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Five Ways You Never Slept With Gregory House
by leiascully
I. Two Pair (H/Cu/Stacy)
You took a bath earlier with a glass of wine and a lot of bubbles, and now you're lying on the couch with your hair damp. Your robe has fallen open to show a little too much thigh and the curve of one breast, but no one else is home anyway. It is so decadent to be lying here, watching old movies on television, the leather of the couch warm and vaguely sexy under the back of your neck. You hear voices, his voice, and then the key rattling in the door, and you are not startled when she comes in after him. House and Cuddy, always a sort of a unit, always bickering. You are jealous that she has known him longer, that she can call him Greg and have it sound right but House sounds all wrong from your mouth. You know that if you ever leave, it will be her and James picking up the pieces of his broken heart. Not that you're planning to leave. It's just that the things you know startle you sometimes, and the way she looks at you when the men aren't around.
She has shrugged off her coat and it's clear she's staying for a while. They're still arguing, the almost good-natured way they always fight, with a lot of flirting thrown in. You sit up, trying halfheartedly to cover yourself, and he comes and wraps you up in his arms, kissing you between words. His coat is cold against all the parts of you that are warm and you shiver, kissing him back, trying to keep a sense of propriety but losing the way you always do with him. She has her arms crossed and a high flush on her cheeks. You are melting against him and you tuck your head against his shoulder and look at her as he kisses your ear. She is gorgeous, eyes snapping, snowflakes melting in her hair, and he is humming to you. You can feel the bulge against your hip through the wool of his coat and the denim of his jeans. It only confirms your theory that fighting for these two is like foreplay for the rest of the world, but you've learned to play along.
"You know, Cuddy," he says, over your shoulder, "I'm pretty sure you lost a bet to me in college that means you owe me a threesome."
"Did not," she says immediately, but starts to fidget. You are tingling all over suddenly, terrified and thrilled about the inevitable end of this conversation. She must be too. Greg would never forget a bet like that.
"Poker night your senior year. Lots of tequila. Limes aplenty. My straight flush over your two pair. Starting to come back to you?"
"That wasn't what I meant," she says, looking sideways and down at the carpet. "It was a joke, and I'm pretty sure you were cheating."
"Would I do a thing like that?" He pulls his face into an expression of outraged innocence.
"Yes," she says without hesitation. "Especially if it meant getting two women in bed with you."
"Okay, that does sound like me," he admits. "But you're the one who agreed to it, Cuddy. It's time to pay up, or I'll tell Wilson you're a coward and he'll nag you until you tell him why."
She purses her lips. "You wouldn't."
"Pretty sure that I would, and if you're planning my assassination right now, remember there are witnesses."
"Fine," she says, her anger spreading in bright spots across her cheekbones, but her eyes are starting to gleam with that low light of arousal. "You win. Now it's your two pair, apparently."
"That's the girl I knew in college," he says to her, his mouth close to your forehead and he brushes his lips across your brow. His fingers play a Bach minuet on the back of your hip. "Babe, you up for it?"
"Anything you can do, I can do better," you tell him, sliding your hand up the outside of his thigh where she can't see. Both of them look startled, eyebrows sliding up, and she sighs. He kisses you again and goes to her and undoes her top button and she lets him, though she's got that little quirk to her mouth that means he'll probably pay in clinic hours. You think, somehow, it will be worth it.
"You do remember how to work buttons?" he asks, and she has something on the tip of her tongue to say to him, but settles for narrowing her eyes. She begins to remove her shirt with an air of courage under fire and he comes back to you so that you can peel him out of his winter clothes. When you look back, she has stripped down to her lacy layers, and she takes your breath away being everything you're not: compact, curvy as hell, with eyes that are ice or ocean or sky depending on her mood, and the thick waves of her hair falling over her slim shoulders like she's some kind of sea nymph out of a Renaissance painting. You want to touch her to make sure she's real.
Greg does touch her, towing you over by your wrist, so that the three of you are one little knot of skin in the room, and he puts his hand over the bone of her shoulder and it is a beautiful thing, his skin over hers. It feels right the way it feels right when he touches you. You are quiet, savoring the strong curve of his back and the lines of the muscles of his arms and legs: he has always been the most heartbreaking thing you've ever seen when he's down to skin the way he almost is now. He dresses like he ought to be all bones and it's true he never eats enough for your taste, but there is so much strength in his lean frame that it's startling. He leans in to kiss her throat and snakes his arm around your waist at the same time, pulling you into them until you can feel her hip warm through the silk over your thigh. You brush your fingertips tentatively across the swell of her breast and she looks at you with her ocean eyes and Greg kissing her throat and this is such a dangerous thing but you want it so badly. She pulls the tie of your robe loose and runs a hand down your side, her little fingers chilly. Your nipples tighten and you bend a little and kiss her, pushing your hand through her hair until your fingers catch in her curls. She tastes tired and a little like chocolate, but her mouth is hot and open.
Desire blurs your vision and your sense of time: you are aware of skin, and two hot mouths, and far more fingers than you've been accustomed to, and the only way you can tell what you're touching is size and texture, because she is smooth and soft everywhere and he is rougher. When you regain your balance, you have his tongue between your thighs and you are gripping the headboard, balanced over him, and she is behind you, riding him with one palm flat against your back and the other hand grazing your breast. You are made of shards of pleasure, all sharp edges grating against each other and nothing has felt like this. It is unorthodox and it goes against everything you've ever thought was true or right, but you are fiercely glad to share this bed with her and you're wild in love with both of them and you almost shriek as you come and he runs a firm, comforting hand down your thigh as it trembles, and you know his other hand is on her somewhere but you have always had to share him with something. Better Lisa who knows him, a symbol for all that medicine he's wrapped up in, than someone illogical. She is quieter than you'd have suspected, though you ease down Greg's body and nuzzle at her breasts as Greg steadies her hips. She bites her lip when she comes and you watch her, astonished, her face all you can see through the rush of lust as Greg's fingers move in you and you tip over the edge again into blue and pink and pale.
She leaves afterwards even though you want her to stay, but she smiles and squeezes your hand before she goes.
II. Tie Goes To The Runner (H/Cu)
You make him go clothes shopping, celebration about the leg, and because he's worn jeans almost exclusively for the last ten years and his dress pants come ridiculously far up his body. He's gotten tan, too, all that running in the sun, and between the pants and the open throats of his dress shirts, he looks like a senior citizen about to head to the early bird special. You cast a sideways glance at him as he fidgets in the passenger seat of your car, drumming his fingers along the door, and think that he is still too handsome to deserve the clothes he's been wearing, though the fabrics were nice.
"Too bad you didn't bring the girls," he said when he got in, glancing at the conservative neck of your polo shirt, and you glared at him. You're wearing jeans and flipflops aside from the shirt and your hair is in a messy ponytail, because you'll be damned if you're going to dress up for Gregory House. Your underwear is nice and fairly lacy, but that's for you to know and him to dream about. It helps to have one up on him, even if it's only in your mind. But he looks good, and you know you look good, and despite yourself you feel a frisson of wanting him. But you tell yourself it's the car rattling over a patch of bad road.
You take him to a nice store. He can afford it, though he complains, and you remind him how the hospital had to pay for his ketamine and his PT and he snarks back something about how maybe some of that money should have gone to security. You ignore his comment and size him up with your eyes.
"What's your inseam?"
"87."
"God, you're a singularly unhelpful individual."
"You could always wrestle me down and check my tags," he says with a gleam in his eye. "Of course, now I can outrun you."
"I can't tell you how I long for the days when you were crippled," you mutter, flipping through a rack of pants, testing the quality of fabrics between your fingertips.
"Missed your chance with this last coma," he says. "Could have really done some damage this time. Taken the leg off."
"Keep talking and I'll put you back in a coma and make sure they take something else," you tell him meaningfully. "The short leg."
"Better give the surgeons more detail than that or they'll take the wrong one." He waggles his eyebrows at you.
You sigh and hold a pair of pants against his waist. "What do you think of these?"
He shrugs. You glare at him and sling the pants over your arm, gathering more as you move through the store. He follows you like some mangy dog, with his three day growth of stubble and that vagabond look in his eyes.
"I forget how short you are, Cuddles."
"I forget what an ass you are," you say as he steps on the back of your flipflops. "Go try these on." You shove the armful of pants toward him. "I'm going to get some shirts that won't make you look like you're about to trundle off in a golf cart."
"What?"
"Go," you tell him, and surprisingly enough, he does. You go look at shirts and run your hands over them, enjoying the feel of the fine cotton. You love him in blue, but he needs to branch out. You pick out a pale sort of almost purple as a transition color, something that's a less gaudy pink than that other one he owns (wherever he got it), and a light green that you think will look good against his new tan. A white shirt, just because you can't resist a man in a nice white shirt. A deep brown as an experiment. Then you look for ties and pick out a few that will go with his old shirts and a couple that might go with the new ones.
You can tell which stall he's in in the dressing room: he's whistling some moody blues in a twistedly cheerful way. You tap on the door.
"The woman's mad for it!" he shouts. "Can't get enough of vaguely public sex!" He's grinning widely when he opens the door a crack and peeks through. "Yeeeeeeeesssss?" he drawls.
"Shirts and ties," you snap, thrusting them towards him, and he grabs your wrist and pulls you into the little room.
