(no subject)

[mmkaternater]

It was somewhere in the cusp between Winter and Spring and Cuddy's car was complaining about the amorphous border between seasons, spewing out gray-blue exhaust like an old man chomping on a faithful cigar. The sky couldn't decide what to do with itself day-to-day, so it settled on gray smear and discovered that it liked it that way. She was blatting away a sheet of rain and snow with her windshield wipers, sitting in the driver's seat of an idling luxury vehicle with both hands on the wheel (one gloved, the other fumbling for the heating controls on the dash.) Two streets down and one over, House was somewhere within the structured walls of his apartment, dealing with structured dosages of painkillers and unstructured parameters on how to use them.

Wilson had come to her.

He'd begun by saying "I just wanted you to know..." while his hands had been suspended, palms out, at chest height like he was pushing a weight away from him. He was, in fact, pushing a box of anvils onto her desk. "He didn't ask. I offered." And his voice had rattled a bit. 'Little like a half-dozen white pills in an orange bottle. After he had left, it had taken Cuddy the better part of an hour to release the tightness in her jaw. She had excused herself from an afternoon meeting of the board -- the first time in five years that she'd done that -- and closed her office while slats of afternoon sun still rode the floor. The sun warmed the back of her head while she walked to her car and when she slid into the driver's seat she'd touched her crown with tentative fingertips to feel the warmth. Then she'd driven.

She brought nothing with her. If she'd brought anything -- groceries, take-out, a movie, a dozen roses, or the Harlem Globe Trotters -- House would have seen through it immediately. He didn't like segues or stepping stones. She might not have even gotten through the door. Her foot pushed the accelerator and the car crept ahead on slushy wheels, closing the last bit of sidestreet distance to his curb. She'd been here before: a mission borne out of worry, House's stately apartment sitting back on a tree-lined sidewalk, water like a deluge around her ankles. Things hadn't been much simpler back then, either.

But at least he'd been clean. She didn't know how she'd find him now.

Her knock was more assured that it'd been the last time.

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[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Wilson had taken House's previous abuse into consideration when writing the prescription, a fact House had noticed but failed to point out in favor of leaving the touchy subject untouched when the oncologist had pressed the slightly-folded slip of paper into his hand. House had been on 30MG tablets with the directions of 'once daily as needed' for years.

Wilson changed the 'scrip this time to reflect House's problem with pill-popping, having changed the dosage to 10MG with a 'one with meals as needed' leaving room for the entire (and perfectly legitimate and relatively safe dosage of 30MG a day) previous intended dosage but making up for House's habit of stuffing a pill down his throat whenever he had a lull in activity.

The prescription had been filled for 15 days with 3 refills attached to it two days prior, and the bottle was still mostly full. House had taken a grand total of one pill before tossing the bottle onto his piano behind the music stand where he didn't have to look at it any more.

He'd been stretched out on the couch, the offending leg in question straightened along the couch's sloped cushions throbbing obnoxiously in time with the uncertain sound of slush (there was no better description for it; the clouds couldn't decide if it wanted to rain or snow) as it occasionally rapped itself against his windows.

The apartment was cold, but mostly because he hadn't bothered to turn on any lights or the heater upon getting home. All he'd really done was take his shoes off. Lifting his head in confusion at the sound of the knock, he craned 'round to get a look towards the door and slowly dropped a hand to the floor where he'd left his cane.

Reluctantly, he climbed to his feet and made his way towards the door, the consistent ache resolidifying the argument in his mind he'd been making towards taking another pill.

All in all, he'd been in vastly better moods when answering the door before, and upon wrenching the door back to find Cuddy, he was momentarily stunned, having expected a neighbor or..girlscouts..something, anything, but her. And he'd been -really- hoping for a neighbor making the mistake of wanting to talk to him. He would have felt a lot better about laying into them.

Instead, he frowned and hobbled back a stride to let her enter, hand remaining fixed on the door handle to hold it open.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

He looked all right. Cuddy wasn't sure what she had been expecting to find -- House with grown-out fingernails and Howard Hughes hair, tissue boxes instead of slippers on his feet? Or House with glazed expression, a shimmer of sweat or mucus or spit above his upper lip? Neither. He'd defied the category by looking like himself.

Albeit a rougher-cut, pared down version of himself. His beard had grown in patchy places and started to creep down his throat and into the collar of his t-shirt. His Adam's Apple fuzzed round with gray and brown scrum. When he'd opened the door she'd gotten a chance to see his eyes -- his pupils were normal size -- and, aside from a little bit of pink scrubbing at the bottom lids, he looked as alert as he was when he was focused on a diagnosis. He was diagnosing her, she knew, and the reason for her visit. His shoulder had come up and he'd flattened his back to the door to let her pass, watching her warily with the cane poised in his hand in case she'd decided to start the yelling early.

