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Light Through Yonder Window
by leiascully
She had wrestled the windowsash up against her better judgement because she had never been able to refuse House in his passion. She could say no at the end of things, after all the arguing was finished, but Gregory House in the throes of inspiration was something so fine and so nearly elegant, giving her these ideas like gifts, that she always heard him through. It had been raining. The moisture in the air played havoc with her windows and doors, the wood swelling, but she had fought with it for the sake of arguing with him when she should have been asleep.
"I can cure him," he said as she pushed the window up further, and the smells of the night rolled over her, rain and the warmth of his sweat and wet roses in her garden. He was breathless and eager, gesturing broadly.
"How?" She cast an eye over him, appreciating how the damp fabric of his shirt clung to his frame, cherishing a vague notion about getting him into her shower and tasting the swell of his bicep. She blamed it on the hormone treatments, but God, there was something to him. They could be past all of this nonsense, him stripping her out of the flimsy cotton of her nightgown, but instead they were standing like some ridiculous scenario, Romeo offering Juliet a consult on his patient, offering madness instead of romance. She savored the brief pulse of desire, certain that in thirty seconds he'd have her so pissed off that she'd never be able to get back to sleep, and what was he doing at her home, anyway?
"Intercranial injection of...." She didn't catch whatever he said through the puff of his fast breathing, but she didn't have to.
"Absolutely not," she said immediately. "That's too risky."
"Look," he said, waving his hands around. "I can make him walk! I can make him talk!"
She crossed her arms. "You don't have a lick of substantiating proof."
"The medicine is sound," he said impatiently.
"What are you now, Doctor Frankenstein?" she said. "House, you're not God. This man will never walk again. He'll never talk again. Let it go."
"Then why did you give me his file?" he demanded. "This is what I do, Cuddy. I make conjectures. I play hunches. And I'm usually right. Even Frankenstein got his monster up and running."
She frowned at him. "You can't do it. Even if you could get the release signed by his family, there's too much of a chance that you'd give him brain damage if you shove a needle into his skull."
"It's not as if I'm going to be doing it haphazardly," he said, almost shouting. "That's why we have brain surgeons!" A dog barked somewhere and a light flicked on in her neighbor's house. House looked around and lowered his voice. "Cuddy. Let me do this."
She sagged against the frame of the window, trying to hide the shiver that went through her at the sound of his voice. "Why are you here?"
"This patient is important to me," he said, leaning on the windowsill, his forehead against the sash.
"Patients are never important to you," she said automatically, eyeing the scar on his neck. The surgeon had done a nice job patching him up. She would have worried about the insanity of his current idea being a symptom of some underlying brain damage done by the shooting, but then again, he had been like this as long as she had known him.
"I can give this man his life back," he insisted. "Cuddy. Let me."
"You have never cared more about a patient than a disease," she pressed, emphasizing the negative, and he leaned further in through her window, his arm almost touching her.
"Maybe almost dying again changes a man," he said. "Please."
She was so startled by the word that she found herself agreeing. "You have to get a release signed," she warned him, still trying not to cave. "You have to do a detailed charting of the treatment, and I want a full explanation, and I want to know when and where this is happening and who's doing it. Otherwise I am walling you off from this patient to keep you from putting needles in his brain. God knows we don't need another malpractice suit right now."
"Thank you," he said, and sounded like he meant it, and she was jolted again. A fresh rush of longing swept through her at the way his face lit up.
"What are you doing here?" she asked again, stepping a little away from the window, hoping she wasn't backlit through the thin fabric of her nightgown.
"Where else would I go?" he said. "I was running. I stood under that fountain on campus and suddenly it all made sense." He shrugged. "I had to tell you."
"Not Wilson?"
"Wilson doesn't have veto power," he said, "and Wilson's nightclothes are much less interesting." There was the House she remembered. He looked her over as if he hadn't really seen her yet, and she flushed, aware of the slight scratchiness of the lace over her breasts.
"It's late," she said to cover her embarassment. "How are you getting home?"
He shrugged again, flashed her a grin. "Turns out these sneakers have pretty good traction."
"You can't run all the way home at this hour," she said, irritated all over again by his willfullness. "House...."
"Okay," he said. "Got a motel around the corner? Or am I bunking with you?"
She wanted to say yes, just to see what his reaction would be, but she made her face stern. "I have a spare bedroom," she said. "As I'd imagine you well know. And I have a shower and some sweatpants that might fit you. Come on in."
"Got another man in your life, Cuddy?" he asked with an air of deep curiosity, but he moved and let her wrestle the window back down as he disappeared around the side of the house. She heard the key in the door, an eerie sound, and wrapped herself in a robe and grabbed a clean towel from the linen cabinet before going around to meet him.
"Bathroom's through there," she said. "I'll try and find the pants." She thrust the towel into his arms. "Go shower. You're soaked."
"Going to join me?" he murmured, and she shook her head. He whistled in the shower, she discovered as she fished through the back of her closet for her med school boyfriend's old sweatpants, which were well-worn but not yet all holes. She tossed the pants in through the door, shouting a warning, and climbed back into bed, wishing for once that her bathroom wasn't attached to her bedroom. But she would just pull the covers over herself, pretend to be sleeping when he emerged damp and sexy and fragrant from her soap, and kick him out before breakfast with all his glorious madness. And then she would go for a run and work off all this misplaced desire as the miles of sidewalk faded away under her feet.
Maybe by the end of tomorrow they would have made a miracle. She listened to his nameless melodies floating through the bathroom door on the patter of the shower and hoped her faith in him would be rewarded.