"Just come in, for Christ's sake," he says irritably. "As if I'm supposed to know what looks good. Isn't that why you insisted on coming along in the first place?" You cross your arms and lean against the wall, turning your face away. It's a standard issue high-end dressing room: full-length mirror, plenty of hooks, little bench for the weary shopper. The door is tall and goes almost all the way to the floor, which you appreciate now that you're in a compromised situation. You're glad the store is quiet this morning and there's no one else in the dressing rooms to hear you arguing in close quarters with House. "Come on, Cuddy, it isn't as if you haven't seen me naked before. I know you were peeking during my surgery. All that vaunted concern for my health - you really just like having me at your complete mercy."
You roll your eyes. "You're not even naked now." His jeans are unbuttoned and unzipped, but that's the limit of his undress.
"I could be," he says, full of mischief like a schoolboy. You glare him down and he pouts and shucks his jeans down his thighs, stepping out of them and into a pair of charcoal dress pants as you take a brief involuntary moment to examine the state of his thigh. The muscle around the scar looks firm and healthy under the skin, but he will never have that beautiful round quadricep again, just the puckered scar.
"Stop it." He isn't even looking at you. "I can feel the guilt wafting my way. You healed me. Be happy." He pulls the pants up too high and buttons them. "What do you think, Doc? Am I beautiful yet?"
You chuff in your throat and push them down his hips a bit, tugging and straightening and running your finger under the waistband to make sure everything's kosher while he makes eyes at you and pretends to be ticklish. "There. Now you're beautiful." You start to step back to admire him, but he puts a hand under your chin and tips your face up.
"So are you," he says, unexpectedly. "I like it when you wear your hair up, Lise."
You jerk your chin out of his hand and turn to fuss with the shirts and ties so he can't see you blush. You hate how he's always known how to push your buttons and when to turn on the charm, and you're furious with yourself for wanting him to take his clothes off.
"So these get the thumbs up?" he says behind you and you know he's smirking. You don't even glance at the mirror in the room because you could probably recreate that smirk from memory if someone handed you a chunk of clay.
"The thumb up your ass," you mutter under your breath, just trying to come up with something. "Here. Try this." You hand him the white shirt without turning, feeling vulnerable bent over the little bench, but it's not as if he wouldn't stare at your ass if you were standing straight. "And don't put it on over the t-shirt," you remind him as you hear the rustle of his arm in the sleeve.
He sighs exaggeratedly and you're sure he's dropping the shirt on the floor behind you as you determinedly try to match too few ties to too few shirts while taking a long time about it. Another rustling noise and his t-shirt falls over your head, warm against your face and scented with deodorant and skin. You take a deep breath involuntarily, almost dizzy, and shake the shirt off your head. It's inside out, but you fold it anyway before you put it on the bench.
"Well?"
You're sure he hasn't had enough time to get all the buttons done up. "Tuck it in. I'm picking a tie. And don't leave more than one button undone at the neck." He makes a noise like an exasperated child put in time out and crumples something.
"Turn around," he says. You don't, but you hold out the tie to him over your shoulder. He grabs your wrist instead of the tie. You turn, ready to snap at him, and he reaches for your other hand. "You're acting like a blushing schoolgirl, Cuddy, surely you've seen a man dressed before." His fingers close over yours and before you can piece together a comeback he has the strip of maroon silk looped and knotted around your wrists.
"House!"
"Don't worry," he says. "If I wrinkle it, I'll buy it." You spin around, furious, but he still has hold of your wrists. Briefly you try to wrestle away, but his hands are big and he has no problem not letting go, even with a one-handed grip as he raises the other to smother a fake yawn. He looks good in the clothes you've picked out but that only makes you angrier.
"Greg, I swear to God, if you don't let me go," you hiss, although the size of his hands and the warm pressure of his fingers are oddly arousing. You try to remember the last time he touched you and can't, and at the moment you can't remember the last time anyone else touched you, either.
"You'll what?" he asks, amused, and moves closer, pressing you back until your calves are against the little bench. "You going to fire me, Lise? Tell the board I talked you into kinky sex games? You don't want to break Wilson's heart, do you?"
"This is not a kinky sex game! This is you being a five year old!"
"Oh, ye of little faith," he says, and lifts your arms over your head, and kisses you. You are too startled to push him away, not to mention that your flipflops are a little flimsy for the kind of kicking you'd like to be doing. And then you don't want to push him away at all, because the man turns out to be an extraordinarily talented kisser, and despite the scrape of stubble against the tender skin of your mouth or maybe because of it, you find you are making small noises and trying to pull him closer with the sheer magnetic force of your hipbones, and also you hadn't noticed that he's lifted the tie over one of the clotheshooks and you are well and truly caught.
As if you didn't know it twenty years ago when he gave you that devilish smile the first time.
When he steps back you whimper and you're still mad at him for being able to do this to you, all of this, the desire that's made your knees so weak you're not sure you'd be standing if your hands weren't tied to the wall over your head, and the tying of your wrists to the wall in the first place.
"So what's the verdict now?" he asks. "Kinky sex game yet? I'm pretty sure Chase is the only one who goes around kissing five year olds."
"Kiss me again and I'll tell you if you deserve that kind of upgrade," you challenge him, and he chuckles.
"Getting feisty there," he says. "I like it." He steps closer and you bite your lip in anticipation, trying to swallow another whimper. "Keep making all that noise and someone will come knocking," he whispers, his mouth almost against yours. "Or is that what you want, Cuddy?" His hand slips around behind you and his fingers graze the bare skin between the hem of your t-shirt and the band of your jeans. "Do you want someone to come asking what's happening so that they find me touching you?" He tugs at the hem of your t-shirt and what you want to say is that you don't care as long as he's kissing you, but you can't get the words out. He watches your face and grins and kisses you anyway, slowly working your shirt up and up until you feel cool air on your breasts and he has to pull away to get the shirt over your head and up your arms, where he bundles it over the coathook and now you're half naked in front of him, all lace and denim and the slow flush rising up your chest that's half embarrassment and half unadulterated lust.
"Will you stop psychoanalyzing me and just get over here?" you say.
"I like this new song you're singing," he taunts. "All this come-hither stuff." He stands in front of you and undoes the buttons of the dress shirt slowly, one at a time, like a strange striptease. You rattle your tied wrists against the hook fruitlessly. It would be easy to escape if you could step backwards, but you're bent at an odd angle because of the bench behind you and you can't find a way to get up onto it without slipping and wrenching your shoulders.
"You're still a pain in the ass," you tell him. "For all the stunts you pull, I should have fired you years ago. You're unprofessional and you're irritating and you have the worst case of egomania in the western hemisphere." And for someone pushing fifty, you're still looking pretty good, you think but don't say. You watch the muscles in his shoulders move as he takes off the shirt.
"I make up for it with my boyish charm," he says, hanging the shirt up carefully.
"You're thinking of Wilson," you tell him. He smirks at you.
"You're not dreaming about Jimmy right now, are you? When I'm here in front of you in all my glory?"
"Such as it is," you say, though he's always looked to you like a piece of art. Surrealist, sometimes, but worthy of praise and study.
He comes toward you and runs a possessive hand down over the curve of your hip and under your ass. "Didn't your mother teach you if you can't say something nice, it's best to put your mouth to other uses?"
"You never say anything nice," you snap, trying not to arch toward him, but your hips are tingling like magnets again and you want to hear the click as they touch his.
"I have better things to do with my lips," he says, and proves it by closing his mouth over your nipple, his tongue teasing you through the lace of the bra. You try very hard not to moan and end up making a sound kind of like bubbles. His chin and cheeks are prickly in all the right ways and if you could move much, you'd probably be rubbing yourself against him like a cat preening, but with your arms over your head and the bench-width gap between your legs and the wall, you can't get any leverage. He has you neatly pinned and it's clear that he's enjoying this. He nibbles at your breast with relish, using his teeth as he pleases, mostly gently but sometimes just enough pressure to sting and make you gasp. He is kneading your ass too, his fingers rolling over muscle you didn't know was tense but is only getting tenser in the best way as he moves his mouth to the other breast and continues in his apparent quest to sample every inch of flesh and lace.
"House," you start to say, not really knowing where you plan to go, but his name is always a good beginning.
"Hmmmmmm," he answers, and the buzz of his lips against the puckered skin of your breasts is amazing. You're goosebumps from toes to chin and your face is hot. The blood in your body seems to have no idea where it should be going and can't manage to prioritize: ass, brain, breasts, and so it settles for washing your cheeks with a high flush. You glance at the mirror by accident and it's startling and sexy to see yourself so turned on and House perusing your chest like a gourmand.
"Ooooh," you say, and he looks up at you and grins that wicked grin.
"Just discovered you like to watch? I'm glad I can bring these kind of revelations into your life, Lise."
You've decided you like it when he calls you that but you like it even more when he nuzzles at the underside of your breasts. He's pushed his hands down into your jeans now and though they're tighter than comfortable with his wrists in the waistband, you're more than willing to have him keep squeezing your ass all day. "House," you pant again.
"Really," he says, looking up. "You can call me Greg." But he kisses you before you can say anything, and you almost wish your hands were free so that you could pull him against you, because there's too much air between you and too much skin that you can't touch. He works one hand around to the front of your jeans as you nip his bottom lip, and just the brush of his fingers against you before he starts to unbutton your jeans is enough to make you jump, your whole body electric. Your fingers are tingling a little and you're worried about the blood flow, but not too worried, because his tongue is in your mouth doing something astounding and his fingers are dabbling along the dampness of your curls, rubbing here and there so that your hips jolt involuntarily.
"Grrrrrr," you try to say, and you think he laughs into your mouth. You want to keep kissing him but you can't take this any longer. You turn your face so that his mouth is scraping across your cheek and landing on your throat, where he sets to trying to give you what feels like the biggest hickey in history, and you can see yourself in the mirror again and it's hard to keep from moaning. The curve of his neck up from his shoulder as he sucks at the tender skin under your jaw is maybe the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.