She didn't. Apart from his appearance, the first thing Cuddy noticed was the cold. And the dark. She left the lighting alone (the gray outside filtered through the edges of the drawn curtains; any other light might put him off) but decided that the temperature had to be metered. Her heels left little points of water on his floor on their way to the radiator. She stepped out of them halfway to her destination, nudged them out of the way with the tips of her toes, and stooped over the heating dial while she pushed her hair back over her shoulders with determined thumbs. A hiss and a warm lick of air across the back of her hand and there was heat again. The room would right itself eventually. Her feet were already beginning to thaw.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Fingers remained tense against the knob of the door, gaze sinking to follow the path of her spine and legs to the heels in question as she brushed past without so much as a word, an act that had him confused and concerned at the same time. It was obvious why she'd come, but the fact that she appeared to be attempting to make herself comfortable... well, that didn't factor into any scenario he'd played out in his head thus far.

Stifling a breath deep within the recesses of his chest, he held it in place until his lungs burned with complaint and eased the door closed when he finally released it, still restrained. He didn't lock it. The last thing he wanted was her having to fight with a lock when they inevitably got into an argument and she left in a huff.

She had disappeared down the hall, but he heard the radiator's low hum come on as she made her way to the heating unit, prompting him into slow stride towards the couch. He was in the process of stiffly sinking down onto one far corner of it and pushing fingers tensely into the complaining indention of absent muscle in his thigh when she returned and he resolutely fixed his gaze forward onto the coffee table. There were a few scattered x-rays and MRIs strewn there, collected from the file of a terminally ill pancreatic cancer patient he hadn't been back to see since she ate his reuben.

Despite the fact that the knowledge of having not gone back to her yet did give him a small swoop of guilt, he kept his eyes there. It was a safer place to look than at Cuddy herself.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She came back into the living room, stepped up onto the balls of her feet because the floor was still cold. Her toes were little tamped down, confident pressure points. She curled them inward when she stopped, just short of the couch, and pulled the blanket from the back cushion. "Glass of water?" The first thing she asked him was both an offer and a request. Her voice was measured to the height of the room, but it held nothing further than what she'd spoken.

Cuddy stuffed her knuckles into the edges of the blanket and swung it above her head, angles all even, bringing it down across her shoulders. It was warm from being wedged between House's body and the back of the couch. She dropped her eyes to the files, considering them for a moment, then brought her level gaze back to his face.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

That's what it was. She was going to smuther him with companionship and pretending to ignore the obvious until he cracked and breached the subject for her. He wasn't thirsty and he didn't need water to take vicodin, having long-ago mastered the 'art' of dry-swallowing them, but the request in her tone was obvious and he gave a consenting angle of his head in response if only in indulgence.

Once she had turned away to do so, he bowed forward, left elbow pressing into the arm of the couch and bending upward to rub anxiously at his brow. Despite whatever discomfort he felt, he didn't move to point the elephant out until she'd returned, and it was still a painful process. Finally, he just blurted it out in the easiest way without actually mentioning the pills in question.

"..Apparently, you've had a visit from Wilson."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She'd had no trouble finding a glass in his cabinets. House, purveyor of gourmet take out and a single jar of peanut butter, only owned one or two drinking glasses large enough to hold water instead of a finger of scotch. She had rattled ice from the bin and dropped it into the glass, then stood at the sink while she watched her pale glass reflection in a cabinet door. She looked all right. Her hair was a dark paintstroke above the white of the blanket.

When she returned, he held her in place with his observation and one bare foot sqwudged against the floor. Her mouth wrinkled once, but then, like her step, it regained its pace and evenness. She wouldn't waste breath or time with excuses like You think that's the only reason I'd show up on your doorstep? Because I heard you were getting high? and instead took a long drink from the glass. She placed it on the edge of the table and sank onto the polar cushion from him. Her thumbs worked the edges of the blanket.

"I saw him about an hour ago." Her confirmation was as open and exposed as the warm center of a red fruit. She knew he didn't 'do' pity or sympathy, but she said, "I'm sorry, House," and hoped he knew what she meant by it.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"I chose the diagnosis over the leg," Odd as it was to voice out loud, it was most likely even more bizarre to hear; House was shouldering the blame for it, something he'd never done the first time around. "I tried blaming the guy and his bat at first --" For having started the ebola epidemic in the first place. "-- but I figured I couldn't hold him to it too much seeing as he died." Unchecked, the virus had eventually claimed the original carrier. House was far less sad about making the diagnosis so late in the game now... but still.

