A/N: Let's add this to the list of things that would never happen but are fun to imagine anyway. This is clearly why I should NOT watch House just before going to bed (or maybe I should, lol--you can be the judge of that). The subconscious likes to do crazy things...

Aisle 7

The way he stood there, staring up at the sign, it was as if the words there were written in Greek or Aramaic or even Klingon rather than eight simple letters of the English alphabet: Whole Foods.

"You said you were going for lunch," he accused, sounding as betrayed as if she had promised him a trip to the candy store and instead pulled up in front of the dentist's office.

"I said I was going to get food for lunch," she corrected, though from what she'd seen of House's kitchen, he probably drew little distinction between the two. She knew she should've been suspicious when he had so readily volunteered to accompany her—had thought (hoped) that this progression implied a step forward, a sort of permanence: what could be more innocently normal than a Saturday morning trip to the grocery store? "It's 10:30 in the morning. And you just ate."

"Cornflakes are part of a balanced breakfast, Cuddy—not the whole thing. Says so right on the box."

He was dragging his feet, lagging again, and she was beginning to understand why some people quite literally kept children on leashes. Reaching back, she tugged on his arm, but he stopped completely, standing his ground. She saw quick, faded images of him as a two-year-old: red-faced, screeching, and kicking with two good legs and all his little might. And honestly, if he had lowered himself to the asphalt and started up a tantrum even now, she couldn't say she would've been all that surprised.

"No way in hell you're dragging me in there," he grumbled in response to her pointed look.

"I'm not dragging you anywhere." She released her grip on his arm, continuing on without him and calling over her shoulder, "If you don't want to come inside, you can wait in the car."

"Give me the keys."

"Right," she muttered—and not have him or the car be there when she came back out. Half-chuckling—he had continued to follow her like a lost puppy (an exceedingly sarcastic and, at the moment, cranky one)—she tried to wrestle one cart away from the others. Not surprisingly, House didn't offer any assistance. "I only need a few things."

"Then why're you getting a cart?"

Yanking once more—and rewarded by nothing more than a dull, metallic clank—she slapped her palms against the handlebar, turning to him in exasperation. "Are you going to carry the basket?"

He nudged her out of the way with an amused expression, and she found his cane in her hands, both of his wrapped around the cart's handle. With a grunt from House and the screech of resistant wheels, metal on metal, the cart relinquished, separating from the others. House pulled it only far enough so that she would be able to remove it, taking back his cane. "Can I sit in the cart?"

"If you can get into the child seat, then be my guest."

He seemed almost to consider this, quickly realizing that the logistics simply weren't going to work if he was going to keep certain parts of his anatomy more or less intact. "How 'bout if I just stand on the back and you push me?"

"How about if you just walk quietly beside me and we'll be out of here in ten minutes?"

Wishful thinking. Or just stupidity.

"Ten whole minutes? But Mooooom…."

If she could forget about the sex, his brilliance, or those rare but priceless moments when they truly connected on a deeper level—something beyond speech or sex or any other form of actual communication—she might begin to think that she actually was looking after a ten-year-old. It didn't help that the cart she had finally managed to secure had a personality all its own (and very much like his), kept trying to veer to the left and required a firm hand to make it bend to her will.

"Oh, grow up. I refuse to believe you've never stepped foot in a grocery store."

"When it's a matter of life and death, and only for as long as absolutely necessary. Women turn shopping into a five-hour ordeal."

"Shoes, maybe. Lingerie, definitely," she teased, pausing to watch as he tried not to show his interest and pulled a face when he caught her eyes on him. "I don't want to be in here any longer than—"

"Grapes."

It was almost a bark, and she blinked at its suddenness. He was conceding to this whole shopping thing, but he wasn't going to like it or make it easy. And he most certainly had a plan. She had won the battle, not the war, but she could deal with that—had with him for years.

"Fine."

A mistake, not being more specific or wary—she should've known this by now. Something bounced off her arm as she bent to inspect the grapefruit; then her shoulder; the third object hitting so close to her cleavage that it almost required an embarrassing search-and-rescue mission. Shielding herself, she turned to glare at him, but too late—his feigned innocence was a work of art (part Impressionism, part Cubism—all of it painted over with the freneticness of Expressionism), and he shrugged, popping a few grapes into his mouth.

"If Mother Nature hadn't intended for them to be thrown, she wouldn't have made them such excellent projectiles. And I'm assuming you'd cover up your bull's-eyes if you weren't up for a little target practice."

"One of these days I will, and you'll be—stop it." She hoped the vagueness of the command would be enough to cover everything as he ate another grape and lobbed a fourth in her direction. "You pay for those by weight, and if you—"

"Like one is gonna make a difference," he scoffed, tossing at least five more into his mouth.