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Cuddy was dozing when he got out of the shower, mostly asleep, so it felt natural when he slipped into bed behind her, his chest broad and warm and damp and the towel rolled over his hips. She was sleeping on her belly with her arms slung around the pillow and he started to rub her back under the comforter, and his hands felt so good on her shoulders that it had to be a dream. She hummed into the pillow as he leaned down on one elbow and kneaded along her spine.
"Pants didn't fit," he murmured into her ear, laying his head on the other pillow. "What kind of short men have you been dating, Cuddy?"
She woke up at that and turned her head to face him, but his hand on her back held her in thrall and she couldn't summon up the necessary wrath to oust him.
"House," she protested weakly.
"Cuddy," he said back to her, walking his fingers up her back so that she arched her shoulders involuntarily. "This would be easier if you weren't wearing anything."
"Get out of my bed," she said unconvincingly.
"I've got nothing to wear." He dug his thumb into her trapezius muscle and God, she hadn't known she was that tense, or that his hands were so good. There were drops of water along his forearm and they melted into the thin cotton of her nightgown and left little spots of momentary heat that turned cool too quickly.
"Housssssssse," she tried to say, hissing as he found a knot in the muscle, and where had his hands been all her life?
"I want to repay you," he murmured, "for saving my life." His fingers played a scale up and down her neck and she was liquid on the pillow, warm and loose like she was the one who'd just gotten out of the shower.
"You can't," she whispered, trying to hold her advantage, but he was so hard to resist.
"I can try," he said, and his face was close to hers. "Cuddy."
She had never been able to deny him the chance to act on his impossible propositions. "Kiss me already," she said, her voice huskier than she'd intended, and he pushed his mouth against hers gently as his fingers danced over the flat muscles of her back. A fragmentary thought went through her head - he talks such trash with this mouth? - but soon she wasn't thinking anything at all, focused on the heat of his mouth and the rasp of his stubble against her chin. He kissed her tenderly, like something he'd been planning for a long time, all candlelight and flowers in her mind and the room still smelled like rain and wet roses and his clean skin and the cotton of the sheets. His tongue touched her lip, licking at the arch of her upper lip, and she opened her mouth for him. She couldn't remember when just kissing had felt this good, but House kissed with the same intensity that he diagnosed with, and feeling all his attention focused on her was incredible.
She had to touch him. She put out a blind hand under the comforter, found the ridges of his ribs, ran her fingers down to the jut of his hip. The towel had come loose and she curled her fingers around his cock, damp from the shower and firm and hot against her palm. His tongue slid sideways against hers and he gasped into her mouth. Suddenly there wasn't enough of his skin against hers and she broke the kiss and rolled onto her back, wriggling out of the nightgown, and he leaned over to help, tugging the hem upward and kissing the skin of her stomach and breasts as she bared them.
"Cuddy," he said into her cleavage in a tone that was almost worshipful, and looked up at her. "They're even better in person."
"Oddly enough, so are you," she said, and pulled him up to kiss him again. He was leaning on her now and she liked the weight of him, the feeling of his bones and muscles under his skin, and so much skin against hers. He kept enough space between them that he could stroke her breasts, and his thigh was wedged between her legs, rubbing gently against her. She pushed her hips against him, arching her back so that her breasts flattened against his chest with his hand still splayed over them, and he kissed the tender spot under her ear, and he was so damn good at everything that it drove her crazy, or maybe that was just the way his hands moved over her.
"Please," she said, hungry for him and damp all over. She could feel his thigh getting slick between her legs, and the pressure against her clit was just right but she wanted to feel him in her.
He moved over her and paused, kissing his way up her throat. "I want this to be good for you, Cuddy," he murmured against her chin, and she wanted to tell him that it couldn't help but be the way things were trending, but then he was pushing into her and all she could do was gasp and wriggle against him, shifting to accomodate him and trying to get closer. He moved slowly in her, so slowly, and it was the most exquisite torture. She was overstimulated from the weight and shape of him, her eyes fluttering closed, her feet tingling. His breathing was ragged and he peppered her face and throat with kisses, and she opened her mouth blindly when his lips touched her lips and sucked at his tongue and lips with increasing desperation. He reached down and slid his hand under her thigh, pulling her leg up to hook over his hip, and it was an astounding sensation. His hips rocked gently against hers and there was the rain beginning again against the window and it was so overwhelming to be here with House and she could feel the ripples beginning in her abdomen. Her orgasm was soft and sweet, no blackouts or the brilliance of stars, but she opened her eyes and House was looking at her with an expression of such tenderness that it was better than any rough pleasure. He kissed her again and moved in her a little faster, reaching between them to rub circles around her clit and her hips tilted up against him. By the time his hips jerked and he moaned her name, she was coming again, brightness around the edges of her vision and his name on her lips.
He was careful not to collapse on top of her, but she wanted to be close to him, stretching herself along his ribs as he lay on his back on the bed. They had kicked the comforter to the foot at some point and she reached for it, pulling it waist-high. He kissed her forehead.
"Was it good for you?" he murmured with an expression of such smugness that she couldn't help laughing, and she nipped his earlobe.
"It was good," she admitted, "but it doesn't consitute a repayment. I saved your life twice, remember?"
"I work on the installment plan," he said, and held her closer, and she was falling asleep again, and she had always loved this madness of his, this way they came together over his misguided notions.
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A/N: Written for the house_cuddy Bedroom Window Challenge. The title is from Romeo and Juliet (of course).
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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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