It was a round about way of saying he didn't want her pity and if she said it again, she'd be shown the door. He had avoided making his prescription known for several reasons and it was conversations like this one and the others that would most likely follow that made up a great deal of the list. She was trying very hard to be supportive, but there was a tension in her shoulders that read as anger.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

It was strange to hear. Even stranger coming from the mouth of a man who said that every human being operated off of a base of selfishness and that no action -- no matter how noble -- was ever truly altruistic. And he might've needed the diagnosis just as much as he'd needed the drugs, but the fact remained that he'd done this knowingly. He'd sacrificed six months' worth of painlessness, mobility and clean-whistle veins for a guy from New York who did lines off of bathroom mirrors. Talk about altruism.

"One life to save eight million? Those're pretty good odds." If unchecked, the epidemic would likely have spread outward, spilled past New York City and into surrounding states. Flights were being screened days later and any passengers who demonstrated suspicious symptoms were being swept into the offshoot hospitals in the surrounding counties. "I understand why you did it. I don't necessarily agree with it. But I understand it." She pushed a thumb against the corner of one eye and chased away an itch. "I'm here because I want to be. Not to give you a lecture," her head came up from behind the curve of her thumb, "that's what you have Wilson for."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Lips twisted with the effort of masking the smirk that threatened in the wake of her statement, head ducking forward with the expelling of a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Wilson did tend to be the harping center of his life. Cuddy tried but rarely could hold a flame to Wilson in that regard.

Eventually, he let the smirk take over if only because it proved as a good mask to the more genuine appreciation he had for the fact that -- as it appeared, anyway -- she wasn't going to run the opposite direction, vicodin knowledge in hand. He had been fairly sure that she would react the opposite way. "Yeah. Well. . . I'm going for the Peace Prize, next. Figured I could use another excuse to haul you off to a foreign country and I wouldn't get you out of the hospital otherwise."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Peace Prize? That brought her lips into a faint contour of mock teasing -- "Is there any part of you that is peaceable?" She balled her fists into the knitwork of the blanket and drew her hands in opposite directions across her chest, stretching out the fabric for her comfort. He was embedded in the tossed wool like a memory stamp; there were little silver hairs caught in the weave from a time when he'd drawn the blanket over his head to shut light, sound, or world out.

It was in her nature to worry -- in her genes, really, courtesy compounded Irish and Judeo influences -- and she would continue to attend him while he made this transition. She might never vocalize it (she'd already admitted as much when she refused to let him dip his toe into other occupational streams) and she would certainly never pawn his bottles from the dresser to check the dosages and amounts, just to be sure. He had her trust. This was already difficult for him. House didn't like dependency -- be it on material, chemical or human sources -- and he would surely see this as a backslide. Even a defeat. But there were avenues he could go down, alternatives he could pursue if he chose to pursue them.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He made a face. "..is that actually a prerequisit?" House hadn't been serious in the first place -- well, maybe he had about taking her out of the country again, but really any place without a cellphone tower in the immediate vicinity would work. Kansas. Idaho. Someplace like that. "'Rules us out, I guess."

Cuddy was less peaceful than even he was. House was surprised she played tennis instead of kickboxing or something else equally as violent. If the size of her hand was actually big enough to form a worthwhile fist, he might have been scared of her.

There was a brief moment of that comfortable silence that he always wondered at but could never allow to extend for long because he knew she would mention it or ruin it with something...sentimental and Cuddian, then House tilted his head to the side in an awkward crane to view her. He'd just offset the almost 'moment' by being crass.

"Did you actually bring a change of clothes this time?"

The man was gifted.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She had been building up defensiveness for his comment about her amiability -- Cuddy thought herself extremely tolerant, but tolerance was not always peacefulness and she couldn't claim a monopoly on that particular trait -- when he'd dipped his ragged expression to her and shoved his eyebrows up into the stratosphere of his hairline. She mirrored the expression, but hers was consternation and dry amusement. She leaned half aside to him, meeting him at his level, the blanket tugged across her chest and any 'n' all visible topography beneath,

"Do you think you actually merit a 'this time'?"

Cuddy had come directly from the hospital to his apartment and had nothing but the clothes on her back, a scuffed sole on her left Manolo, and the only change she had equated to two dimes, three quarters, and a quartet of pennies in her car's cup holder. She nudged a smile into place (one that almost bordered on a grin and that got a rare peek of teeth -- not her usual tight-lipped amusement) and swayed back into her own space.

