Coming To Terms, Chapter 1
Title: Coming to Terms, Chapter 1/10
Fandom: House, MD
Pairings: House/Cuddy, Wilson friendship
Warnings: Explicit content in later chapters
Summary: In the weeks following "Help Me", House, Wilson and Cuddy all have some adjustments to make.
Disclaimer: Seriously? You do know I am not David Shore, right?
He crumpled.
The hand in hers tightened and his knee buckled. He broke the embrace, half-stumbling into her.
“As romantic as this setting is…” He tried to smile, but what was intended to be a sardonic apology came out as a shamed plea.
She looked over his shoulder. The scene was one of some truly impressive destruction: shards of broken mirror in the tub, scattered narcotics tablets, plaster dust, a cavity in the wall. It looked like the aftermath of an earthquake. Apt: the ground beneath them, never stable, had shifted and roiled.
“I’m wiped out myself,” she admitted. “And I think romance can wait until we’re both clean and rested.”
He darted his eyes away from her and then nodded. “’Kay,” he whispered, meeting her eyes. “You need to get back home and sober up. Talk to Lucas, work it out.”
“He and I have already done all the talking there is to do,” she said flatly.
That hadn’t been much. Her own words cut in to her memory with the precision of a scalpel.
I don’t love you. I wish I did, I’ve tried to, but I can’t.
She supposed she had House to thank for the clarity and brevity; she’d learned from him that there was a sort of kindness in the speaking of unkind truths. There was also, she was finding, a sort of courage in moving beyond guilt, not because it was unearned, but because it was unproductive, irrelevant.
“House,” she said softly, letting impatience shade the compassion in her voice. “House.” She touched his chin. “House, look at me. Rachel will be up in two hours, and I’ll probably have to spend half the morning talking to reporters about the accident. But I’m coming back. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“I know that,” he growled. “You’re so damned stubborn you never change your mind about anything. You may refuse to listen to it, but you never, ever change it.”
“Well, that was quick. From kissing me to insulting me in ten seconds.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and didn’t remind her that she’d gone from viciousness to tenderness almost as quickly, and with less provocation for either. “Been a long night.”
“No kidding.” She rubbed her forehead. “We need to re-bandage that shoulder. Take off your jacket and shirt.”
He grumbled incoherently and gave her no further resistance, and there was a defeated slump to his shoulders as she guided him to the bed. She recognized his easy compliance as an indication of how exhausted and wounded he was.
He sat motionless while she stepped back into the bathroom for supplies. Glad she couldn’t see her own reflection in the ruined mirror, she rummaged quietly in a cabinet. It was cluttered with items that had obviously been nicked from the hospital, but it was organized; either a testament to House’s habits of self-injury and self-treatment, or to Wilson’s efficiency. She pushed aside an ice pack, a heating pad, and a catheter -- she did not want to think about that one - and selected a bandage and a suture kit.
Moistening a washcloth, she steeled her own shoulders and straightened, as if readying for another battle. Give his body a few hours to recover, and he’d wake with his shields up, daring her, forcing her, to take on those defenses of his. She resolved to take advantage of the lull and get some rest herself. She’d need it, if she was going to do this crazy thing.
His exertions had pulled out two of the sutures and the gauze was soaked through. An angry bruise glowered beneath the taut flesh of the collarbone.
The laceration on his face leaked crimson from beneath the mask of dust and grime. He was accumulating an impressive collection of scars.
She turned on the bedside lamp, and he winced and moved his face away from the sudden intrusion of light. Shadows laid down on the line on the edge of his right eye, the one she preferred to mistake for a wrinkle because, like the tiny circular one on his nose that she chose to think was a pox scar, it looked old enough to have been acquired when he was still a child, and to her physician’s eyes it was clear that whatever had caused it, it had hurt. His eyelashes fluttered.
“You look pretty in scrubs,” he commented.
“You mean I look like a doctor, for a change.” There wasn’t any regret left in the admission: she’d come to terms with the fact that she was a competent, not exceptional, practitioner. Her most exceptional contribution to medicine lay in keeping the man now under her hands alive and functional despite his own efforts, sometimes with nothing more than force of will.
A sudden tension in his neck and a sharp inhalation aborted her ministrations. She pulled back her hands, waiting patiently and silently for permission to touch him again.
“Dammit,” he groaned, and his hand fell to his left side.
“Need some ibuprofen?”
He nodded his head so slightly that the motion was almost imperceptible. “Stuff’s good for joint pain from my fucked-up gait, hangovers, and bruises. Doesn’t touch The Other.” She translated instantaneously, heard the capitals. House had an entire vocabulary for pain.
“You gave yourself quite a punishment tonight,” she pointed out, moving to where he’d shrugged his jacket onto the floor. “My whole body hurts from crawling around in that mess, and I’m not six two and over fifty.”
“Hunh. You’re no spring chicken, either, Ms Poster Girl for Perimenopause. And my back doesn’t have to support the weight of that rack.” He gestured vaguely at her chest and attempted a leer.
“No, just the weight of your enormous ego.”
Dry-swallowing the pills she placed into his hand, he chuckled, accepted a gentle shove that sent him backwards onto the pillows, and closed his eyes.
He didn’t stir again until she finished with the bandage and pulled a corner of the comforter up over him, and then only to cop a half-hearted feel, mostly, she suspected, out of reflex.
She placed the bottle of ibuprofen on the bedside table, pulled off his shoes, and breathed a kiss against his forehead. He inhaled deeply, as if he was trying to savor her, and their fingers laced together again.
“Wish you could stay,” he said, but this time it was without need, utterly clear-eyed and accepting.
“Me too,” she said honestly. He had a sleepy little smile on his face, and she wanted to memorize it and store it away. It seemed to her sometimes that the only quiet moments of his life consisted of lying down between blows, or pausing to re-load; she’d have given anything to lie down right now, let the mattress take her weight, run her hands over his shoulders, and just observe him, see what he looked like when he was at some kind of peace.
But Rachel would be waking soon, and the world would begin devouring the world again, and there was a hospital full of broken, hurting people to tend to, so when he disentangled his hand from hers, she lowered her head and put one foot down in front of the other, wanting to know when moments like this had become the ongoing theme of her life. The prospect of fitting this intense man and these relentless emotions into life with a small child and a demanding job … God, it was already beyond exhausting.
He was nearly asleep by the time she reached the threshold. She rested her forehead on her still-bare left hand against the frame, and watched him take a few deep, shuddering breaths.
“House,” she said.
One bright blue eye opened, and she drew in, feeling overwhelmed; she was bruised inside and out, and although he had to be at least as haggard as she was, even half of his focus was almost too much.
“Yeah, Cuddy?”
“Thank you.” Her face was wet.
“The hell for?”
“For giving me a second chance.”
He struggled onto his elbows and blinked stupidly. “Huh?”
“I don’t deserve it.”
She left him looking confused and lost, undone at last. It figured that of all the critical turns of the past twenty-four hours, this would be the point where he’d come apart: torn up, not by physical collapse, not by devastating failure, but by an unanswered question. Of all the damage she’d done to him tonight, all the horrible things she’d said, it was what she had not said -that she very well could be the one who had just been rescued -- that had wrecked him.
A fragile smile crept onto her face as she closed her car door. Point to her.
Chapter 2 (part A) Chapter 2 (part B)