"Pants off," you manage to say eventually, though his fingertips are tracing the patterns of the lace against the most sensitive bits of you.
"Yours or mine?" He rubs his chin over the tops of your breasts, then attempts to work your breast out of your bra using only his mouth.
"Yes!" you say, about an octave higher than you intend. "Both!"
He works you out of your jeans slowly, so slowly that you end up biting his earlobe in frustration, because he's creating a necklace of hickies that means you'll have to button your shirts up for a week. You are trembling and your arms are beginning to ache a little, but you're not sure if it's the way they're caught up above your head or with your need to hold him. His lips and teeth on your skin bring vague aches and the occasional pinch, and there are cool spots dappled over your neck and shoulder where his mouth has been, and you look to the mirror and see them already turning pink. He is possessive and he is controlling and you can't get enough of him.
"Plleeeeease," slides out of your mouth as he pushes denim down your thighs, leaving your mouth to kneel before you, his tongue warm and wet against the lace that is suddenly too much fabric. His knuckles roll along the back of your legs, too firm to tickle, and you think you could come just from that if it weren't for everything else. It's cold in the store, the ac up too high, but you feel like you've got the kind of sunburn you only remember from summer camp, so much heat in your skin that you're delirious. Your jeans are at your knees and you lift your feet out of them one at a time, careful not to knock his jaw, sliding your calf against his arm in a vain effort to touch more of him, and he is breathing into the crease of your thigh and you're almost at the edge and you haven't even gotten to the actual sex yet.
"Going to crease those," you pant, your voice rising and falling with the motion of his tongue. "Trousers off." He puts his cheekbone against the inside of your knee and drags his face slowly up and over your thigh and stomach back to your breasts, which he nuzzles as he unbuttons the pants and steps out of them. He moves away to shake them into their proper folds and hang them with the shirt, deliberate on purpose just to leave you needy on the other side of the room with four feet between you.
"How are the arms?" he asks, making the creases sharp and perfect, adjusting the drape of the fabric on the hanger.
"Tingly," you say.
"Not sure of the differential for tingly, but I have to say I like you this way, Lise. All dressed down and nowhere to go." His voice is low and it seems to vibrate in some deep part of you in a way you can't explain or describe.
"Greg," you say, just wanting to taste the whole word in your mouth before he renders you unable to string syllables together or put non-sibilant consonants on the ends of things again, and he turns around in his boxerbriefs and you think, God, he really is a piece of art. And he wants you, badly: you can see his cock twitch under the fabric as he looks you over, and there's a hungry glint in his eyes.
"I need you," you tell him, truthfully, but also to watch him react. His eyelids drop and his cock jumps, and you are going to go up in flames tethered to this stupid wall, a smear of ash in a dressing room. Then in one step he has crossed the space and for the first time you are pressed against the length of his body, his cock throbbing against your stomach as he cranes his neck to kiss you, and you are gasping at the heat of his skin as you push against him and get one heel on the bench. You brace your hips against his thighs as he leans into you and manage to get your hands unhooked. You drop your linked arms over his head, resting your elbows on his shoulders, and he chuckles.
"Clever," he mumbles, and presses you back into the wall. You hook the toes of the foot from the bench into the band of his boxerbriefs, tugging them down as best you can, and he moves against you helpfully, his thigh rubbing between yours and you're not sure what's the mirror and what isn't, because everything is bright and you see him everywhere. He reaches down and peels your panties off and you're glad you wore the lacy ones and you're sure he is too, and then he does a strange sort of twist to get all the way out of his boxerbriefs and his cock is hot and rigid against you and all you can think is how much you want him in you, no units of measure, just a vastness of need. Your best doctor, your oldest friend, the most difficult person in your life, fucking you in an upscale dressing room in front of a mirror and your hands are tied with silk and he's got this way of touching you with worship layered under all the desire and how did your life get here but it's just what you needed.
His fingers are grazing your clit now, moving through your curls, pressing into you as if he needs to check for your arousal, as if the room isn't starting to be perfumed with the smell of sex. He mutters against your lips and cups both hands under your ass, shifting the two of you sideways so that he can lift you a little way up the wall without your head banging the hooks, and you still have one leg hooked over his hip and you're on tiptoe. Pleasure washes through you at the friction of skin. Your breasts are crushed against his chest and you love it. He wraps his fist around his cock - you can't see it except in the mirror, but you can feel his hand between you - and nudges along the length of your folds, spreading the dampness, two fingers fishing inside you for a moment, stretching and curving to find your g-spot, and he rubs until your head lolls to the side and you can't help but moan, a shivery sound, and you see yourself in the mirror and it's astounding how utterly ecstatic you look and how sexy he is and then your eyes flutter shut and he's kissing you again as your muscles clench around his fingers.
You love him for this: he kisses you, seeing you through the moment, his fingers moving gently inside you as the ripples quiet. He is quivering against you, hot drops of fluid smearing over your thigh as his head bobs a little. You should probably have a condom, but you trust him to have tested himself, and you want a baby anyway, and he knows it. You open your mouth under his, and if you could free your hands you'd guide him inside yourself, but all you can do is whisper against his tongue how much you want him. He always was a quick study.
He pulls his fingers out with tender care, brushing them along your thigh before touching the tips to his mouth, and pushes into you so slowly you're not sure you won't scream. Either it's been so long since you had sex that you didn't remember how it felt or the two of you are made for each other, and at the moment you're laying odds on the latter because he feels better than anything.
"Lise," he says, and his voice is low and strained.
"It's fine," you gasp as he begins to move, carefully like it's painful for him, and you're hoping it's just imminent ejaculation that's worrying him and not his thigh, but he's balancing fine, better than you're doing on your toes, and you bless the years of high heels for your strong arches. He nods at your words and moves a little faster, his hips jerking like he just can't hold himself back. The force of his thrusts shakes you, and your head would be knocking the wall if your neck weren't rigid, your back arched with pleasure, your hips grinding into his, and the pain in your toes is half ecstacy too. His hand slips between you again, his damp fingers rubbing your clit, and he's getting more and more frantic. The tendons on his neck are standing out and you stretch to taste them and he gasps.
"Come on," you goad him, holding him close with your calf. "Grrrrrrrrreg." His name takes years to drag out of you and those years are spent not really being able to breathe because the air has gotten thin and so hot that everything's cold and you can still feel the friction of him against you but it's incidental to the euphoria the two of you have created, because at this high point, it is just you and House and the sum of all the minutes you've spent together. Your hands are fists because you can't dig your nails into his back the way you want to. He is murmuring into your hair and you suspect he's saying your name but there are some unfamiliar sounds as well and you're not sure what language he's speaking. You hold him as close as you can with the pressure of your leg and your bound arms and the two of you come down together. You can feel your heartbeats thudding in synch. In the mirror, you both look limp, completely satiated.
After a moment he lets a long shuddery breath into your hair and eases out of you, making sure you don't fall over as your hips slide down the wall. Your knees won't hold, so he settles you on the bench, sitting beside you, pushing aside the pile of fabrics into the corner of the room. His deft fingers undo the knots of the tie. It is indelibly crumpled and you want to laugh. He loops it around his neck. You lean against him, just breathing in and out, and then you lean over to pick up your panties. Your fingers tremble as you pull them on and your thighs are slick with his wetness and yours.
"Let's go home and take a shower," he says, his cheek canted on top of your head. "I trust your fashion sense. This tie will definitely go with everything. I can't wait to see you blush every time I walk down the hall in it."
"Anything to get you to wear something professional," you murmur, but you're blushing again already.
"Maybe I'll give it to Wilson," he muses, and you glare at him in the mirror, and he smirks back at you.
"You will not," you order him. "Some things are personal. No one else is allowed to wear it."
"Are you saying you'd be willing to wear it again?" His eyes are bright.
"Maybe if you're nice," you say. "Shower. Yours or mine?"
"I have a bathtub big enough for two," he says. "And some ancient bubblebath, I think. I'll let you wash my hair and everything."
"When you put it like that, who could refuse?" you tease. He kisses the top of your head and gets up, slow and shaky, pulling his boxerbriefs on over his flaccid cock, but you're cheered by the thought that he'll probably let you strip him down again later. You adjust your bra and both of you find your clothes, moving a little stiffly, and no one in the department store will look at you as you pay and leave with the large bags, but that's all right. On the way to his place, you roll the windows down and turn the radio up because life is good.
III. Biology, Chemistry, Physics (H/Cu)
You meet him in college. UMich is large and exciting and you settle into the premed program immediately, taking science classes with the sophomores and juniors because you killed your AP exams. You're proud of yourself and determined to start life off right. By the fourth week, you've mapped out the perfect running route, which is good because it's around then it starts to get cold and sometimes the only way to drag yourself out of bed is to remind yourself of the beauty of the river in the crisp mornings. Before long it's gotten snowy and there are white crusts on the tufts of grass. You learn to love it, running in winter. The cold air feels so clean and sharp in your lungs. You run alone because that's what you've always liked best. You work things out during runs.
It's full winter when you notice him, the lanky guy running along what you think of, rather jealously, as your route. He doesn't try to talk to you, just lopes along. Mostly he stays off in the distance, or outpaces you pretty easily with his long legs, but then one day he settles in next to you and keeps pace for a couple of miles, and from then you can't shake him off. You've always been stubborn. You stick to your route and ignore him for weeks, until the day you can't take it any longer, and you prop your hands on your hips at the end of the run and pant out your questions.