"No, but entire handfuls might. And those haven't even been washed."

Throwing another grape into the air and catching it in his mouth, he munched the fruit with a look of pure rapture—probably not a coincidence that it mirrored an expression she'd only recently grown accustomed to seeing. Generally horizontal then, with more perspiration and under much less harsh lighting, but the uncanny resemblance….

"Added protein."

"Put them in the cart."

"We're off the clock." He waved the grapes in front of her tauntingly, dangling them just over the carriage. "You're officially not the boss of me."

"You're officially acting like a three-year-old."

"You were singing a different tune last night." The bag of grapes dropped into the cart with a dull thud, half of them probably bruising. But the much more pressing issue at the moment was the mischievous gleam that had suddenly appeared in his eyes. "Or screaming might be more accurate. My right ear's still ringing."

"I don't scream," she hissed, the best she could do for the moment with the rush of breathless memory, the way he suddenly brushed up against her, and that bone-melting grin. "And for a good part of last night, I was the boss of you."

Her breath hitched towards the end, a soft sound that barely broke the sentence, and she wondered if it was enough for him to notice. It was insane—there was no other word for it—absolutely insane of her to be acting like a silly schoolgirl who'd just discovered the merits (as they were) of the opposite sex. This—whatever it was between them: stupid arguments and pent-up tension that had culminated in fantastic, almost frenzied sex and building from there into something almost resembling a relationship—had been going on for weeks now, more than enough time for her to be used to the touching, the sex, him, yet….

House cleared his throat, the noise seeming to surprise him as much as it did her. "That's what you think," he belatedly mumbled, voice rumbling low, and he moved away, absently a running hand over the apples as he went: McIntosh, Empire, Gala, Pink Lady, Red Delicious…. She stifled a groan as she watched his fingers. God, when had fruit become so dangerous (at least this far outside of Eden)? With a deep breath, she tore a plastic bag from the nearest roll, fumbling to find the end that opened before selecting grapefruit at random and shoving them inside.

"Hey, Cuddy!"

Only a few feet away and he felt the need to bellow loud enough to be heard over an absolute downpour, never mind the almost noiseless sprinklers currently spritzing the lettuce. She didn't need to look up to know that he doubtless had the attention of everyone within a fifty-foot radius—or that she probably would be less than thrilled by whatever came out of his mouth next. At least he had the courtesy—if it could be called that—to sidle slowly closer before continuing, cane hooked on his arm and a fruit in each hand.

"You squeeze my melons, I'll squeeze yours."

It was hard not to laugh when he was holding two cantaloupe up to his chest and shaking them in what he no doubt assumed to be an enticing manner, but she managed—raising an eyebrow to keep the half-smile that had escaped to her lips from growing any wider. "I have a feeling one of us will get a little more enjoyment out of that than the other."

Another mistake: House turned her own sentence on her almost immediately, as though he had been hitching for a chance.

"You can pay me back when we get to the bananas."

Wiggling his eyebrows, he shook his newly-acquired breasts in her face before holding them up to hers for comparison. His thumbs caressed the rough skin of the fruit gently, almost reverently, the gesture so familiar that she could practically feel his fingers ghosting over her own skin—touch by osmosis: fruit and metaphor standing in for membranes and water. And God,this was so not the time or the place. She turned away in a huff, back to business and shopping. She could resist him. She could resist sex. And there was no reason why the combination of the two should prove fatal.

But he knew exactly what he was doing: tone innocently conversational if pitched just a tad too low. "What's with the Produce Department and erotica? It's like a soft-core porno in here. Bananas… melons… whatever the hell this is…."

Whatever the hell it was was currently smacking against her forearm, so she had little choice but to quickly glance up from the asparagus to what he held in his hand. Racking her brain for the names of exotic fruit, at least, left little of her mind free for anything else (whether it was methods of killing him or sexual fantasy). "Tamarind."

"Seriously, what body part does this look like to you?"

It was a leading question and she wasn't going to answer, but he apparently hadn't planned for her to. Not having gotten enough of a rise out of her, House had moved on to the corruption of youth. A scrawny, scab-kneed boy had materialized beside them, peering up at the fruit solemnly before making his verdict. "A arm."

"I think we've got a difference in proportion," House mused, holding the tamarind up to the child's arm. "I'd say it's more the size of—"

She nudged him—hard. "Little ears, House…."

"Not really what I was thinking." Grinning broadly at the boy, House swatted at her with the fruit, brandishing it like a machete: a blow to the bicep, the forearm, the hip. With a sharp look, she quickly grabbed the makeshift weapon from him before he could continue his safari into latitudes closer to the equator. The boy tried to smother a fit of giggles behind cupped hands, but the laughter slipped through his fingers.