He might have been asking because he wanted to throw her off her pace. Something about House recoiled at comfortable silences and she had been ready to say something -- something akin to an offer she'd made to him when he'd been courting Boston and fake cancer diagnoses -- when he'd dropped the ball on sentimentality. Cuddy was secretly glad for it. Some things with House were better left unspoken.

Most things with House were best left unspoken.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

The thing -- whatever it was (they'd only discussed it the once then left it unspoken again so it was hard to really give a title to it) -- between them wasn't a reward system, and even if House had to toss all the good against the bad since their last encounter, he was fairly certain the good would come out on top. At least this time.

Still, the teasing deflection had been met with pensivity and now rather than answer straight forward, an action that would leave him vulnerable in the face of the intended answer, he gave a hollow shrug to suggest he honestly didn't know.

"Seeing as I'm still a little foggy on the first two times, I couldn't answer that. I was just wondering how much Thai I needed to order for dinner."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

It was both amusing and heartbreaking that House seemed to need justification for her presence there; her presence at any time over the last few weeks, months, years. Almost as if he were waiting for the other shoe to drop; for her to say "Just kidding!" and walk out the door. And, tempted and goaded as she was at times to wash her hands of him completely, there was never a question that this guy -- this guy with the caustic attitude and the razor phobia -- inspired the sticking power in her.

She bobbed her head toward the shoulder nearest him and pushed her gaze up under knit brows. "Not Thai," she said, and shrugged one corner of the blanket down around her arms, "there's a place on Market Street that does Cantonese. Talk to me about shahe fen and I'll talk to you about lifting the fog."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House wasn't a picky eater, and while he couldn't readily recollect having Cantonese lately or ever, he was easy enough to goad into obliging, especially with such a promise attached to it. She could have convinced him to not eat at all (though she'd be hard pressed to keep him out of the peanut butter) with that sort of reward attached. He'd just double whatever it was she was getting.

"Cantonese it is." As she hadn't been exactly forthcoming on phone numbers, he pushed himself warily to his feet and snatched up his cane as he did so, bracing himself into a progression towards the counter-top island he had last seen his phone book on. Wilson had a habit of hiding it -- well, he called it 'putting it away' -- when he came over which tended to make it difficult to find. Fortunately, House had located it since the last time and located it in the same place he'd left it.

"Start talking." His pace halted and he thumbed the tome open to begin searching for the number in question.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy shed the blanket and pulled herself to a stand. The floor was warmer, whether through her perception or the hard work of the heater, and she was able to go on full, unpicky feet to join him in the kitchen. He had a smallish but functional space. Cuddy's own kitchen wasn't much more than an island in the middle of a bookshelf and knick-knack ocean, but she had never seen a need for a grandiose cooking area because -- with the constraints of job and the impatience of personality -- she didn't spend much time there. House's kitchen was a masculine reflection of that same theme. He'd hung copper pots above the butcher block, but they were clean-scrubbed on the inside and never used. A ladle and dishcloth, both on the side of the block, still had their price stickers attached. His refrigerator was stocked with more take-out menus than food.

She put her shoulder to the wall and tucked an ankle behind a heel. Draped, casual pose to broach the nature of their non-casual relationship.

"The last time we talked about this, we both agreed that it was something, but we didn't get much more specific. And I'm not --" she shifted "-- talking about nailing down exact details and parameters, but I think we should both have an understanding of how we can go about this." Like she was outlining the stations of a business proposal. Cuddy was aware of her official tone and she held a pause while pushing her tongue to the roof of her mouth, reassessing.

"What this is, is nice. Stockholm was nice. Here was nice." Five times had been more than just 'nice.' She pushed her feet against the floorboards and came further into the kitchen, dropping her knuckles to the counter. "I want more of it."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Brows pinched, but not in an altogether unamused expression. Eyes lifted from their inching search down the list of numbers he'd pulled up advertising as serving Cantonese cuisine (now it was just a matter of finding the one on Market Street) to pin on her, lips slanting hard to the side bemusedly.

"Are you saying you want more of the sex or more of.." He wasn't even sure what. Wrapping herself up in his blanket and following him around his apartment after work? It was hard to put a finger on what this was, really. Hanging out, maybe. "..this?" A vague indicative motion of the hand.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Both," she said, simple word and simple phrasing. She drew up her chin and made her mouth an easy shape. "More of the sex and more of the ambiguous hand gesture. Here --" scooting a finger along the spine of the Yellow Pages to bring them in line with her. She'd nearly memorized the Cantonese place's number, but her hands were as moved to action as the rest of her. She needed tangible, tactile supplements to stave off the gravity of what she was saying.

