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tellitslantTitle: (this could be) the last time
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tellitslant
Fandom: House, M.D.
Spoilers: minor through 5x23, Under My Skin
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Rating: R
Word Count: 2500
Summary: Past and present, but she doesn't want to know if there'll be a future.
Notes: written between airings of 5x23 and 5x24.
Their first first kiss – and she's never asked him if he remembered it, but she knows now he does – was in Michigan, some party in some crowded student house full of the type of drunken shenanigans that she usually tried to ignore. But midterms were over and a week of freedom stretched out ahead of her, and so she was leaning over the drinks table trying to find something other than Miller Lite when he came up behind her and grabbed her wrist.
She spun to face him, or he turned her around, and in the moment it took her to register who it was he was already kissing her. Just a brush of lips, like they were meeting over dinner or saying goodnight after the opera instead of standing on carpet that had survived a thousand puking undergrads. He tightened his grip on her wrist as he pulled back, fingers pressed against her radial artery as if he were measuring the effect of his breath against her skin.
She blinked and reached for a beer, determined not to feed his penchant for drama, not to be the victim of his latest prank. "What was that for?" she asked, and tried not to smile at the surprise that flickered in his eyes.
He recovered quickly. "Oh, I wanted to say thanks for all the help on the endo midterm," he said nonchalantly.
"I didn't give you any help on the endo midterm," she replied, wincing inwardly as she felt her pulse climb. She wouldn't think about private tutoring sessions. She would not.
"Sure you did!" he exclaimed, loudly enough that a few heads turned, then more as the whisper of his name spread through the party. "I mean, I assume you wrote all your answers in nice big girly writing just for me. You absolutely saved me on question five," he confided, leaning close to her ear as if he wasn't speaking to the entire party. "I never could have described the process of mineralocorticoid receptor to ligand binding as concisely as you did."
He turned her wrist in his fingers and pressed his mouth to her life line in an intimate reversal of courtliness, and it disconcerted her more than his actual kiss had. "So thanks," he said as he let go of her hand. "Keep up the good work. I appreciate it.
"By the way, question nineteen, you spelled Szentivanyi wrong. Remember, I before V even after Z, and maybe you won't disgrace yourself in neuro next year," he said as he turned around. "Of course, you know you'll never make a good doctor," he continued, his voice rising as he got further away, "not with such legible handwriting. Try secretary school!" The last was shouted from across the room, and he smirked as he ducked out the door, leaving all eyes on her and her palm tingling.
Dammit. She curled her hand into a fist and thumped it against her leg. He was right about her spelling.
**
The first time she kissed him back, his hand was already under her shirt, though she couldn't really complain because hers were already down his pants.
It was two years later: she was celebrating med school acceptance letters that kept rolling in, while he was celebrating having managed to stay at one school long enough to earn his MD without getting kicked out again. Rumours abounded about demands the program had put on him to prove his loyalty – re-taking undergrad courses the least of them – but he'd passed them all, or faked enough of them, and in a few months both of them would be leaving.
She knew better, even then, to think he'd congratulate her or take back what he'd said. So when she'd seen him across the bar, she hadn't waved him over, just lifted her glass in a toast and smiled.
He'd come over anyways.
And he hadn't been civil, but he hadn't been able to take his eyes off the vee of her blouse, and she was drunk with success almost more than wine and had gone home with him without even making him ask.
"If I'd known you were this easy," he said, opening his apartment door and ushering her through, his hand sliding from the small of her back to the curve of her ass, "I wouldn't have stopped talking to you after you changed seats for the endo final."
"If it took you this long to notice I wanted you," she replied, turning and pushing him back against the door, "you deserved to wait."
He kissed her first, but she kissed him back. His fingers snaked up the back of her shirt and flicked open the catch on her bra, and she leaned back, trusting him to hold her up as his mouth traveled down her neck. She palmed his ass and pulled him closer, his thigh between her legs and his cock hot against her belly.
"Almost worth waiting for," he said into her cleavage, and she laughed.
"Only almost?"
"Well." He pulled back. "Can't say for sure till I've seen the whole package."
She raised her eyebrows eloquently and looked around. "Your place is cleaner than I thought it would be, but I'm not fucking you on your hallway floor."
"Picky." He flipped a light on and pointed her towards the bedroom. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"I have standards." She pulled her shirt and bra off as she walked and glanced over her shoulder. "Be glad I'm lowering them for a night."
"Ouch." He caught up in the doorway and crowded against her, flattening his hand over her belly and pressing her back into him. She let her head roll against his shoulder as his fingers inched down her jeans. "Keep talking like that and I might not be nice to you any more."
