Disclaimer: Don't own em. Just playin'
AN: Not as pleased with this one - but it needed to get out there as it moves the plot along.
"This is so me…" House commented as he stepped inside his apartment, with only his small backpack.
"You could at least get out of my way, House." Cuddy grumbled from behind him, pulling her own suitcase, her laptop bag over one shoulder and two bags of groceries clutched in her arms.
"Awww…" House tossed his backpack and cane onto the couch then turned and smirked as he took away the grocery bags. "And here I thought at home you'd call me Greg. I mean here we are shacking up."
"We are not shacking up…" Cuddy snarled as she put her suitcase and laptop off to the side. "I am here until either you get your memories back or your mom can come back from their tour of Europe." She glared at him as he rooted through the groceries looking for the bag of Oreos that he'd conned her into buying. "Then I am moving back to my own house."
"I bet if I looked, there's only one bedroom – so we are so shacking up." House said as he pulled out the bag of cookies and limped back to the living room, settling on the couch after pushing his backpack onto the floor. He then proceeded to pull out a cookie, twisting the two halves apart, scraping the filling off with his teeth and tossing the discarded wafers on the coffee table.
Cuddy sighed as she moved into the kitchen, pulling open the fridge to inspect the current contents. Her nose wrinkled slightly – it was bad – but not as bad as she had imagined it could have been. She was almost glad of his abysmal dietary habits – rotten vegetables would have been worse to get rid of than pizza boxes growing new civilizations that could be gotten rid of wholesale by safely removing the box without opening it. She went to the counter where she'd deposited a box of garbage bags and retrieved a bag. "I'm not staying in your room. I am sleeping on your couch. So no shacking up."
She was on her knees in front of the fridge and concentrating on digging out an apparent bag of something take out that had fallen into the very back – behind the apparently unused vegetable crispers, so she didn't notice the pair of feet appear at her side, until she pulled back and jumped slightly from their appearance. House looked down at her seemingly amused. "So if we're not shacking up, then why are you cleaning my house?"
"I'm not cleaning your house, just your refrigerator. And because for a doctor, you're fridge is disgusting – and I'm not living on take out while I'm staying here." She stuffed the last of the refuse into the black plastic bag at her side. "And I don't plan on ending up in my own hospital with severe food poisoning or a spore infection."
"I still say we're shacking up…" He insisted – in fact he was bound and determined they were.
Cuddy's shoulders sagged for a moment, and then she stood up and moved to the sink to get a pan of hot water, and added some dish cleaning detergent to it. Without speaking, she walked back to the fridge and knelt again. She didn't want to look at him while having this conversation. "This is why I didn't want to stay here."
"Explain it to me…" House leaned over the fridge door and fiddled with the few items.
She sighed wearily. "There's always been this … tension between us and living in proximity to one another… Nothing good can come from this. You don't remember everything and when you do this is all going to change."
House admitted that she had neatly not answered his question, while still answering it. Still he got the gist of her objections – which left him with more questions. The implication was that when he remembered whatever had happened in the interim – shacking up wouldn't be on his list of to dos. Now whether that had specifically to do with Cuddy or if it was a general thing – there wasn't any hints. "What if it doesn't change?" He just threw the thought out there to see how she reacted.
"You're going to remember." She looked up at him, fire glinting in her eyes.
Which wasn't what he was getting at, but since guilt had always been one of Lisa's motivators, he wasn't surprised at the conclusion she'd jumped to. He moved to the counter and picked up the bag of groceries and brought them back when she was done with the clean up. He pulled out some sort of leafy green thing and handed it over to her. "Evil green…"
Cuddy sighed, even as he went through the bag of vegetables and handed them down to her. "They aren't evil, they're healthy – you're a doctor – I'd think you'd know this." She was glad of the change of subject though.
"Poh-Tay-Toe… Poh-Tah-Toe…" He said as he smirked – feeling the tension ease back down to normal levels and plotting his next move. "Same difference."