"Who the hell are you?" you demand, bright red in the cold, and he stretches his hamstrings and ignores you.
"Why do you keep following me?" you try, knowing you and your fury are a laughable tableau. You're not that short, but you're not tall enough to pull off all this anger, and he is all height and stubble and indifferent lean muscle, and it only makes you madder.
"You're not big enough to defend yourself," he says, still bent over his knee. "You're little and you're a girl. You shouldn't run alone."
"Oh, so you've nominated yourself as my grand protector? Listen, I don't need you to watch my back. For all I know, I should be watching against you. Most guys wouldn't be afraid to give their names."
He straightens up, almost magnificent in his thermals and his running shorts, and you're impressed despite yourself. You like tall men and he's well put together even if his face has sharp hollows that make you want to drag him home and let your Jewish mother feed him until he softens a bit. His eyes are very blue. "Your scientific little brain would be put to better use studying for your bio final than trying to riddle me out, Cuddy."
"Who the hell are you?" you ask again, spooked. He just grins this crooked mysterious grin.
"Ask the right questions, Cuddy."
Then he lopes off, and you watch him, hot with anger and curiosity and maybe something else you're not willing to admit or discuss. You play tennis in the afternoon and slam the balls across the net imagining they're his head, but in the morning, you come prepared with questions about the tricky sections of molecular bio and you know his name.
"You're Gregory House," you accuse him, after he's explained all of biology with a lazy brilliance and you're starting to shiver a little because you're sweaty and it's cold. "The infamous. Why are you hanging around me? I'm an undergrad. I'm a freshman. You're the most notorious med student in history." You didn't have to ask around too much to figure out who he was, and the rumors floating around about him are varied and startling: he got kicked out of Hopkins for cheating, he knows everything about everyone, half the professors hate him because he could get them fired, half the professors hate him because he's the smartest guy the med school's ever seen, he's had sex in half a dozen impossible places across campus and he's only been here a year, he's better than the entire lacrosse team but he won't play in the actual matches, he plays the piano at the Old Town on Sundays sometimes. Most of all the rumors say he's smarter than should be legal, a rude cynical bastard, and he doesn't care about anyone. You wonder why he's paying attention to you.
He looks you up and down slowly, blatantly, and you blush under the flush of exercise and cross your arms over your chest. "I like to pick the winners," he says. "Bring your books. Eight tonight. My apartment's number 37 in that complex by the river."
He's gone before you can object and you spend the whole day confused, swearing to yourself that you won't go, that it's probably some ruse to get into your pants. But you don't tell anyone in your study group and you don't tell your roommate or your best friend. "I was seriously considering not coming," you mutter that night as he opens the door.
"Doesn't matter. You're here." He ushers you in and his apartment is fairly clean, which surprises you a little. There's a keyboard in the corner with a guitar propped against it, and he plays around with the guitar as you study, answering your questions for an hour in the form of improvised bits of songs before he picks up his own books. You get up and putter around his kitchenette and make coffee, which he seems to appreciate, and at three he walks you home as you yawn against the weight of your books. He's only half a gentleman: he doesn't offer to carry anything.
Every night that week you end up at his place, even when you're studying for your English final, and you ace everything. He starts to call you Lisa with his half-lisp that's nearly endearing after it becomes clear that you're going to call him Greg, but sometimes he still calls you Cuddy and it's somehow attractive. He isn't going home for winter break because he says he's got nowhere to go and you think about kissing him or inviting him home, and decide that you've got to swear him off when you get back, get down to the studying again because you want to be a doctor so badly. Everything he knows you'll find in your books eventually.
It doesn't work, of course. You're in his bio section for the spring, the one he TAs, and though you try your best to ignore him the first day, you can hear the ripple of whispers as he crosses the lab to stand behind you. He leans in too close over your shoulder to murmur in your ear, "Six. I bought food. You can make dinner." You stand firm against his magnetism, but the rumors will start, and the bitterness of the other students, and the talk of favoritism. He'll enjoy it and you'll just have to kick ass in class to prove that it isn't true. In class you call him House, enforced distance, the roundness of his surname sweet in your mouth like a secret, but you learn to make the syllable crack like a whip when he gets inappropriately close or disregards the other students.
The semester pushes on and you're spending too much time with Greg: your classes aren't suffering, but your friendships are, and you have to make a conscious effort to be with other people. You're still not sure why he's interested in you. Your face has a little baby fat left, despite the running and the tennis, and the rest of you is more skinny than curvy. You dress up well when it's called for, but around him it's always t-shirts and jeans, no makeup, your untameable hair in a messy ponytail. He could have his pick of the pretty girls, you're sure. The blondest, curviest sorority girls are intrigued by his dangerous reputation, flirting and pouting when they see him in the library, and he disregards them entirely. There are other students probably just as smart as you and yet you've never seen him offer to help anyone else outside of class. He never makes a real move on you, either, just flirts the way he seems to flirt with everyone, and you're not sure what to make of him.
It snows and melts and snows and melts and rains, and you study through all of it, and run in the mornings with him beside you, an elongated masculine shadow. Once or twice you fall asleep studying at his place and wake up alone in his bed. Once or twice you visit the Old Town on a Sunday night and he buys you a beer and you sit nervously with the glass and your biochem book, listening to him play jazz and waiting to get caught with your fake id. Finally it warms up enough to play tennis outside and you're on your way to meet your singles partner, wearing your new tennis dress, when Gregory House appears, looks you over, wraps one hand around your wrist, and starts to drag you off like a caveman.
"Greg, I've got to meet someone," you protest, trailing along behind him. His hand is very warm on your wrist. You wonder if he's feverish. "Where are we going?"
"Fine arts," he says. "Something to show you."
"Can't it wait?" You look over your shoulder, as if you're going to see your tennis partner looking after you all forlorn, racket drooping to the ground. It's just the usual collection of students enjoying the sunshine, and no one pays the least attention to you. Greg takes you down to the basement where the practice rooms are and drags you into one of them and almost before the door closes, he's got you up against it and he's kissing you like he's been wanting to do it since the first time he saw you. A thought about your age differences flits through your mind, freshmen are museums and not petting zoos, but your arousal is hard and fast like you've slammed into a brick wall of need, and your skin feels scraped raw with wanting him. You kiss him back, arms thrown around his neck, your tennis bag slipping down your arm into the crook of your elbow, and you don't care that it hurts. He turns the lock behind your back and the click of the bolt is like everything sliding into place. You untangle your arm long enough to drop your bag, careless of your racket, and then you're kissing him again with all you've got, up on your tiptoes, quivering against him.
God, he's good at kissing. Better than he is at biology. The three cells of your brain that are still working insist that this is biology, what you're doing, and chemistry and physics, magnetism and gravity and friction and volatile reactions and combustion and the reproductive imperative and irresistable forces and you'd laugh except you can't really breathe because your mouth is wedged against his but you don't ever want to break away.
When you're light-headed and about two seconds away from passing out from lack of oxygen, he drags his mouth away from yours, his lips grazing your cheek as if he can't stand to really pull away, and the scrape of his stubble makes you shiver. He ducks out of the circle of your arms and you feel cold and rejected for a split second before he takes your wrist again and leads you to the piano. It's a beautiful instrument, a full-size grand, and before you can wonder what he's doing, his hands are around your waist and he's lifting you onto the piano as if you don't weigh anything. The wood is cool against the backs of your thighs. He sits down on the bench, pushes your knees apart with one hand, and starts to kiss the skin just above the joint of your left knee. You've done your share of experimental petting, gotten close to sex at summer camps and parties, but no one's ever kissed your knee before. It's startlingly intimate and Greg's mouth is amazing.
"Where did you get this stupid outfit?" he murmurs into the crease of your knee. "Victoria's Secret have an athletic department now?" He lets his teeth graze your skin as he talks, and between the edges of his incisors and the stubble, you're being driven quietly crazy. His hands are pushed up under your skirt, working at the elastic of your bloomers. You hold on tightly to the edge of the piano's top, trying not to fall off or moan as his mouth moves over the insides of your thighs, sampling at random, and his long fingers work off your bloomers and then your panties. They're damp, which would be embarrassing if you weren't so distracted by your desire for him. You are suddenly, irrationally glad that you shaved your legs and that your underwear is cute. His cheek scrapes some especially tender skin and despite your best efforts, you moan a little. He grins up at you.
"Relax. Practice rooms are soundproofed for a number of excellent reasons." He rubs his chin over the top of your thigh, looking up at you. "Ever done this before?"
"Not exactly," you mutter, a little shy. You want to close your legs except that you're trying to be brave and he's still holding your other knee anyway. You're not afraid of sex and you're not afraid of him, but you're a little afraid of sex with him. You've known Greg long enough to know that he doesn't do anything casually, and what will it mean for your friendship? Your studies? How will you get any work done and he's got his clerkships to start and what if he decides this shouldn't be a repeat performance?
"Trust me, Lise," he says, and he's never called you that before but you like the way it sounds. He hooks one arm around your hips and pulls you forward, putting his shoulders between your knees. Then his face is between your thighs, the tip of his nose against your curls, and he's playing something on the piano at the same time. It's a Bach piece, you think, trying to place it from the days that you had to take flute lessons, but the music ripples and his tongue flickers out and it's all you can do not to fall off the piano. He has one of the pedals pressed down, the loud one, because the music is shimmering through you, and you're never going to be able to listen to Bach again without blushing. He plays and plays and you're not sure how many tongues he has, but it has to be more than one, and it's a good thing the room is soundproof because you can't keep quiet. His hands move over the keys and the music fills the whole room with a joyous dissonance that your whimpering melts into, and you're learning the real meaning of crescendo as your body responds to him. Your knees are tense against his shoulders and you're holding on wherever you can, afraid of flying away. He starts to hum along with the music and the world narrows to his lips and tongue against your sensitive flesh as he kisses and licks and you feel the rough of his tongue and the flat of his teeth and then he's only got one hand on the keys and two fingers of the other inside you, but the music is still ringing through you. You come hard against his palm, your perception shattering into notes of music that bounce off the walls and into the half-sonata that his left hand is still playing.