"Who says I want nice?"
He bent and kissed her. She bit his lip as he slid two fingers inside her, and she smiled.
**
She watched and listened to him practice the art of the put-down for over twenty years, and though she wouldn't admit it, she learned a lot of her own skill in the same game from him, at the feet of a master (and that was a phrase she'd never use in his hearing). They clashed swords verbally nearly every day, twice on the bad days – or maybe those were the good ones, she was never quite sure.
It didn't keep her sharp – she would have stayed sharp anyways – but it gave her an edge, a rush, a high. She didn't look forward to the constant comments about her breasts and her ass, but she watched him shape the words in his mouth, roll them over his tongue, before he dropped them where they would do the most good or the most harm. It was a strange form of intimacy, but intimacy nonetheless.
Lots of men ogled her. Not many spent days coming up with the right comment and then days waiting for the right moment. She appreciated his dedication.
She kept her cane digs to a minimum in response. No need to give him more to psychoanalyze her with.
When he insulted her personal life or her professional abilities or both, it was harder to let it go, to remind herself that giving in would only get him out of her office until the next time and the next, wouldn't even give her space to lick her wounds. Too, she knew that he looked at her with the same insight he turned on charts and scans and x-rays, that he saw just as much in the empty patterns of her days. She refused to let him diagnose her, but feared that every comment was one more step in the differential.
When he let his internal filter slip, when he flung accusations at her and they only confirmed her own beliefs, that was the first time there was no artistry to it. His mouth twisted with pain and betrayal and he left before he saw her reaction, clear indication that he wasn't driven by anything other than anger.
It hurt.
It hurt like her own skin was bubbling and boiling, the vitriol of his words flowing over her and eating through all her pretenses. Heat flared in her cheeks, down her chest, shame cooled by the icy water of the shower raining down on her and the girl she was failing like she'd failed her own child before she – he – it – had even been born.
"Dammit," she whispered, "damn you," trying to summon some defiance, but her words were empty, as empty as she was.
So she cried instead, silently, so she wouldn't upset the girl. The wetness disappeared in the spray of the shower, but she could feel the warmth of her tears against cold-numbed skin. They slid over her cheeks and into her mouth, salty and bitter, and she ran her fingers over her lips to wipe them away.
**
It wasn't the first time he'd apologized to her and meant it, though such occasions were few and far between. It was the first time he'd apologized with his mouth instead of his words, though, the first time she'd left him so speechless that he closed the distance between them and kissed her like it would make everything better.
She wasn't sure who he was trying to make things better for, her or him, but she clung to him and kissed him back like it didn't matter.
The sun was setting. It got dark so quickly now, and the days were so short. She rarely came home in the daylight, because there was nothing to come home to, and there still wasn't, except tonight there was, because he was here. He kissed her like he was telling her all the things he'd never say out loud. He kissed her like he wanted to make everything better, which was a change because usually he wanted to make everything worse, but then kissing her was creating chaos in its own way.
He kissed her, or she kissed him, and she wrapped herself up in him and the comfort that her worn, baggy sweater couldn't provide. His hand splayed over her back and he was the only solid point in her universe, even though he couldn't keep his own balance.
It wasn't enough, of course, wasn't really an apology. He kissed her like he was sorry, but he couldn't be sorry for everything; there weren't enough kisses in the world. And just because he kissed her like he cared, it didn't mean he did. She knew better than to expect that.
She did know better. She knew he cared. She didn't know if it made a difference.
But she kissed him, because she wanted to, she wanted this, and there were so many things that she wanted that she would never get. She wanted him to want to kiss her, and he did, and he was, and it wasn't enough but it was something.
She wanted more, but he stepped back, let her down, leaving her flat-footed as he towered above her. She could have taken more, and he could have given more, but maybe that was the wrong way around, because wasn't she the one who was always giving, and giving in?
For once, he had nothing to say. It wasn't that they'd said everything in the kiss – because they hadn't. The kiss had been about everything they couldn't say. All they were left with was "Good night" – the most meaningless utterance in the world, she thought. Good night. Sleep tight. Platitudes neither of them would deign to exchange in the normal course of things.
But neither of them could meet the other's gaze, and the space between them wasn't enough. So "Good night" it was, and the sun had set by the time he closed the door behind him.
If it had been a real apology, he wouldn't have walked away.
**
And kissing him was like falling, or flying, or – no, it wasn't like any of those, wasn't coming home or solving the puzzle or anything except doing what felt right. Or what felt good. One of the two.
