Thanks so much for all the reviews guys! I'm not really sure how often I should be updating seen as I have the first 11 and a bit chapters already written... But I'm really glad you all like it anyhow! Also, for me, if you like this fic then pop over and take a look at partypantscuddy 's fics, specifically Beauty and the Tragedy, her new fic, and After the Bombs, which is wonderful and she's just an all round wonderful writer and wonderful person! I love hearing all your comments, so please leave a review! xxxx

Ps. It may not seem like it, but this is a House/Cuddy fic, I promise! Just, give it time... XD

Pps. This is for partypantscuddy because I really think she needs it more than anyone tonight 3

II

"Lucas… Do you think I'm a coward?"

"What? Where has that come from?"

Cuddy leant back further in her office chair, slid each court shoe off with the opposite foot and let them tumble to the carpeted floor, before lifting her stocking covered feet to perch on the corner of her desk, right next to her outbox. She held the office phone to her ear with her left hand, playing absent-mindedly with the spiralled cord with her free fingers, and in her right hand she held a canteen standard white plastic fork which was chasing a piece of lettuce drenched in salad dressing around a transparent plastic pot. "Nowhere…" she lied, without a second thought. "I just… Do you think I'm too…? Do you think I play it too safe? I don't take enough chances?"

Her boyfriend's voice alone was comforting and that in itself was helping to wash away the seeds of doubt that House always managed to plant in her mind when she sat down alone and over analysed everything he'd ever said to her. "You took a pretty big chance on me, didn't you? But seriously, what did House say to make you think that?"

She was almost embarrassed that he knew her well enough to know basically the only person who would ever get to her, and she was highly embarrassed by the fact that his words actually did get to her. "Oh, nothing… Nothing important…" She answered distractedly, her voice a little muffled as she stuffed a whole cherry tomato into her mouth.

"Come on Lisa, you don't fool me. He's said something to wind you up and you've spent the last few hours wondering whether he was right, so you called me for a secret little confidence boost and to hear me say that he doesn't know what he's talking about." She could almost hear him grinning with satisfaction from the other end of the phone line because he knew he was right. "For being so annoyingly right about you, surely that warrants you telling me what's upsetting you?"

She sighed and caved reluctantly. "He was insinuating I'd be more suited to date women than men… Which in itself doesn't bother me, because that's just House being House, but then he added that actually, even if I wanted a woman, I'd never go for it because I'd be too scared. I wouldn't take the risk…"

There was a moment of silence.

"Lucas?"

"Have you ever been with a woman?"

She sighed, but was marginally amused. "You're as bad as him Lucas. You're supposed to be making me feel better…"

"Okay, okay I'm sorry. There's a time and a place for that question and this isn't it. You take a lot of risks… You sometimes don't get up as soon as your alarm goes off in the morning; sometimes you call in sick so you can spend all day in your pyjamas..."

"Lucas!"

"Sorry. Lisa, you do take risks. But what's even better than that is you've taken so many risks and so many well judged risks in the past that now you've made a life for yourself that's so stable that you no longer have to take risks as often as you did. But when the situation calls for it… You took a risk on Rachel, on us… And look how they turned out for you."

Cuddy couldn't help but break out in a smile. "You know sometimes, and right now is one of those times, you remind me why I'm actually dating you." She had that warm, wriggling feeling in her stomach that luckily had nothing to do with the food she was eating and felt content. It was a feeling she was encountering more frequently lately than she had in a very long time, and she was almost getting used to it.

It was almost like a bizarre therapy scene from a straight to disk movie. James Wilson sat behind his desk with a pen in his hand regardless of the fact that he hadn't actually written anything down in the past fifteen minutes and Gregory House lay back on his sofa, eyes closed with the intent of relaxing if not actually sleeping.

"Do you think she's actually ever tried the gay thing…?"

Wilson threw his pen down in exasperation and ran his hand through his hair, making sure that he didn't let on that the thought had distracted him ever so slightly. "I don't know, House, and frankly, I don't really care all that much, and I certainly don't care enough to spend the next half an hour speculating about whether she has or not because neither of us have the slightest clue so nothing we say will bring us any closer to the actual answer to that question."

House's eyes snapped open in apparent shock. "You don't care? You are a disgrace to the male gender Wilson – every man should care if the Dean of Medicine has had any girl on girl action in amongst her many sexual encounters." He furrowed his brow and examined his best friend for a second before breaking out in a grin. "Besides, you were lying, you can't stop thinking about it now, which means there must be another reason you don't want to talk about it… Because you think it's degrading and disrespectful… Which you'd only care about if you thought she'd find out that you were degrading and disrespectful… And we're the only people in this room and I'm not going to tell her, so the only way she'd find out is if you told her… So that means you planned to spend enough time with her for it to come up in casual conversation… You want to jump her!"

"No I don't! House, will you please stop assuming that the moment I appear to have any respect or care for her?" Wilson dropped his head into his hands and sighed so deeply it was as if he was taking his final breath. "You know why I don't want to talk about it? Because I'm bored of talking about Cuddy. Well, no, I'm not, but the fact is, if I sit here and listen to your elaborate theories and fantasies about her, I'm enabling you ignoring your feelings for her and letting out your frustration by coming to my office to talk about her. So I'm withholding the privilege until you at least do something proactive about your feelings for her." He held up his hand as a motion of silence, then attempted to return to the mountains of files on his desk, but had only poised pen above paper before House started talking again.