"Easy, easy," he says, stroking the inside of your thigh with the back of his hand and kissing your knee again. "That's it. Come back to me, Lise." Your whole body is limp and you're trembling a little, and he looks more turned on than you've ever seen anyone look, even the drunken frat boys at the parties you've been to. His eyes are bright blue and his pupils are huge. You glance at his lap and the swell of denim. He follows your gaze, smirking a little at himself.
"Vasodilation," he says, "resulting in erection. Symptomatic of desire. You'll understand when you're a doctor."
"I don't have an M.D. yet, but I think I have a cure for your condition," you tell him, trying to be bold.
"You don't have to," he says, but his pupils get even bigger and his voice is a little hoarse. You ease off the piano, trying not to sit on the keys on the way down, and he cups both hands under your ass for support or just because he likes to touch you, you're not really sure. You coax him into turning so that he's straddling the end of the bench and unbutton his jeans, pushing his boxerbriefs down over the tops of his thighs, and he lifts his hips to help you. His erection is impressive: you wrap your hand around it a little timidly as you kneel in front of him. You've really never done this before, but it can't be that difficult. You've read Cosmo.
You let your fingers move along the underside and he quivers, breathing faster. A little moisture glistens at the tip and you touch your tongue to it. He is salty and smooth, the skin like hot silk under your fingertips, and you take him into your mouth a little at a time, laving with your tongue any part that strikes your fancy. "Lisa," he says roughly, and his hands twine into your hair, loosening your ponytail elastic until your hair tumbles in waves over your shoulders and falls across your cheeks to brush his thighs. Your pulse throbs between your legs at his obvious enjoyment. His pleasure is turning you on all over again. Your breasts feel heavy and your bra is almost painful as the fabric rubs against your nipples. You toy with him, drawing back and blowing across his damp skin, flicking your tongue out, careful not to use your teeth directly but letting them slide against him through the cover of your lips. After a few minutes, he groans and pulls you up for a kiss, your salty mouth against his lips that still taste the way that you must, and you melt against him, trying to keep your hips away from his. You can feel all your blood moving through you, better than an angiogram, the scrape and crowding of the red cells against the white cells and the platelets.
"Want you," he says, looking into your eyes, and you nod. He reaches awkwardly for his wallet and pulls out a condom, ripping the packet open with his teeth, spitting out the little bit of foil. You take the latex from him and roll it down over the hot length of him as he closes the piano, and then he turns and leans back against the case, motioning you to straddle his lap. You lean over him and he kisses you again, cradling your face in both hands like it's the most fragile thing he's ever found.
"We don't have to if you're not sure," he says, drawing back so that he can see your face, his hands still big and gentle on either side of your head. "I'm not much for sentiment, but if it's your first time, this isn't very romantic."
"Want you," you tell him, which earns you a little smile, and you reach down and guide him in. You let yourself down slowly, very slowly, but still it hurts like hell for a moment. You close your eyes and bite your lip hard against the pain, and he kisses your eyelids and you can tell he's trying not to move. Then the pain fades into a new, astoundingly pleasurable feeling of fullness, and you open your eyes and raise one eyebrow at him.
"Brave girl," he says approvingly, putting his hands on your hips. He coaxes you to rock a little and both of you gasp. "You're a natural," he tells you, the words choppy as he breathes heavily. "You're sure you haven't done this before?"
"I hope like hell it doesn't hurt like that every time," you retort, and move again. He feels good. You feel good together. He keeps one hand on your hip, steadying you as you rock against him, and the other wanders over your back and up to the nape of your neck. Your hips are tipped against his and the friction is amazing, especially since you're already ridiculously sensitive from the first orgasm. Suddenly you want to feel his mouth on your breasts and you balance over him as you grab the hem of your dress and peel the thing over your head, tossing it onto your bag. Your sports bra is tight and won't come off easily, but you tug it until the band is on top of your breasts, and his eyes light up.
"For me?" he says, and starts to kiss them without waiting for an answer. God, you hope he never stops. The hand that isn't on your hip moves to your breast, his thumb rubbing over one nipple as he pulls the other into his mouth and it's like someone hooked you up to a battery. You're tingling all over. You rock faster, feeling the band of his jeans against your legs. The feel of the denim under you is great, but he's wearing too many clothes, and you reach down and pull at his t-shirt until he lifts his arms and lets you wrestle it off, and although it means he stops kissing your breasts for a moment, you're glad to feel his skin against yours. You lean to kiss him as he palms your breasts, your hands on his shoulders for balance, and you have Bach running through your head as the pleasure begins to build.
"Lise," he warns, "getting close." You press against him, rocking hard.
"Just," you pant, "just...moment." He grabs your hips and holds you as he thrusts, and your breasts rub against his chest as you bury your face in his neck, trying to muffle your moans against his beautiful bare shoulder. You grind against him and you can feel his thighs tensing under you and he's moving just right and you're suddenly so glad that it's him as you crash against that wall of pleasure again and break through. He grunts a little and pushes hard into you, hands tightening on your hips, and then he lets out a long sigh and wraps his arms around you, pulling you against his chest. You are breathing hard, almost dizzy, damp with sweat, and you can hear his heart beating triple-time, almost rattling in his ribs. You stay tucked against him until your breasts start to ache under the compression of the bra, and then you move carefully, separating yourself from him with something that feels almost like regret. You pull the bra down so that it's comfortable again and then pick up your panties and bloomers, dragging them on with hands that shake. In your tennis bag there are some tissues and you hand him a couple before you put your dress back on. There is a little blood on the condom and you tuck a tissue into your panties just in case. No point in ruining your underwear, even over really good sex. He peels off the condom and rolls it up in the tissue, tossing it into the trash before dressing slowly.
"Better than tennis?" he asks, not looking at you, and you duck around until he has to meet your eyes.
"Much better," you tell him, and drag him down for a kiss.
"Burns the calories," he says, looking more cheerful. "If you decide you're looking for a regular partner."
"We'll see," you say, because what you want to say is yes, over and over, and saying yes to Gregory House is almost never the safe option. You shoulder your bag as he opens the piano again, moving a little stiffly. You smile fondly for a moment, but you have to recompose your face into something more snarky than affectionate as he looks over. You know you will never call it dating, but you know you will sleep with him again, certain as the sun rising, and he's going to be part of your life for a long time, one way or another.
"Coming over after class?" he asks, not sitting down yet, stretching his fingers in the air over the keys like he doesn't care about your answer, but he's listening.
"Wash your hands," you remind him, and he rolls his eyes like you're taking all the fun out of life though he's smiling. "I may come by. I've got a chem test on Thursday to study for, and I've got to get an essay started for one of those humanities you can't believe I'm taking. Are you going to play for me?"
"Anything you want," he says, getting up and opening the door for you. "I'll just go wash my hands. You know, sanitary habits and all. You should probably shower before you trip off to class. See if you can wash off that I-just-got-laid smug look, too. You wouldn't want everyone getting jealous, not that there isn't plenty of me to go around." He raises his eyebrows suggestively.
"There wouldn't be," you grin up at him. "But lucky me - no one else wants you."
"Get," he commands, kissing you quickly so that you stagger a little with a whole new rush of desire. You don't look back as you walk off down the hall, but you know he's watching you, and you can't stop smiling to yourself.
IV. It's Kink, But You Don't Ever Tell Her (H/Cu)
You fidget in the car, planning your day of seeing patients and doing the paperwork that means your hospital will run smoothly a little while longer, trying not to think about the injections. It's not the needle prick that has you spooked, although you do have a nice sore spot on your ass that has you shifting in your chair at board meetings. No, what's got you worried is House, who is being entirely reasonable about the injections and hasn't said a word about Mozart guy in days. You're due for a lecture accompanied by the subtle caress of the alcohol pad (even from that you can tell his hands are amazing) and that would probably be okay if you hadn't ripped your pantyhose this morning. You were in a hurry, you've had to wear a lot of skirts lately because of the injections, you tore a magnificent run in your last pair of clean hose, toes to knee. It's a law of the universe, you suspect, that a woman's need for hosiery is inversely proportional to how many clean stockings she has left.
Desperate times, desperate measures: you rolled on your thigh-highs and fished for the ridiculous bit of lace that passes for a garter belt. It's not as if you haven't worn the stockings with garters to work before. You do it at least every couple of weeks, or when it looks like House is going to be particularly difficult. The feel of lace against your upper thighs is somehow a boost to your confidence and knowing that you look incredible under your clothes gives you an edge when you're arguing with House. On the other hand, now he has a reason to be under your clothes, and the protocol is for twice daily injections, so even running to the store won't help because you've got a board meeting that you're probably going to be late for and then he'll be lounging against your desk with the needle, making mad science look unfortunately sexy. No chance to hit up the lingerie section of Target or grab the extra clothes from your office closet.