It would be too easy to say this was about gratitude, but maybe it was. He was grateful that she cared. She was grateful that he'd finally let her. It might have been about desire. It might have been about need.
It might have been the first time they'd both meant it.
The rising sun slanted through the blinds in his bedroom and he squinted, his face falling into the familiar lines of pain, and her breath caught in her throat. But this time she could kiss those lines away, and as she stepped towards him she stepped into the light, and his face relaxed in the shadow.
He sat down hard on the side of the bed and drew her in between his legs. She tilted his head up and looked down on him for a change, dropping kisses on his forehead, his cheekbone, his nose before whimpering into his mouth as he unfastened her bra and drew the straps slowly down her arms.
"God, Cuddy," he whispered, scraping his teeth over her nipple as her fingers clutched at the back of his head, "how did I go for so long without seeing these again in person?"
"Good self-discipline," she muttered, "a thing for delayed gratification," and laughed, as much out of relief as hilarity, because this was finally happening. It wasn't her only fantasy, but she wouldn't pretend it wasn't a fantasy, and the world seemed to be giving her everything she wanted for a change so she was damn well going to enjoy it.
And it was about need, because he was wearing too many clothes and she needed to get them off, needed to see him whole, as whole as he had been for years. And she needed to be kissing him, again, because it could be the last time, could be that this happiness was too much and the universe was going to catch up with them, again.
She sprawled out on him on the bed, skin to skin and his fingers moving over her body and between her legs and she was happy, she realized, happy to have him where she wanted him, doing what she wanted, for once. She needed to tell him that with her mouth, kissing him because they were never good at speaking softly and anyway she was barely coherent already, gasps and moans the closest she could come to words, but she tried.
His name hissed out of her on an exhale, "Houssssse," and he jerked beneath her and her heart sped up even faster. She could feel him smiling against her lips and that was a miracle in itself. So she kissed him to thank him for it, and because it could be the last time and she didn't know.
Author:
tellitslantFandom: House, M.D.
Spoilers: minor through 5x23, Under My Skin
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Rating: R
Word Count: 2500
Summary: Past and present, but she doesn't want to know if there'll be a future.
Notes: written between airings of 5x23 and 5x24.
Their first first kiss – and she's never asked him if he remembered it, but she knows now he does – was in Michigan, some party in some crowded student house full of the type of drunken shenanigans that she usually tried to ignore. But midterms were over and a week of freedom stretched out ahead of her, and so she was leaning over the drinks table trying to find something other than Miller Lite when he came up behind her and grabbed her wrist.
She spun to face him, or he turned her around, and in the moment it took her to register who it was he was already kissing her. Just a brush of lips, like they were meeting over dinner or saying goodnight after the opera instead of standing on carpet that had survived a thousand puking undergrads. He tightened his grip on her wrist as he pulled back, fingers pressed against her radial artery as if he were measuring the effect of his breath against her skin.
She blinked and reached for a beer, determined not to feed his penchant for drama, not to be the victim of his latest prank. "What was that for?" she asked, and tried not to smile at the surprise that flickered in his eyes.
He recovered quickly. "Oh, I wanted to say thanks for all the help on the endo midterm," he said nonchalantly.
"I didn't give you any help on the endo midterm," she replied, wincing inwardly as she felt her pulse climb. She wouldn't think about private tutoring sessions. She would not.
"Sure you did!" he exclaimed, loudly enough that a few heads turned, then more as the whisper of his name spread through the party. "I mean, I assume you wrote all your answers in nice big girly writing just for me. You absolutely saved me on question five," he confided, leaning close to her ear as if he wasn't speaking to the entire party. "I never could have described the process of mineralocorticoid receptor to ligand binding as concisely as you did."
He turned her wrist in his fingers and pressed his mouth to her life line in an intimate reversal of courtliness, and it disconcerted her more than his actual kiss had. "So thanks," he said as he let go of her hand. "Keep up the good work. I appreciate it.
"By the way, question nineteen, you spelled Szentivanyi wrong. Remember, I before V even after Z, and maybe you won't disgrace yourself in neuro next year," he said as he turned around. "Of course, you know you'll never make a good doctor," he continued, his voice rising as he got further away, "not with such legible handwriting. Try secretary school!" The last was shouted from across the room, and he smirked as he ducked out the door, leaving all eyes on her and her palm tingling.
Dammit. She curled her hand into a fist and thumped it against her leg. He was right about her spelling.
**
The first time she kissed him back, his hand was already under her shirt, though she couldn't really complain because hers were already down his pants.