"So your theory is that if you don't sit and talk to me about her, then I'll get so frustrated that I can't talk about her that I'll go and talk to her instead?" House feigned pondering on this theory and then deciding it was ludicrous. "Let's see how that one works out for you."

Knowing that continuing to argue with him was only continuing to enable him, Wilson attempted to ignore House's presence in his office.

"Well that's mature." House lifted his cane and poked Wilson hard in the right shoulder with it, intentionally when he had pen to paper, causing a huge scribble over the whole page. "Oops. Did you make a mistake?"

"Well that's mature." Dropping his pen onto his desk, Wilson sighed and gave up. "Fine, House. But you have to talk to her. Or do something. And not your usual excuse of doing something – thinking up some elaborate plan to make her angry, or testing her coffee cup for hormones, or anything like that. Actually something proactive. Because I can't stand much longer of you coming to my office and moaning about her, or fantasizing about her." This was a conversation they'd had before, and last time it didn't exactly go as planned so he knew was dangerous territory. He also never knew how seriously to take House, or how seriously House was taking him.

Pushing himself up from the sofa with his cane, House limped towards the door, before nodding at his best friend. "Okay cupid, you tell yourself I'm going to do that, and I'll pretend to do that and instead go and sit in my office and wait for my team to come and tell me my patient is cured and we can all go home. That'll keep us both happy." And he limped out of the door without another word.

"You have to go and talk to him!"

"Wilson, no I don't. There's nothing to talk about. He had a drug induced hallucination about having sex with me – something which he does when he's off drugs anyway – and now he's clean. And I'm his boss. And everything is back to normal. We have absolutely nothing to talk about and I have absolutely nothing to say to him." Cuddy leant back against her desk, holding herself up with her hands, frowning at Wilson who was standing by the door of her office.

"He hallucinated having sex with you, you wear low cut tops and spend all day ordering him around because you know that's what he likes. The only difference is, he's a lot more upfront about it, and finally is no longer in denial!"

Scowling and turning her back on him, Cuddy went back to sitting behind her desk. "I order him around because it's my job, and someone has to, because you certainly don't keep him under control. You enable him, just like you're doing now by playing matchmaker! He needs to move on with his life, and making him believe his fantasy in which I was his saviour and we lived happily ever after could come true is only keeping him stuck in the past. He never should have gone back to living in that apartment alone, or come back to work so quickly. He's supposed to be moving forward Wilson."

Wilson shook his head in disbelief, determined not to drop it, especially when she was so blatantly changing the subject, so she clearly had something to hide. "Don't try and make this about his recovery Lisa. This was coming way before the drugs screwed him up, way before Kutner, and Amber. Regardless of what should have happened when he first came out of Mayfield, it's too late. And he's fine so far. But you're right, he does need to move forward, and the only way he can reach the next stage of his life is if the woman he's spent years coveting is prepared to give him a chance and believe he's changed!"

"Now you're making this about his recovery. Don't try and blackmail me by telling me it's the only way for him to get better – do you really think that is the foundations for a good relationship? He needs to move on… I have." The words stuck in her throat for some reason, possibly the same reason she felt a sudden involuntary urge to not answer when Lucas first asked her on a date. It was something that had bubbled under the surface for years, never quite rising up. And it felt like now she'd buried it forever, banished it to the land of no return, and she felt a sense of loss, and fear.

He blinked in shock. "You've moved on?"

"I had to."

"I don't believe you. Feelings like that don't just disappear Lisa. Not even if you want them to – usually even less so if you want them to. Just give him a chance…"

She wasn't quite sure why she wasn't telling Wilson the real reason she couldn't give her and House a go. If she needed to, her brain within seconds could give her a million extremely logical reasons, excuses she could use to placate him and get him to drop the subject. But the fact was, even though every single one would be valid, not one would be true. She didn't know why she wasn't telling him about Lucas – all she knew is she wasn't quite ready yet, but she was telling herself she was keeping it a secret because House wasn't ready yet. As narcissistic as it seemed to her, she was scared what the news that she was dating one of the only people House had ever been able to socially spend time with would do to him. But most of all, it would make it real. From that moment, there would be no going back. There would be no chance of there ever being a 'them' – she would have moved on for good. And she wasn't quite sure she could kill that possibility quite yet. So in some ways Wilson was right, she hadn't moved on. "Believe what you like, but I can't. I've started a new chapter of my life, as he has of his. I have Rachel now; I have responsibilities to more than just myself. And I can't put her stable environment at risk for a lust filled fling that we both know would never work out anyway. I'm sorry."

There was a momentary silence before he shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. He grabbed the door handle, but before leaving, he turned back to her. "You'll regret it, you know. As will he. But you're both too stubborn to admit what you want and by the time you do… It might be too late." Without waiting for a reply, Wilson left his boss' office.

As she heard the latch click on the outer office door and she watched him leave the clinic, Cuddy let out a sigh. What made it harder was knowing Wilson was right, she would regret it. Probably for the rest of her life. But right now, that didn't make it worth it. Lucas was the safe bet – he was good with Rachel, he was always home when she needed him there and he didn't hate the world. But she couldn't get rid of the nagging the nagging feeling at the back of her mind – he wasn't House.