You wish you'd just gone bare-legged to work and screw professionalism, but it was difficult enough to convince the world that women are good Dean material, and you'd rather not give anyone ammunition to use against you. Vexed, you wrench your car into the parking lot and click off to the meeting, trying to work up a buffer of indignation against seeing House. It doesn't work: all through the meeting you keep imagining the look on his face when you lift your skirt over lingerie worthy of a can-can girl. The pattern of the lace stretched over your skin and the tension of the garters distract you. Fortunately, it's not a particularly important meeting, but you're still furious with yourself when you leave for letting your personal life interfere with your hospital. House has always been able to do this to you; he draws you away from your responsiblities, and you hate that about yourself, but he manages to fix things too, so you've all survived with your jobs intact. You smile at the others, but your mouth feels too tight and you almost stomp as you head for your office, brushing off Wilson's concern because Wilson forgives and you don't have the time to deal with him.
All the blinds of your office are drawn when you get there, and you scowl. House has kept your secret, but he's also kept his sense of drama. The nurses will have watched him cover all the windows as he waits in your office alone. You hope they chalk it up to House being House, all subversive mystery, instead of imagining that the two of you are having some wild secret affair, which you suppose is closer to the truth but not close enough to be any comfort. With House it's always damned if you do, damned if you don't, and some days you think you might as well do, but you haven't yet.
You compose yourself in the foyer, glad for the moment that you've lost yet another assistant, and open your office door with an affected nonchalance. He is sitting in your chair facing the windows like some evil genius in a movie. You roll your eyes at his adolescent sense of drama.
"I could smell you coming, Clarice," he says.
"You can't mix Bond villains and Silence of the Lambs," you snap. "Can we get this over with?"
"Bad morning?" He swivels the chair around and looks you over deliberately. You glare at him and try not to blush. By now you should be immune to his flirting, but he still manages to flummox you with the way he doesn't even pretend not to be undressing you with his eyes. He gets up and limps around your desk, examining your breasts as he approaches. "Bend over."
You do, your nostrils flaring in annoyance as you lift your skirt carefully to your hip, trying not to wrinkle it. You can almost feel his eyes traveling up your calf, your thigh, and then he half-whistles, quiet and appreciative. At least his estimation of your clothing doesn't seem to have included undergarments quite this scandalous, and that gives you a brief sense of satisfaction. But he doesn't touch you with the swab for several long minutes, and you wait gripping the edge of the desk with one hand and hiking your skirt with the other while he stares at you. You're getting more and more angry and then more and more turned on by his complete distraction, because the longer he stands silent behind you, the more the air begins to crackle. He touches the tip of one finger to your ass, running his nail under the garter to move it a bit, and you shiver. His hands are warm.
You expect a joke, something like "It isn't my birthday" or a quip about Doctor Partypants, because he's never let you forget anything you did in college, but he says nothing. House the professional, except that he's been staring at your ass for what feels like ages, and you can feel the warmth of his body as he leans closer. Finally you hear the rip of the sterile packet and then he's rubbing the swab over your skin, taking his time about it. The edges of the little swab graze the edges of the garters and you shiver again. The alcohol is cold and his fingertips are hot through the cloth and the movement tickles. You had never realized how the belt and straps that hold up your stockings could feel like some kind of light bondage gear when you've got House looming behind you. You are tethered to your own clothing, but you might as well be tied to House, the way you're feeling: caught, all breathless anticipation and lace.
The prick of the needle is swift and you gasp, not expecting it, which you suspect pleases House. He presses his thumb to the mark afterwards and you can feel the pulse between your legs. You're suddenly aware of the space between your thighs, the way you're braced against the injection. He drags his thumb over the curve of your ass, tracing the gluteal muscle, and slides his finger under the garter again, moving it back into place. But his finger lingers, moving underneath the slender strap, up to the edge of the belt around your hips and then back down to the lacy top of the stocking. You'd forgotten that the backs of your thighs are ticklish, but it's all you can do not to squirm and arch against his fingers. Your knuckles are turning pale from the force of your grip, but you fight your desire. Gregory House accepts only unconditional surrender and you have things to do.
"House," you say, trying for stern and coming up with something much closer to pleading. His fingers dip inside your stocking, his palm a little rough against the inside of your thigh. The heel of his hand is against the lace of your underwear - you were pleased that if you had to wear the garter belt, at least you matched all over. You can't stop yourself from moving a little against his hand, just brushing his wrist, and you bite your lip to keep from moaning. He pulls his hand slowly out of your stocking and then lifts the other side of your skirt and runs both palms down the outsides of your thighs under the garters.
"Please," you say, and stop is supposed to come next but you end up swallowing the extra syllable because it doesn't seem that important. He is going to stretch your stockings but you've stopped caring because his hands are on the fronts of your thighs, moving up, and he snaps a garter against your skin with one thumb and the slight pain is almost pleasurable.
"I thought this was supposed to be my favor to you," he says, and you're so glad to hear him say something, and so startled that you step back and accidentally grind your ass into his groin. "Lacy underwear - what are you trying to talk me into this time?"
"Just trying to keep you interested," you manage, but it feels like your brain is only working at half speed. He's hard against you and it feels good. You want him. You want him to want you and he does and it's so gratifying that all this seduction wasn't just for show. He wants you to only have thighs for him. He holds you against him, his big hands on your thighs pressing you back, and he frees one hand and pushes it up under your shirt to cup your breast.
"Cuddy," he says in a new sexy voice you didn't know he possessed, and you want to say yes yes yes. The hand on your thigh has moved: his fingers are exploring your panties and the apparently fascinating surfaces underneath, given the attention he's paying them, and you are well and truly seduced. When he pushes two fingers into you slowly and deliberately, you gasp again. You're not sure if he's trying to play The Who between your legs or not, but you're about to sing from how good it feels. He's thrusting gently against your ass, his fingers probing inside you, his palm over your breast. The hormone injections have kicked your libido into overdrive as it is: you didn't need much encouragement and House is, God, you can't remember a time you didn't want to fuck him. When you're happy, you want him in your bed. When you're angry, you want him up against a wall. He owes you atonement for a thousand crimes. You would gladly have him pay in kisses, the lingering kind that would require him to devote intense attention to very specific areas of your body. You know he has the capacity for laser-precision focus over a long span of time if you can only get him interested.
He's interested now.
You can tell because he's kissing the back of your neck and using his teeth, nibbling at your shoulder where the open collar of your shirt leaves the skin bare. He's almost fierce about it and you're glad to urge him on, rolling your hips into his palm and against his thighs. His thumb rubs over your nipple. His fingers are still pushing inside you, your pleasure so sharp it's nearly metallic, but you want more.
"House," you say helplessly, and he understands as if you worked out this code years in advance; he makes a thousand different interpretations of the way you say his name. He turns you around, holding you as close as possible.
"Much as I liked that view," he says conversationally, as if he's not pushing your panties down your thighs, "this one's better." He pushes you up on to the desk so you're sitting on the edge and slides his way down your body, undoing your shirt buttons as he goes and kissing a line of heat down your stomach. He's face to face with your garters as he unsnaps them to pull your panties down and then does them up again carefully, nuzzling at the insides of your thighs as he works on your clothing, pulling at the edges of things with his teeth and his nimble fingers.
"Christ, Cuddy, I'm never going to be able to sit through a meeting again knowing you might be wearing something like this underneath all those suits." His fingers dance from your ankles to your ass and little whimpers are coming from your throat against your will. He pushes your skirt up, his lips browsing over the crease of your thigh, and your whole body is tingling. Your toes curl in your shoes. The prickle of his stubble is maddening in the best way and you shift against his cheeks and chin, hands on the edge of the desk again even paler than before. He slides one hand up and down the back of your thigh and teases your curls with the other, pressing a long and thorough kiss to your clit so that you sigh and push one hand into his hair. You shouldn't be doing this here and you shouldn't be doing it with him of all people, but you've fought against it for too long to care anymore.
You drag him up with one hand under his chin, and he nips at your stomach and breasts as he passes. Then you're kissing him with all the morning's fury and twenty years of pent-up sexual tension. His tongue plunders your mouth. If you had any secrets from him before, you don't now. That was always a problem. House knows you. You've probably never had a secret from him.
"You're overanalyzing," he says, drawing back for a long breath. You reach for the button on his pants.
"Make me stop thinking," you challenge, pulling down his zipper and pushing his jeans and his boxers off his hips.
"This is what they mean by job satisfaction," he tells you, pulling you close but not quite close enough. You arch your back, trying to push your hips into his, but he holds you off and you only succeed in exposing your breasts to him. He bends you back and devotes his attention to teasing your nipples to an almost painful hardness. "More demands for sex. Fewer clinic hours."
"I am not demanding sex," you hiss. "This is mutual. This is not some favor. I don't need you." Your hips betray you, canting towards him; you want him so much that the space between your hip bones aches. You curl your toes so that your shoes clatter to the carpet and you run your toes up his leg, reaching out to take him in your hand, and he lets you stroke him, his eyes half-shut. "I don't need you and you don't need me. I could kick you out any time."
"I bet I could make you beg," he says, patented House-brand smug, and you're so mad that he's always right. You keep touching him, running your fingers over him, trying to justify the way he's touching you by touching him back, but you're distracted by the rattle of pleasure through your body and you lose your grip on him. He breathes across your breasts and slips one hand between your legs to graze your curls, tracing a spiral pattern. "Just because it's mutual doesn't mean you don't need me." The pressure of his fingertips increases, the caress nearly rough, and then lightens to almost nothing. His thighs are pressed to yours and he shifts so that your garters rub against the sensitive spots on your hipbones. Your mind won't form sentences anymore. "Say it, Lisa," he insists. You whimper as he scrapes one cheek gently over the tops of your breasts and then looks into your eyes. "Tell me. Cuddy, tell me you need me too."