It was two years later: she was celebrating med school acceptance letters that kept rolling in, while he was celebrating having managed to stay at one school long enough to earn his MD without getting kicked out again. Rumours abounded about demands the program had put on him to prove his loyalty – re-taking undergrad courses the least of them – but he'd passed them all, or faked enough of them, and in a few months both of them would be leaving.
She knew better, even then, to think he'd congratulate her or take back what he'd said. So when she'd seen him across the bar, she hadn't waved him over, just lifted her glass in a toast and smiled.
He'd come over anyways.
And he hadn't been civil, but he hadn't been able to take his eyes off the vee of her blouse, and she was drunk with success almost more than wine and had gone home with him without even making him ask.
"If I'd known you were this easy," he said, opening his apartment door and ushering her through, his hand sliding from the small of her back to the curve of her ass, "I wouldn't have stopped talking to you after you changed seats for the endo final."
"If it took you this long to notice I wanted you," she replied, turning and pushing him back against the door, "you deserved to wait."
He kissed her first, but she kissed him back. His fingers snaked up the back of her shirt and flicked open the catch on her bra, and she leaned back, trusting him to hold her up as his mouth traveled down her neck. She palmed his ass and pulled him closer, his thigh between her legs and his cock hot against her belly.
"Almost worth waiting for," he said into her cleavage, and she laughed.
"Only almost?"
"Well." He pulled back. "Can't say for sure till I've seen the whole package."
She raised her eyebrows eloquently and looked around. "Your place is cleaner than I thought it would be, but I'm not fucking you on your hallway floor."
"Picky." He flipped a light on and pointed her towards the bedroom. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"I have standards." She pulled her shirt and bra off as she walked and glanced over her shoulder. "Be glad I'm lowering them for a night."
"Ouch." He caught up in the doorway and crowded against her, flattening his hand over her belly and pressing her back into him. She let her head roll against his shoulder as his fingers inched down her jeans. "Keep talking like that and I might not be nice to you any more."
"Who says I want nice?"
He bent and kissed her. She bit his lip as he slid two fingers inside her, and she smiled.
**
She watched and listened to him practice the art of the put-down for over twenty years, and though she wouldn't admit it, she learned a lot of her own skill in the same game from him, at the feet of a master (and that was a phrase she'd never use in his hearing). They clashed swords verbally nearly every day, twice on the bad days – or maybe those were the good ones, she was never quite sure.
It didn't keep her sharp – she would have stayed sharp anyways – but it gave her an edge, a rush, a high. She didn't look forward to the constant comments about her breasts and her ass, but she watched him shape the words in his mouth, roll them over his tongue, before he dropped them where they would do the most good or the most harm. It was a strange form of intimacy, but intimacy nonetheless.
Lots of men ogled her. Not many spent days coming up with the right comment and then days waiting for the right moment. She appreciated his dedication.
She kept her cane digs to a minimum in response. No need to give him more to psychoanalyze her with.
When he insulted her personal life or her professional abilities or both, it was harder to let it go, to remind herself that giving in would only get him out of her office until the next time and the next, wouldn't even give her space to lick her wounds. Too, she knew that he looked at her with the same insight he turned on charts and scans and x-rays, that he saw just as much in the empty patterns of her days. She refused to let him diagnose her, but feared that every comment was one more step in the differential.
When he let his internal filter slip, when he flung accusations at her and they only confirmed her own beliefs, that was the first time there was no artistry to it. His mouth twisted with pain and betrayal and he left before he saw her reaction, clear indication that he wasn't driven by anything other than anger.
It hurt.
It hurt like her own skin was bubbling and boiling, the vitriol of his words flowing over her and eating through all her pretenses. Heat flared in her cheeks, down her chest, shame cooled by the icy water of the shower raining down on her and the girl she was failing like she'd failed her own child before she – he – it – had even been born.
"Dammit," she whispered, "damn you," trying to summon some defiance, but her words were empty, as empty as she was.
So she cried instead, silently, so she wouldn't upset the girl. The wetness disappeared in the spray of the shower, but she could feel the warmth of her tears against cold-numbed skin. They slid over her cheeks and into her mouth, salty and bitter, and she ran her fingers over her lips to wipe them away.
**
It wasn't the first time he'd apologized to her and meant it, though such occasions were few and far between. It was the first time he'd apologized with his mouth instead of his words, though, the first time she'd left him so speechless that he closed the distance between them and kissed her like it would make everything better.
She wasn't sure who he was trying to make things better for, her or him, but she clung to him and kissed him back like it didn't matter.