Her elbow slid onto the countertop while she looked, swimming her arm around the sail of a blanket to keep it out of the way. She pushed her nose close to the page for a moment to get her place, then straightened and began flipping. Momentarily pulled her eyes from the ordered black numbers and placed them on his face,

"-- And I want to know that you want that, too."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House didn't budge, even when she moved to slide fingers against the phonebook to edge it across the counter and closer to her. He was comfortable with taking up space, even if it was hers, and further proof to it he leaned forward as she began shuffling through the pages, tucking both elbows up and under the upper half of his body which he leaned casually out and over the counter-island. By the time she lifted her head from its incline over the series of numbers, he was hovering closer than he had before, blues low and providing idle watch to the digits, waiting for her to point out the correct one.

Feeling more than seeing the movement of her attention up and to him, eyes shifted up and aside to meet her gaze. He kept the close proximity, failing to draw back even if typical social boundaries deemed he should. "..I do. 'Long as you don't start making my go to charity functions or suck up to board members, anyway." As long as the lines were drawn in her pulling him into her work life (ambition was not a trait House possessed and he had no urge to be remotely involved in hospital business more than he already was), they would be fine.

She probably didn't want him dragging her to any monster truck rallies with Wilson, either.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She'd tucked her thumb underneath a line of numbers when he taxied in close, keeping her place. It was well established that House didn't believe in 'typical social boundaries.' House didn't believe in any social boundaries if he could help it. He was close, and she didn't have to turn her head more than a fraction to get a good look at him when he responded honestly -- then dovetailed the honesty with his typical line of wit (though Cuddy didn't doubt he was serious underneath the snark.)

The corner of her mouth closest to him started a slow peaking process. "You don't even have to be charming," she said, tucking the smile into her chin and turning back to the phone book, her thumb papped once against the page, "but I'll take it."

She drew a pressure line with her thumbnail beneath the Cantonese number and pushed the edge of the phone book back to him, forward lean on her elbows to keep the proximity with him. Her thumbs hooked around one another. She had a slanted, coy, cat's expression. "Your turn."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Brows fired skyward to ask 'Me? Charming?' (yes, he could do it when he really wanted to but getting him to admit that would be about as difficult as getting him to say that he liked ballroom dancing or that the Spice Girls' music hadn't really been -that- bad.), but he questioned it no further than that as he pulled the yellowpages towards him and twisted to snag his phone, intentionally bumping shoulders with her as he did so.

"..All right, so what am I ordering?" He immediately began dialing in the numbers, assuming she'd rattle off the order he could duplicate as he did so. At least for the time being, the conversation setting parameters on their relationship was put on hold in favor of food.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy had a strong, low center of gravity but she was bumped a bit by his larger, rangier frame and briefly lifted off the side of one foot. She gave him a look for it -- temperate and a little soft on the rebuke -- and pushed her hands into her hair to throw it off her shoulders. "They make it easy," she said, twisting curls around her fingers and pushing them into the collar of her shirt, "by giving everything on their menu a number. Get a number three, a sixteen, two -- no, three -- orders of the seven." She leaned backward toward his cabinet drawers; pulled a few open to search for a pen. The drawer she pulled first had three forks, a plastic spoon, and a spatula to its name.

She brought her upper body back to the counter and back in line with his, this time affecting her own shoulder bump. House had a catalogue of languages at his disposal and Cuddy knew that he'd always been eager to show them off. Maybe he'd order the numbers in Catnonese.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Brows fired upward as she rattled off the numbers and he temporarily wondered if she was ordering for herself and he had failed to note over time that she ate a ridiculous amount of food, or if this was for the both of them. By that point in time, someone had answered on the other end in shaky English and House turned his attention to the phone, ignoring the retaliating bump Cuddy gave (her center of gravity was below his and she did get him to weave slightly to the right, but his cane ended up absorbing the majority of the motion, so he remained unfazed).

"Uhn, 是, 你好。" At this point he hesitated, eyes screwing upward as he fought for the correct numbers and translated them in his head. His Mandarin was a great deal better than his Cantonese. "我需要第号三, 十六, 和三次序第号七。"

A question on the other end had him frowning in consideration. "您建议什么?" Another response and he nodded, finally beginning to get a better mental grasp on the dialect and the more odd degrees of pronounciation it had. "那将是美好的。您需要我的地址吗?"

It was still several moments before the conversation was completed with an address provided and House hung up before serving Cuddy with a briefly exasperated expression. As if he'd been forced to speak in another language. "Next time, we're ordering Russian and you're doing the talking."

..so she'd better learn Russian.