the ground, he took her smaller hands back in his and gently walked her over by the wall of the building. Before Cuddy knew what hit her, House's arms wound their way around her middle to the small of her back until he could pull her flush against him. He was slowly sliding his nose along the side of her neck, inhaling the heady scent of her that mingled with her perfume. Just like the aftermath of her song, it was as if the two of them had gone through a time-warp and Cuddy had forgotten that they weren't supposed to be touching each other.
While the substantial amount of alcohol House had consumed by this point in the evening only invigorated his boldness, the effects on Cuddy manifested through lowered psychological defenses. She dreamily ran her hands up his chest, and House started to taste and nip at the sensitive skin behind her left ear. But somewhere in the recesses of her mind, Cuddy remembered that this was not what they were supposed to be doing.
"House… what the hell?" she demanded angrily, hastily stepping out of his embrace and backing up a few feet.
"Well, they're all going to be talking anyway… we might as well get something out of it and pepper the gossip with some truth," he reasoned evenly, waggling his eyebrows as only he could.
"No. We… we can't," Cuddy protested too weakly for him to really take her objection seriously. Closing her eyes and rubbing her face, she added, "It's a terrible idea. For so many reasons."
"Ah, but judging from your unconscious reciprocation just a second ago, at least part of you remembers that some of it can be a very, very good idea. You definitely want me."
"Oh, don't start that again, House. You are the one that convinced me to take part in this stupid band thing in the first place. You knew it could put us right back in this situation… with so much alcohol and so many emotions being stirred up from the past."
"I didn't make you say 'yes.' I didn't pick your song for you. I didn't come sauntering up to me in those too-tight pants and do-me heels silently asking to re-enact our little courtship dance."
"But you did it back!"
"So what if I did? How could I not with you standing there right in front of me, looking the way you do?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Cuddy asked, crossing her arms indignantly.
"I may be a genius, but I'm also a human… and a male. You're no idiot yourself, so there's no way that you're completely oblivious to the effect of your outfits on the opposite sex. You are the one who pointed out, not so very long ago, that I… now let me see if I can get this exactly right…" House exaggeratedly scratched his scruff and did his best to look thoughtful. " 'check out your ass and question your wardrobe' on a regular basis. You're hardly playing fair if you're fully aware of my uncontrollable tendency to leer and continue to make clothing choices that inspire it."
"Oh, I see. So I'm supposed to run around dressed like a nun because you can't keep your hormones under control."
"No… no… I didn't say that. See… you're putting words in my mouth," he explained with an infuriating smile. "That would be an insane waste of your visually pleasing, work-safe assets. I never said I wanted you to stop dressing the way you do. But I do wish you would own the fact that you do it… at least partially… to get my attention."
"Well… so?" Cuddy flustered, her irritation multiplying rapidly at his ability to pinpoint her somewhat subconscious motivations in dress. "You… show off by playing inane pranks to get my attention and piss me off… like some cocky fourteen-year-old boy."
"Maybe... occasionally… I have sometimes been known to do that in the past," House tentatively acknowledged.
"In the past? Oh yes, I'm sure now that we've had this unbelievably enlightening conversation that your behavior will be altered drastically come Monday morning," Cuddy retorted, although mentally she was trying to catch up to the fact that he had admitted the motivations for his behavior on some level. "That would really be something… it might mean you would actually start filling out patient charts and filing your department's quarterly budget on time."
"Let's not get overly ambitious, now," he chided playfully, stepping confidently back into his boss's orbit now that he was beyond positive that she reciprocated his degree of attraction. During their little tête-à-tête, Cuddy had unconsciously leaned against the brick wall of the building, which she quickly realized left her at an incredible disadvantage to dodge House's reemerging advances. He moved to stand in front of her and placed his palms flat on the bricks on either side of his boss's shoulders, drinking in the slightly bewildered look in her expressive gray eyes.
"House…" Cuddy protested, familiar enough with his repertoire to know what was coming next. His nearness was unnerving, but strangely enough, the thought that he would suddenly pull away from her in that moment in order to mess with her proved far more disappointing than she wanted to admit.
"Cuddy…" he parroted sarcastically, but quietly, moving closer. When his lips were a hairsbreadth away from hers, Cuddy's eyes took their last opportunity to asses House's very blue ones before they darted to his mouth. She hated herself for it, but all she could think of was how much a part of her really did want this: want him. When he finally ended the suspense by parting her lips with such an unanticipated gentle sensuality that she ached all the way down to her toes, it spurned Cuddy's newly aggressive need for closeness to him and she deepened the kiss almost immediately.
Forgetting that his initial intent on some level had been to playfully trap her into admitting her desire, House found his arms sliding behind her back to grab a good handful of her ass. Cuddy answered with an appreciative groan from deep in her throat and rose up on her tiptoes so she could wind her arms possessively around his neck. By now their kisses had become more desperate, their noses bumping into one another as they shifted angles and their tongues sought a mutual source for pleasure. It was House's turn to moan when Cuddy settled her attention on his bottom lip, suckling it just like she had wanted to a hundred times to shut him up when they were giving each other hell. He responded by holding onto her even tighter until his very obvious arousal was pressing firmly against her pulsing center through both of their jeans.
Something about the gravity of that gesture reached through the haze in the entirety of Cuddy's brain in that split second and plunged her back into reality. She remembered where they were, and why they were there, and who was waiting for them back inside the bar.
Placing her hands insistently, but not harshly on House's shoulders, Cuddy breathlessly intoned, "We have to go back inside. Amber's going to organize a search party if we don't show our faces in there pretty soon. Probably Wilson, too."
"No!" House whined with an incongruously sincere conviction. "I finally have you where I want you, and I had to be a big enough idiot to arrange for a room full of nosy people that we work with to be on the other side of that damn door on the night I make my move." He gave her a few lingering pecks to try and change her mind. "Stay," he asked her with a voice full of lust, but laced with evidence of genuine emotion.
"I'm not… leaving you," Cuddy smiled a little shyly. "I'm just saying we need to stop… for now… and go back inside before we make them any more suspicious than they already are," she explained while she untangled herself from House's reluctantly loosened embrace. Patting his chest and giving it a little affectionate rub, she took a few steps to where his cane had landed and picked it up for him.
When she handed it to him, House's fingers brushed against hers, and he cocked an eyebrow and mischievously asked, "Does the 'for now' thing imply that there might be a 'later'?"
Cuddy walked over to the heavy metal door that led back into Beasley's, looking back at him as she turned the handle. "Might be," she repeated impishly, her eyes gleaming. The slam of the door echoed loudly between the surrounding buildings when she went inside, and House leaned heavily against the wall behind him to try and collect his thoughts. He permitted the gamut of emotions to wash over him while he looked up at the clear and starry sky.
Although it was delayed by shock, a smirk mirroring Cuddy's eventually materialized on his face. "Cool," he uttered with a mix of disbelief and amusement.