Started this for a Huddy friend. Should only be a very short story but with some planned steamy scenes. The action begins at the end of "Help Me." Please read and review.
Like Rain in the Desert
How long had they stood together? The moments stretched out between them like miles of high desert roadway shimmering silver in the noonday sun, timeless and eternal.
Lisa Cuddy slowly became aware that her neck was beginning to ache from craning her head up, up to meet the softness of his lips, breathing in the warmth of his exhalation, the thrill that stirred within every fiber of her being at the rich closeness to the man for whom she had just confessed her love.
That he was bruised and covered in dust made no difference to her. He was here and so was she. She had found him. More importantly, she had found she needed him, that she wanted him, that she loved him.
Before this evening began, Cuddy had almost convinced herself otherwise. She was taking the safe route, engaged to a man who was pleasant but innocuous. There was no fire in her relationship with Lucas Douglas, no ardor. Lucas was as different from Gregory House as ice was to flame. And though she feared the heat of her passion for House, Cuddy had found that there was no refuge without him either. In fact, her heart could die within the icy grip of a false sense of security just as surely as it could be burned by the torture of loving a man bent upon his own self-destruction.
So she had thrown caution to the winds, forsaken what was safe for what she knew in her heart to be right. Cuddy had come to him as she had the first time they were together, with no expectations, only a love that could no longer be ignored or denied.
Once he had clasped her hand with his own, House had moved nothing save his lips and his tongue into the sweetness of her receptive mouth. The filth and anguish of this fate-filled night were blown away like sand by the wind at those two points of contact. They were the only places on his entire, battered body that House felt vital and alive. For the rest of him, there was an ache and a weariness, an overriding exhaustion of both his body and soul.
Except for that shadow of eventual collapse, House believed he could go on kissing her forever. He hadn't stopped since she said, "Then I think we're okay."
We're okay. We. Us. Her words continued to wash through his mind, cleansing her earlier condemnations and his own regrets and fears.
But her lips, her lips were his direct connection to the torrent of emotions flowing between them. If only they could go on kissing . . . perhaps that "we," that "us" could keep on going as well.
Cuddy eventually forced herself to pull away from him ever so slightly. She opened her eyes to see House already studying her with his even, azure gaze.
That look, those eyes so filled with both pain and hope in equal parts. Cuddy suddenly became weak in the knees and nearly surrendered her decision to say what needed to be said. But although she desperately wanted to stay locked in a never-ending kiss with House, she knew they both needed to get cleaned up. They needed rest and his shoulder wound required attention.
"House?" she said.
"Hmmm?" He closed his eyes again and began kissing her neck.
She faltered, once again losing her resolve as she closed her eyes and leaned into the heat of his breath, the warm moistness of his lips. Cuddy spoke slowly, as if she were in the brilliant haze of a drowsy summer's day.
"You should pack a few things, just for tonight. You need to clean up and I ought to have a look at your shoulder. You can call someone later to clean the glass from your bathtub."
She paused, attempting to master her rapid breathing, a response to his kissing and her own reckless longing to have him physically claim her then and there.
"In the meantime, you can shower and get some sleep at my place. There's even a jetted tub in the master bath. You could soak your leg and . . ."
"You had me at 'You should pack a few things,'" he whispered against her neck. He rose up once more, towering above her, a small, slight smile on his face. "I'll just be a few minutes," he said. Then slowly, regretfully, as if it were a herculean effort, he let go of her hand.
While he was in the bedroom, Cuddy stooped to pick up the Vicodin that House had dropped earlier. She hesitated. Quickly standing up again, she brushed the pills from her hand. She had come to him this morning, not as a babysitter, but as a lover. And just like her love, she needed to extend House her trust.
Cuddy realized that trust was not something you can put a limit on. If she truly loved House, she needed to trust him with the decisions he would make about his life. So far, his choices, even more than her own, had helped to lead them to where they were at this point in time. That thought made Cuddy smile with satisfaction as she walked toward the living room, waiting for him to finish packing, waiting for him, knowing that this time, her waiting would not be in vain.
House was smiling to himself as he threw a couple t-shirts into his backpack. Cuddy's spur-of-the-moment invitation was just what the doctor ordered. He was looking forward to the promised shower and anxious to try out her jetted tub, maybe with her joining him, if it was large enough. Most of all, he was looking forward to the prospect of sleeping in her arms.
Just as he was cramming a pair of jeans into his bag, he stopped and let out a long, slow breath. His heart was racing and his mind, plagued with questions to which he had no answers.
What if Cuddy didn't want anything else from him right now? She had, after all, just broken up with her fiancée. Maybe this whole night could be written off as just a crazy, emotional rollercoaster that, at some point, left the rails.