You think there's something to remark on there, but you can't quite process it. He strokes his thumb across your clit. You just want to give him what he wants, though you're not sure when this got so serious, because his eyes say that this isn't just a power trip: he needs to hear that you need him, and the heat of his mouth hovering over your breasts is a good incentive to tell him what he already knows. He always knows.
"Need you," you get out, breathing between the movements of his fingers because your body stops functioning properly when he's touching you. "House. Greg."
"You haven't called me that in a long time," he says, and kisses you, pulling you against him. You push one hand between your bodies as you lean into his mouth and you guide him so that he slips right in. It hurts a little at first: you haven't had sex in a long time. But then you stretch to accomodate him the way you always have when it wasn't sexual and everything fits and it's so goddamn right that you want to shout about it. You're half off the desk, braced against it but sliding against him, and he moves and keeps kissing you and he's fucking you in your office and you hadn't known you wanted that but you know now. Oh, the things you know now, like the way he hums in his throat as he kisses you, and the way his ass tenses as you grab him and pull his hips into yours, and the way his busy hands play over your breasts even though you were sure there wasn't that much room between the two of you. Twenty years of teasing and three minutes of sex and you're tipping over the edge, your head rolling as your back arches so that he kisses your throat instead of your mouth. The medical details of orgasm - neurotransmitters, pleasure centers, muscle spasms - flash through your mind and go up in smoke, because there's nothing in any textbook to explain how he feels inside you, how you feel against him.
"Greeeg," you say on a rising note, trying to be quiet about it because the nurses' station is really so close, and he thrusts into you hard, cradling your head with one hand as he brings his mouth to yours. The clever fingertips of his other hand are busy finding what feels like an ember between your legs.
"Let go, Lise," he says with his mouth so close to yours that you feel the words more than hear them.
And you do. Your body is a short fuse catching on a long flame. You are a roman candle, seventeen separate explosions at once, your office filled with sparks of different colors. He moans and shivers into you, against you, and you hope that he sees the purple flare and the bright gold in the dim light of your shuttered office the same way that you see them.
He sighs against your throat. You kiss his forehead. "You need me," you tell him, and he shrugs but doesn't deny it. "Who else can stand you?" you ask, facetious: he is loved beyond what he suspects or accepts.
"Only crazy people," he murmurs against the underside of your jaw. "And hard-up hospital administrators with control issues and baby envy. I will never understand why a babe like you isn't getting banged on a regular basis. You've got the accessories for it." He runs a hand under your garters and kisses your breasts. "These and those."
"Go do your job," you say. You are smiling, triumphant, sweet and lazy with afterglow. He pulls away slowly, reluctantly. He limps into your bathroom and you hear the sound of water running. You reach for a tissue and wipe the moisture from your thighs, your knees still shaking. You should find your shoes. You should find your underwear. House is still in the vicinity and his presence skews your priorities; what you want to do is curl up on your couch for half an hour or so against the length of his body, or better yet, the two of you in his yellow chair. You wonder when he last had sex. Probably with Stacy, according to the the last bit of girly gossip you heard from her or Wilson, though House jokes about his hookers. You imagine that this was more fun and less trouble than either married women or hired ones.
"You know," he says, limping back out into your office with his clothes arranged again, "the protocol calls for twice daily injections." He emphasizes "injections" with a salacious twist to the word and a gleam in his eyes.
"Don't even make that joke," you say. "Or else this will never be a repeated experience. It shouldn't be anyway."
"Come on, Cuddy," he coaxes. "You want sperm. You have access to my medical records - nice clean genes, smarts, decent hair. I want to see your underwear again and I like the way you squeak when I grab your ass." He picks up your panties and dangles them in front of you until you take them. "Plus I've seen the way that you look at my chair."
"Go do your job," you repeat, but the impact of your command is probably lessened by the fact that you hook your foot behind his thigh and drag him close for a long fierce kiss. He leans in, pressing you back against the desk, and reaches behind you for his cane.
"I will see you later," he promises. There is a whole world of conversations you'll never have in the way he tips his head and looks at you for a moment and then smiles and leaves. You go into the bathroom and dress yourself, smiling when you see your flushed face in the mirror, smoothing down your hair. Then you go to your desk to start the good work of making people healthy, and you're humming as you review the schedules. It is an unusual, often difficult life you've chosen, but for the moment, you are utterly satisfied to be this very woman, living this way.
V. Proximity (H/W)
You've always been good with distances. Each time when your wives decided to leave you, you knew; as their gazes skidded past yours without interest, as difference widened to become indifference, you felt it. There is a critical point in disintegrating relationships, an insurmountable breadth of misunderstanding. You supposed each time that you could find a way to bridge that distance, but it turned out you were better at counting distances than crossing them. The times you take a moment to feel sorry for yourself it almost makes you laugh, given how good House thinks you are at getting close to people. He's right, as usual - but only half right, as usual: you're good at getting close to people, which is an excellent thing for an oncologist saddled with the responsibility of telling people gently that they're going to die. You're not good at keeping them close, which is generally good for your work as well. Your patients die. You have to let them go, care right up until the end and then let go as they slip further and further into their diseases. It is your gift and your awful burden to understand the hundred signs that proximity is no longer enough.
That was what you understood, finally: you always know where House is in a room - glass walls, lead walls, no walls. You sense his position with respect to yours. You are acutely aware of the way he looms into your personal space and the distance between a miserable day and a glad one. You measure it in millimeters. Love does this thing to you, makes you think in metric, makes you know things you didn't even know you were devoting brain power to. You get precise. That little ache, that vague emptiness when you watch him lean over Cuddy's shoulder or crowd up into whatever Cameron or Chase is doing, you have to measure it in pinpoint slices; fragments of space are turned into significant figures, tided off to end in zeros. It happened with Julie and Debbie and Grace and every one of the others you loved. Love. It's your pathology. House said that once, but he was half wrong that time. This metric affection, that's your real pathology. With each wife, each girlfriend, you learned how to make joy something measurable, before distances stopped mattering. The difference with House is that you never stop doing it.
So you wait, fighting it during the day, choking on his name in the shower as you lean into your orgasm. In the evenings you try to chase him with a beer, like a shot of whiskey. The metaphor fails when you can't wash him down to be processed and passed through your system. The burn of him stays with you. You wait for the moment where he walks away and something slips: millimeters, centimeters, meters, and more than that, but the pull of him never gives. Your chest aches with waiting and you can hardly breathe some days. He paces off the meters and your eyes follow him as sure and steady as the first time.
Somewhere near the midpoint of this push and pull, Julie slips away, and you're not sure if you missed the moment for watching House. At least with her it has been sins of omission more than sins of commission. You have not been with her much, but you haven't been with anyone else either, not really, except for House, and that was always true. You could never wash away all the evidence of your sins, and she throws hers at your head from three meters away. Even though it has been bad, you still love her enough to know how wide the space between you is. Three meters of carpet and three hundred kilometers of misery. You can't remember the last time you were closer than that, and you look at your hands that have House's name written across the creases. So you have nowhere to go and he asks you to move in, and it is torture. There is close and then there is close, and he is down to skin in the other room showering as you sit on the couch, and you can't count on anything with your hand straying to your crotch against your will. You lie. You leave. You had never known that there was an insurmountable nearness, and when you come up against it, you stagger backwards, landing in a place that would jeopardize the only other thing that matters to you.
You have been too close to House and now you can't get away. Someone else's bed isn't far enough to extinguish House's own proximal magic: you step into his orbit and he knows. His gaze sharpens.
"Are you going to move back in?" he asks, forced nonchalance, leaning too hard on his cane. I decided I want you to stay, you remember him saying. Come back, you want him to say, but he isn't the type. I love you, you want him to say, but he really isn't the type. You can't remember hearing him say it, not even to Stacy. This is as close as he gets to emotional: he is standing near you, leaning out a little as if he isn't sure about it, asking this question. He is thirty-six centimeters away from you. You could cut them into equal pieces, drop them on the sidewalk, and the measure would be the same.
"I don't think so," you tell him. Too close. Too far. Too many mornings of strangled half-moans as he slept behind a solid door, and your eyes closed hard against the sight of his shampoo and your shampoo on the same little plastic shelf like some couple. Like the two of you were some couple and he was something you'd be able to come home to for years and years. Like he was someone you suddenly had a right to be near, shoulder to shoulder like your stupid shampoo bottles pressed against each other in the damp of the shower. They touch all day with the drops of water bridging the infinitesimal gap, distance at last rendered neutral in solution.
You always figured if it was going to be anyone held against him that way, Cuddy would be the one: she's known him longest, she's put together like a work of art, all brains and curves, and he has that erotic fascination with women who won't let him get away with things. Hell, you've entertained more than a few midnight dreams of Cuddy, but you know that isn't the way she thinks of you, and House is territorial even about things he'll never act on. You want him to act on you but you know he won't, so you refuse to take that step, even though you slept better to the squeaky lullaby of Steve McQueen's exercise wheel than you ever remember doing next to Julie.
You're resolved. You're strong. You are coping with this frightening, strong, nameless thing that exists between you and House. Grace is gone, but you go over to pack your things. There's no reason for your head to hurt and your joints to ache a little from the dainty work of putting your ties away so they won't crease, but they do. You chalk it up to the psychosomatic effects of misery and you leave your key in her mailbox and make hotel reservations.