The sun was setting. It got dark so quickly now, and the days were so short. She rarely came home in the daylight, because there was nothing to come home to, and there still wasn't, except tonight there was, because he was here. He kissed her like he was telling her all the things he'd never say out loud. He kissed her like he wanted to make everything better, which was a change because usually he wanted to make everything worse, but then kissing her was creating chaos in its own way.
He kissed her, or she kissed him, and she wrapped herself up in him and the comfort that her worn, baggy sweater couldn't provide. His hand splayed over her back and he was the only solid point in her universe, even though he couldn't keep his own balance.
It wasn't enough, of course, wasn't really an apology. He kissed her like he was sorry, but he couldn't be sorry for everything; there weren't enough kisses in the world. And just because he kissed her like he cared, it didn't mean he did. She knew better than to expect that.
She did know better. She knew he cared. She didn't know if it made a difference.
But she kissed him, because she wanted to, she wanted this, and there were so many things that she wanted that she would never get. She wanted him to want to kiss her, and he did, and he was, and it wasn't enough but it was something.
She wanted more, but he stepped back, let her down, leaving her flat-footed as he towered above her. She could have taken more, and he could have given more, but maybe that was the wrong way around, because wasn't she the one who was always giving, and giving in?
For once, he had nothing to say. It wasn't that they'd said everything in the kiss – because they hadn't. The kiss had been about everything they couldn't say. All they were left with was "Good night" – the most meaningless utterance in the world, she thought. Good night. Sleep tight. Platitudes neither of them would deign to exchange in the normal course of things.
But neither of them could meet the other's gaze, and the space between them wasn't enough. So "Good night" it was, and the sun had set by the time he closed the door behind him.
If it had been a real apology, he wouldn't have walked away.
**
And kissing him was like falling, or flying, or – no, it wasn't like any of those, wasn't coming home or solving the puzzle or anything except doing what felt right. Or what felt good. One of the two.
It would be too easy to say this was about gratitude, but maybe it was. He was grateful that she cared. She was grateful that he'd finally let her. It might have been about desire. It might have been about need.
It might have been the first time they'd both meant it.
The rising sun slanted through the blinds in his bedroom and he squinted, his face falling into the familiar lines of pain, and her breath caught in her throat. But this time she could kiss those lines away, and as she stepped towards him she stepped into the light, and his face relaxed in the shadow.
He sat down hard on the side of the bed and drew her in between his legs. She tilted his head up and looked down on him for a change, dropping kisses on his forehead, his cheekbone, his nose before whimpering into his mouth as he unfastened her bra and drew the straps slowly down her arms.
"God, Cuddy," he whispered, scraping his teeth over her nipple as her fingers clutched at the back of his head, "how did I go for so long without seeing these again in person?"
"Good self-discipline," she muttered, "a thing for delayed gratification," and laughed, as much out of relief as hilarity, because this was finally happening. It wasn't her only fantasy, but she wouldn't pretend it wasn't a fantasy, and the world seemed to be giving her everything she wanted for a change so she was damn well going to enjoy it.
And it was about need, because he was wearing too many clothes and she needed to get them off, needed to see him whole, as whole as he had been for years. And she needed to be kissing him, again, because it could be the last time, could be that this happiness was too much and the universe was going to catch up with them, again.
She sprawled out on him on the bed, skin to skin and his fingers moving over her body and between her legs and she was happy, she realized, happy to have him where she wanted him, doing what she wanted, for once. She needed to tell him that with her mouth, kissing him because they were never good at speaking softly and anyway she was barely coherent already, gasps and moans the closest she could come to words, but she tried.
His name hissed out of her on an exhale, "Houssssse," and he jerked beneath her and her heart sped up even faster. She could feel him smiling against her lips and that was a miracle in itself. So she kissed him to thank him for it, and because it could be the last time and she didn't know.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 10:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-05-11 04:22 pm (UTC)Oh, this was just perfect in so many ways. It's so them and so wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time. One of the best I have read lately. Fantastic job!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 04:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 07:01 pm (UTC)Most perfect sentence. Brillant!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 07:11 pm (UTC)And kissing him was like falling, or flying, or – no, it wasn't like any of those,
Heh. I like that.
His hand splayed over her back and he was the only solid point in her universe, even though he couldn't keep his own balance.
Oh, that's a good image. I mean, not good, but....yeah.
They clashed swords verbally nearly every day, twice on the bad days – or maybe those were the good ones, she was never quite sure.
Fabulous. So very them.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 09:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 04:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 09:48 pm (UTC)