| |
feel it in my bones
by leiascully
She remembers the jolt as he came back to life under her hands. She remembers the faint burn of residual electricity as she flattened her palm over his beating heart, almost surreptitious in a room full of nurses, the fluid from the paddles faintly greasy under the heel of her hand as she pressed two fingers to his throat for the pulse.
She had caught herself at that moment thinking tenderly and desperately of him as Greg and from then she couldn't look at Stacy without blushing imperceptibly. She has saved his life: he belongs to her now in some subtle way. Stacy's claim is stronger, but Cuddy knows that Stacy cannot stand against this. There are older wonders than medicine in the world and stronger ones, though that is not the way she thinks about it, when she thinks about it.
She blushes again years later when Stacy is gone again, smelling House's aftershave in her bedroom and knowing he has gone through her underwear drawer. She wonders which pieces he touched. She wants to feel his hands on her skin: they will be uncharacteristically soft, the right slightly callused from the cane, but he has always had doctor's hands. She remembers him in college, the legendary Greg House, rough around the edges then too. She had never expected him to know her name, but one day he had jerked his chin at her. "Cuddy. Let's go get some coffee."
He had laughed more then. His eyes had been a brighter blue, and his smile was quicker. She had, of course, fallen hard for him and one night at a bar she had kissed him with the bitter foam of Guinness on his lips until he had taken her home. They were adventurous. They had fast, rough sex in library bathrooms and at other people's parties, and sometimes they spent long, lazy afternoons in bed. She always called him Greg, then, and he called her Lisa with that half-lisp of his, like her name was caught behind his teeth, and his long fingers played over her like the keys of his piano. Sometimes when he couldn't sleep she would hear the piano in the next room, just an old cheap upright, and his bare back gleaming in the light from the road. Those were the moments she loved.
But he went off to Johns Hopkins for his second specialty, and she went off and did the rest of her training. She worked hard and she almost never thought of him, except once or twice when someone played piano in a bar, and once she got a Christmas card, Stacy going through his address book, though she wouldn't know that until later. And then one day his resume came across her desk.
When she looks at him now, there is a little ache under her breastbone. She worried it was heart trouble like her grandmother had, but her echocardiogram came out clear and eventually she realized it was him, the sight of him. She remembers how blithe his run was in college, how free and joyous, how he had sprinted across a field to pick her up and swing her around once. Just once. He was never much of a romantic, too cynical even then, but she remembers how now and again he would overflow with delight.
She lets Cameron seduce her once after a party, though some part of her is offended that Cameron thinks she's so helpless and needy. Cameron is painfully earnest as she fucks her and Cuddy never really relaxes, just chokes on her orgasm and hopes Cameron goes home. What she still wants is House, even now when all his joy is gone and his blue eyes are cloudy. She imagines being in bed with him, wonders whether the stiffness of his leg would change the way they used to fit together in their bonny youth. She shies away from the word love, but it is in her bones. She knows the tempo of his heartbeat under her palm that she is responsible for. She has seen the shriveled muscle of his thigh; she has had a role in it, though he has forgiven her and not Stacey, some kind of respect for a doctor trying to solve a tricky puzzle, some kind of exoneration because she was not the proxy.
In the daylight it is different. He is arrogant. He is irritating. He looks at her with those knowing eyes as if he would measure the new curves of her body through her clothes: she has lost weight since college and so has he, and she wants to take him home and cook for him and feed him until his face loses a little of its sharpness. But he goes on eating badly and sleeping badly and riding that motorcycle and blowing her off. All the cynicism and the difficulty and she only wants him more, but she forgets the tenderness that he would show, now and again, and he can catch her off guard with one half-sweet word in five years. He doles them out rarely enough, but he cares, in his way, and she cannot steel herself against the combination of desire and the weight of their joint loneliness.
He knows the curve of her ass, she thinks, which few enough have known in her lonely doctor's life. He has dosed her like a patient, more careful with the needle than most times, and he has not told her secret, and she has never known him to be so discreet. He is protecting her and her vunerability to the anonymous donor, and now and again she has an ache between her hips to match the ache between her clavicles. She will not admit that she wants it to be his baby and she wants to conceive the old fashioned way, the two of them tangled messily in her bed. She wants his sweat against her skin. She wants the scour of his stubble against her cheeks. She wants to spread her palm against his chest again and feel the strength of his heartbeat, House who is so vital, and she wants to feel the vibration of his laughter as he chuckles at her and presses a quick kiss to her forehead.
More than anything she wants to hear him laugh again, and call her Lisa, and she wants to wake up to his restless beautiful hands moving over her as he smiles.
+ + + +
A/N: Title is from Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run". Any med school inconsistencies are my fault and the fault of a shaky timeline.
Please post a comment on this story.
Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
|
|
|