Cuddy had told him earlier, "I don't love you House." Now, she was saying she did love him. Which was it? Maybe she simply pitied him for all his efforts to save Hannah?
Oh God, Hannah. House sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, the various aches and pains in his body were nothing compared to the anguish he felt in his heart. He'd meant what he had said to Foreman, the fact that he'd done everything right but Hannah had still died threatened to overwhelm him with the unbearable sorrow of injustice.
House felt breathless and alone in the middle of a windstorm of emotions. But there, just beyond the edge of the blinding dust and abrasive sands stood Cuddy, her arm outstretched in a gesture of hope. Salvation lay within him, if he would only take her hand.
This was what he wanted, she was what he wanted, for so very long now. When she said that she wanted him, that she loved him, he was going to have to trust that. He needed to trust her, trust that she knew what she was doing, trust that she would not hurl him back into a lonely desert of torture and despair.
He came out of the bedroom with his backpack and immediately took her hand again. He held it not unlike a love struck teenager, almost shyly, gingerly stroking across its surface with his thumb.
He let go of her hand when they came to her car but as soon as they got in, he interlaced his fingers with hers once more. They drove along silently as the morning sun freed her hair, its golden strands cascading through the grey streets of Princeton.
Half way to her condo, Cuddy glanced away from the road to look at House. His head was lolling to the side, his forehead leaning against the passenger window. His eyes were closed and his breathing had become regular and deep. Still, his thumb continued gliding back and forth across her hand so that even in sleep, he continued caressing her.
She swallowed the knot that had formed in her throat, countering the burning tears welling up in her eyes. They had come so close, so many times. Cuddy had wanted this for so long, had wanted this man beside her to stay near her, always.
His lure was like that of the moon upon the tides, constant and magnetic, forever beckoning. Yet for almost a year, she had denied her passion for him, especially to herself. She pushed him away, trying to lock her heart away from him. Each time she succeeded, it felt as if she lost another piece of herself.
Finally tonight, they hit an impasse and she brought forth a terrible lie. "I don't love you," she'd told him. Then she demanded he move on with his life. She'd said that he had nothing, no friends because both she and James Wilson had moved on with their lives, House had no one, nothing.
Her words had shattered him, just as surely as he had shattered his bathroom mirror.
And yet, it was in his very brokenness that he had become stronger and whole again. She witnessed the soul of the man whom she always knew was there. Her accusations this night had all proved false. None of what House said or did for Hannah had anything to do with Cuddy. They were all compassionate, heroic gestures to save his patient, to save Hannah.
That was when he gave in and let go. And that was when Cuddy had broken too. All the lies and deceit and pretenses that she had told herself over the past year had broken apart and came flooding out of her.
She gave way. Like storm clouds that crash into the high mountains releasing heavy rain into the desert, Cuddy could no longer hold back her tears of anger and frustration; because she could no longer hide them from herself.
She drove back to her condo and ended it with Lucas. There were more tears and angry words but he had gone.
Then she had sought out House. Could he forgive her? Could she forgive herself? No matter, she needed to try.
For the first time in many months she felt unburdened. The oppressive weight of lying to herself, of dating a man she didn't love to build a life with him, supposedly all for her daughter, and the most terrible falsehood, that she didn't love Gregory House, had all been lifted from her heart. Her lies had been washed clean this night, like rain washes away dust in the desert, allowing hope, like flowers, to bloom in its stead.
She parked the car in the small lot adjacent to her building and when she turned to look at him again, seriously debating whether to wake him up. The light of dawn shaded the angles of House's face in muted colors of pink and grey and yellow. His handsome high cheekbones were offset by a large bruise that had formed on one side of his face. A secondary collapse underneath the parking garage had formed the bruise just as it had marred his refined, straight nose with an angry red slash. His deep set eyes were framed by long, dark lashes and his kissable mouth remained slightly open as he steadily inhaled and exhaled.
Except for the cuts and bruises and dust, Gregory House looked like the boy she remembered from Michigan. And Lisa Cuddy suddenly felt as if she were that same girl from school with more than just a simple infatuation on the tall, lanky, funny, cocky, genius med student.
But Cuddy knew that reality, the here and now, must eventually intrude upon them. House still needed his shoulder attended to. He needed rest and she wanted sleep herself. She grudgingly removed her hand from his grasp and as she did so, she leaned into him, gently kissing his scruffy cheek.
Cuddy immediately felt his long eyelashes brush against her face as House awoke with a start. She leaned back, still looking at him as he blinked several times before looking to the side, registering the intensity of her oceanic gaze upon him.
"We're here," she said quietly.
"Hmmm," was all he was able to utter while rubbing his bloodshot blue eyes with the back of his hand.