But you can't make yourself go to the lonely room you've paid for, despite the nice round numbers on your credit card bill and gin in the minibar. Instead, you go to House's with your couple of suitcases, and no one answers when you knock, even though you know he's home. You use they key he never wanted back, and think how canned soup in his kitchen is more satisfying than an expensive dinner at one of the town's nicer restaurants: tonight you want the comfort of knowing what's in the spice rack is, and the familiar heft of a spoon you've used before. You know it's a bad idea the moment you step through the door, but your choice was made. You can sense him, and the space between the two of you. You hope he'll ignore you or at least that there's no hooker in there with him. In the kitchen you find a can of beef stew and dump it into a saucepan, shaking in a little cumin and some parsley. House has an excellent range of spices, though you're not sure he ever uses them. You mash some garlic with butter and spread it on some slightly stale bread. Not much has changed since you left: you know you made the vinaigrette you find, and it's entirely possible that you bought the bag of organic spring mix that's gone a little soft. Might as well feast for your failures.
When he notices your presence and begins to move toward you, you can feel it. His cane is nearly silent on the carpet, but you have the advantage of long familiarity and tile in the kitchen. You expect some quip about how you've come crawling back, but he says nothing, so after a few minutes you say quietly, "There's enough for two, if you haven't eaten."
The cane acts as a metronome to the irregularities in his step as he approaches. He pauses two and a half meters away, two hundred and fifty centimeters or twenty-five hundred millimeters. "In my house," he says. "Eating my food. What's the differential for too much cumin?"
"I think I'm entitled," you say, already exasperated, tensing more as he limps towards you. He should have been a psychologist, trying to diagnose your mood from your choice of seasoning. "If it really bothers you, I'll buy dinner next time we go out."
"I'm not bothered," he says mildly. He always gets so reasonable when you're illogically upset. "Just curious. You said you weren't coming." He is close now, only a couple of centimeters away. You imagine you can smell the vague bitterness of Vicodin on his breath.
"Changed my mind," you say. Your hands are tense on the spoon handle. You want to kiss him or kick him. You drop the spoon into the stew and start slicing tomatoes roughly, ripping them instead of cutting them neatly, and you can feel him watching you. Then he limps away slowly, forty-eight centimeters more each time the rubber tip of his cane thuds on the floor, and even though he's going, your shoulders are still so tight that your neck starts hurting. The heat in your chest is steady as a stone. Steady as love. You flinch from the word and nick your finger with the knife and swear, low and hard, gripping the countertop.
He is as God made him and apparently he's made to drive you crazy; he is most of your pain and much of your joy. House makes you sick. He makes you fly. You've never been more high than the lazy evenings you've spent here, buzzed on MSG, listening to him improvise at the piano. You remember the ease and warmth of it all: the way the couch creaked underneath you as you stretched, the way the beer washed down your throat, the way your tie came off and your top buttons slipped out of their holes, how rough and unrehearsed his laughter sounded. It would have been easy, so easy, to walk across to him and put your arms over his shoulders as he played, and press a kiss to that soft spot that must exist behind his jaw. Maybe he will play tonight and you will finally get up your courage.
Steve McQueen wakes up and starts gnawing at his water bottle and you force yourself to calm down. Slowly, slowly, the long muscles in your back relax, and over the bubble of the stew you hear the sluice of water begin in the bathroom. House is in the shower, probably having downed another Vicodin and a couple of fingers of whiskey, and you envy his ease. He is home and you feel half at home and half displaced, awkward as a middle school dance. House has never been a sanctuary, but you sometimes wish he could be. You try not to admit it, but you are lonely, achingly lonely, and you have been for a long while, and the space is not filled by fucking patients or having dinner with Cuddy.
You turn off the stew when it starts to burn and spoon half of it into a bowl, neatly arranged on the plate with the garlic bread and the salad. The stew is smoky, delicious, and you wonder with a tiny thrill of triumph what the differential is for being so damn righter than House, however ungrammatical that is. The water sounds in the other room stop as you savor your dinner, and you feel House getting closer, millimeter by millimeter, but you're determined to ignore him. He eases into the room and you poke your fork sedately into your salad, though the little hairs on the back of your neck are standing up. He is right behind you and you will not pay attention to him, you will not, and then he puts those long fingers into the collar of your shirt, the tips of his fingers just resting on your clavicles, and you're lost. You melt the way you've seen some of your patients do when they finally stop fighting: it's terminal. Your fork crashes to the table, sending little spots of vinaigrette all around it. But you're just there, anchored by his fingers dipping in your suprasternal notch and his thumb against the side of your neck, just grazing the tendon, a distracted caress.
"Were you ever going to say anything?" he asks, and his voice is back to whiskey. You luxuriate in the burn of being so near him. "You didn't even send me a note with the little boxes to check yes or no. At least Cameron had the balls to say something."
"I'm not Cameron," you say, feeling the vibrations of your own voice against his fingertips.
"Thank God for that," he says, and strokes up your throat, as if he's mapping the path of a scalpel, delicate but not tender. You have been hard since the moment he touched you. His skin is hot from the shower, the warmth radiating from his body, and the moisture left on him makes his fingers drag deliciously over your skin. He undoes a button of your shirt, experimental and a little rough, and then leans down over the chair back and bites your neck, just at the trapezius muscle. You arch in the chair, choking on your desire for him. Gregory House was never gentle and you're glad of it. You could not face his tenderness tonight, too much like pity.
"I always thought it would be Cuddy," you say, torturing yourself, challenging him. The edges of his teeth will have left a mark. You can feel the exact spot pounding, blood coursing to it as he pulls at your skin with his lips and tongue. His stubble, water-softened, prickles on your skin and you want to scrub his face all over your body until you're scoured by desire.
"Oh, you know," he says vaguely. "She'd destroy me in bed. Lisa's a mankiller." Any other day you would press but right now you need to finish this. You like men. You like men a lot, the grunts and the salt and the planes of muscle, and you haven't had sex with a man in a long time. When you turn, offering yourself, he is only wearing a towel. Drops of water glisten on his skin and he's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, lean and muscled - just exactly how a man should look - and you want him. You push back enough to shove your hands underneath his towel so that it falls, pulling his hips forward as you struggle to get up. Even his ravaged thigh makes him look like a work of modern art: hideous and gorgeous, nearly unthinkable, but you can't look away. His mouth claims yours and you scrabble at the table, trying to push your plate out of the way as he bends you backward and the edge of the table cuts into your hamstrings. You fight to stay upright because you're worried about his leg, because the tumble begins in your bones; you can feel that the both of you will fall to the floor before it happens, except that the way his tongue is moving between your lips now, you forget that you're worried about anything.
"Couch," you gasp, and wrestle him across the room, kissing him hard enough to overbalance him even as you support his weight and try not to trip over your shoes as you toe them off. Fuck you, you say silently against his mouth, fuck me. His incisors slide across your tongue. His hand is down your pants and his palm isn't really wet enough, but it feels so damn good, the pressure and heat and texture of his hand on your cock. You press him into the leather of the couch, using your weight and your stability against him, and you drag your mouth down his body to his cock, grateful for his nakedness, and then you tease him. You graze him with your lips, flicking your tongue along his length, and he tangles his hands in your hair. There is a bottle of lotion next to the couch and you reach for it. You work a palmful of it into the backs of his thighs as you take him into your mouth and he groans, his fingers clutching and knotting and you're glad you didn't get that haircut. He is hot in your mouth. The combination of salty skin and tap water makes you want to swallow him whole. You knead along his thighs as you work your tongue down the underside of his cock, using your cheeks and your throat: you've always been good with your mouth.
House groans again and drags you up by your hair. You surrender to him by centimeters, making him use all his strength, fighting the pain in your scalp. He lets one hand travel to your fly, fumbling with it, releasing you, and you kick against the fabric of your pants until your legs are free. You're still wearing socks and your dress shirt, and you don't care how unsexy a look it might be, because he's found the lotion and his palm is wrapped around your cock again. It feels like exactly what you want.
"I'm better with my hands," he says, not at all apologetically, and his fingers work you like he's playing scales. You think of the way his stubble would chafe against your thighs and agree, your slippery fingers stroking him. His hands burn like torches where he touches you. You imagine that your skin singes and smokes as he moves his fingers. You're rutting against his stomach now, the hair on his chest crisp against your head, and his hips jerk against yours in equally desperate bursts, his shaft rubbing along yours and ten of your collective fingers clutching between you.
"House," you gasp, trying to warn him as you feel the familiar tightening in your balls and the concentration of your entire being in your lower abdomen.
"Don't stop," he growls, his mouth and his cock bumping against yours, and his stubble scrapes your lips and you're dissolving into him the way you always wanted to, the moisture between you filling all the space so that you're touching everywhere, sweat and semen and the end of some barriers, and you think suddenly of salt bridges and laugh into his throat, spent and helpless. He turns his face, lazy now instead of frantic, and kisses you, and you kiss him back, slow and deep, before realizing that you were wrong: his mouth doesn't taste of whiskey.
"I thought you'd been drinking," you say, turning your head away from him as if you could hide, worried about your weight on his leg but too limp to move. "Wanted you to know I'd do it sober," he says, and you feel him stretch out one long arm to grab the pill bottle on the table. The scrape of his stubble against your cheekbones as he swallows almost masks the prickle in your eyes, because you're not sure he'll ever get closer to I love you.
"You're a mess," you say after a long moment of just breathing, your chest against his, and he must be hurting because he lets you help him up after you roll off the couch.
"Going to soap my back?" he says, and leans on you on the way to the bathroom, and as you turn on the water, you think: enough, this is just enough, this destructive, deep, perfect affection, because somehow you're starting to heal as you hold your fingers under the tap to test the temperature.
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A/N: Many thanks to extrabitter and julietcetera for the beta help and encouragement, to angiescully for being a cheerleader, and to angelfirenze for inspiration.
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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.
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