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Two Acts
by leiascully
He wore a tie.
No surprise, she thought, and let her fingers curl into the crook of his proffered arm. Wilson was the type to wear a tie to bed, and not in any promising way, she thought, with an idle half-interest that did surprise her. But he was only a gentleman: didn't stand too close, didn't stroke her fingers where they lay on his jacket sleeve, didn't let his hand slide down her back later as he guided her to the seats.
The play was dull, and she drifted as he leaned forward, absorbed in the petty details of ill-constructed romances. She regarded the figures dispassionately as they went through the motions of overdone daily life. She had enough of that in the day to day, enough invented trouble and strife, and much more life or death than these people imagined. She leaned back, knee crossed over knee so that she could feel the pulse between her legs, and let herself daydream. Her head, thrown back on a pillow so that her hair spilled across it. Her breath catching in her throat as fingers traced the curve of her ribs and the damp curls at the juncture of her thighs. The sharp feeling of orgasm, so strongly imagined that her muscles clutched once or twice in sympathy, and she sighed as the players on the stage went on with their scripted woes and joys.
But there was no man in the dream, no face behind the fingers. She stole a sidelong glance at Wilson.
No. No wonder. His fingers were steepled under his chin as he gazed at the stage, though he gave her a brief smile when he felt her eyes on him.
The hour is come but not the man, she thought, and wondered where she'd heard it.
He kissed her cheek when he dropped her off, his lips dry like somebody's uncle at a bar mitzvah, and she closed the door without regrets.
+ + + +
He wore a tie.
He almost wore a tie, she amended to herself, because it was sloppily knotted and pulled loose in a way that made her fingers itch to reknot it and settle it properly around his neck, or reach up and just slide the knot all the way down until the thing unfurled in her hand and he was watching her with that anticipatory look. There was no arm to rest hers in, but he did jostle with her for the armrest in the theatre (they had the best seats, and he angled his cane into somebody's spine with that bright smile of false apology). She wedged her elbow in under the muscle of his forearm and he looked down at her, arch, patented House-brand smug, and she blushed for no reason at all. Her fingers curled over the end of the armrest, almost under his, and it seemed like an accident when his fingertips brushed her knuckles, except that it happened again and again.
It wasn't enough of a touch to pull away from, just a gentle grazing of skin against skin, nothing to object to, but it continued until she imagined she could feel the individual ridges in his skin and her whole body was oversensitized. Her toes curled inside her shoes. She watched the actors intently, seeing nothing, her breath hot behind her teeth because she couldn't quite seem to make it go normally. Her neck tingled.
He wouldn't look at her. She tried not to look at him, but kept taking little glances, like sips of a long drink: even the close, cool air inside the theatre was heady as wine next to him, with his fingertips that kept caressing and caressing her knuckles. She crossed her legs, knee over knee as before, as always, feeling the pulse all along her thigh and in her throat and in her fingertips and in the little jump that her foot made each time her heart thumped. She tried to trace the path of the blood to calm herself, but instead of oxygen, the red blood cells seemed to be carrying anticipation along the familiar pathways, half-nourishing her body with breathless desire. It was a slow, beautiful death of suffocation: he could breathe her back to life if he wanted to, but this was House. House taking up more than his share of the armrest, House with his cane hooked over the back of someone's chair, House who drove her crazy all day and was driving her crazy now with his half-ironed shirt and his half-knotted tie.
But he was wearing a tie.
And she knew that if House ever brought a tie to bed, it would be so that he could wrap her wrists with silk, make her back arch, coax all the lines of her body to a tautness that verged on pain, and then send her flying until she came back to herself limp in his arms. House always had plans.
And she couldn't breathe, and his fingertips were still moving against her fingers in tiny circles.
She was still staring hard at the figures on the stage, but it was House she was seeing. House's blue eyes and tousled hair foregrounded against the cream of her ceiling. House's fingers almost dusky against her skin in the half-light of her bedroom at night. House's chin and cheek pressed against her chest and his tongue flickering out pink against the pink of her nipple. House's cock nudging his belly and her thigh, leaving a faintly gleaming trail of moisture on the inside of her thigh.
Her inner muscles fluttered in frustrated yearning and she nearly whimpered, suppressing the sound hard until it was just a bubble between her lips, not even a murmur, but he heard. His dimple, rarely seen, deepened until she wanted to put her fingertip or her tongue into it, to flummox him. Instead she turned her face resolutely toward the stage, staring into the glare of the lights on a whitewashed corner of the set until she was half-blinded. But his fingers were still there, warm against hers, and her whole body was leaning towards that warmth.
She clapped as hard as she could at the end, but the sting across her palms couldn't banish the afterimage of his touch, the tickle of flames that could be easily fanned into a fire. When they emerged from the theatre, she blinked into the dark as if she were coming out of an afternoon matine into full summer sunshine and heat.
"So," he said, and she couldn't help it, she was turning toward him like a flower to the sun, her face tipped up to him. "What's your favorite way to express your gratitude, Cuddy? Oral? Intercourse? My place or yours?"
"Good night, House," she said, but he was leaning forward and she was reaching up to brush her lips against his, and she let the nail of her index finger trail along the line of his jaw. His eyes almost fluttered closed and his mouth opened, trying to draw her in, but she resisted, lingered, pulled away, walked away.
"We came in the same car," he growled as he limped up behind her, the head of his cane pressed into her back just hard enough to feel good against the muscles.
"My place, then," she said, taking the keys from her bag, thinking of ties, of silk scarves, of zippers, of skin, and she smiled.
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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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