"I know what you're thinking, and the entire Produce Department doesn't need a perverted anatomy lesson."

House cocked his head, his fingertips playing at the hem of her shirt. "How about just you?"

Hand to arm to thorax (fingertips barely touching, almost tickling—or maybe this time his lips went ahead to scout out the territory, joined after a moment by teeth and tongue), down the abdomen (lazily, much too slowly), finally reaching the pelvis and….

"Billy! Billy! Leave those people alone! What did I tell you about bothering every single—"

She snapped back to attention as the boy scampered away, arms pumping, a renegade fist smacking her leg as he passed.

Right. Grocery store. Small children and old ladies whose idea of indecency was letting their ankles show. Saturday mornings should be G-rated: all cartoons and sugary cereal, and most certainly not whatever House had in mind. But the slow, warm flush that started deep in her belly, leaving its telltale footprints behind as it stole steadily up her chest, wouldn't listen to reason. The cart squeaked softly as she forced it to the right, pushing steadily ahead.

"Oh, no." House ground to a halt so quickly she could almost hear the screech of brakes. He waved a hand at some invisible barrier in front of him, shaking his head. "This is where I draw the line."

"At the natural foods section?"

"Self-preservation. I plan to leave this place with as much of my manhood still intact as possible."

She rolled her eyes. Men and their unnatural aversion to anything… well, natural—at least when it came to food. "Because there's nothing more emasculating than a little soy and granola."

The silence was strange—there should have been some smart-alecky comment. But he was already gone. Shrugging, she continued down the aisles, keeping one ear open for the crackling of the PA system that occasionally broke through the elevator music. So far, so good: no announcements for the Hell Bitch, the Devil Woman, or even Lisa Cuddy—or warnings that a crazed cane-wielding shopper was terrorizing the canned goods section. She'd find him eventually—probably in the meat department, standing over an array of sausages and loudly proclaiming about their sizes relative to….

An unexpected puff of air just over her ear caused her to hiss in an involuntary breath—which almost immediately released itself in a (hopefully exasperated) sigh. Her chin connected with something somewhat soft and slightly cold—his nose, she thought—when she turned back to look at him; facing forward was a better option. "You can't step foot in the organic section, but you'll follow me into the feminine hygiene aisle?"

"Aisle 7 is home to more than douches and tampons," he stated matter-of-factly—and a little too loudly. But her split-second panic that some nearby prude would hear him and take offense was almost instantly allayed as he entered her field of vision, dropping an armful of condom boxes into the cart with a clatter and a smirk. "Huge sale. I figure these oughta get us through the week."

"A little presumptuous." —Was it? Really?— "Put them back."

"All of them?" He was certainly whining, almost pouting—should've known that if he was going to use sex to torture her, she sure as hell could turn the tables. "We're running low."

"Well if someone hadn't kept trying to make balloon animals…."

"Hey, there was no trying about it," House grumbled, gathering up the condom boxes—all but two, which she pretended not to notice—and placing them amongst the diapers on the shelves as if a belated warning (or more likely a taunt) to new parents.

"My mistake. Clearly you've missed your—"

"Hold on," he suddenly demanded, something accusatory in his tone, and the box of tampons she had been about to place in the cart was snatched from her hand and held aloft. His eyes flicked from her to the box and back again, and he read it as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. "Super absorbency. Our best protection yet. New advanced—"

"House."

"So let me get this straight." He turned his attention back to her again, that knowing grin plastered on his face. "You can pick out whatever you want to shove up there, but I don't have any say? That doesn't seem fair."

Ignoring his crudeness—more to keep herself from laughing than anything—she quickly lunged for the tampons, managed to secure the box though he tried to pull it out of her reach. She tossed it into the cart, turning to glower at him. "You start bleeding once a month and then we'll talk about fair."

"Is this where I have to suffer though the 'you don't know how hard it is to be a woman' speech, because I can think of…." He paused, twisting up his mouth and squinting at the ceiling, either working some mysterious calculations or simply buying time—knowing him, probably both. "… five good reasons why you chicks have it made."

Only when she tried to move did she realize how he had somehow managed to entrap her: the cart, his body, his cane, a formidable shelf of maxi-pads in all shapes, sizes, and scents. The cart and cane were out—he had a hand on each and wouldn't be above using either against her. Diving straight into him was laughable for obvious reasons—though it carried with it the possibility of winding him and the element of surprise, there was no guarantee that she'd be able to disengage from his magnetic field. Clearly her only options were speech or scaling the shelves behind her, and seeing as one took much less effort than the other….

"I'm sure you'll enlighten me whether I want to hear them or not."

"You've heard them already. Neighbors probably did, too." He took a step closer, held up five fingers, and she squirmed in frustration, unable to move away. "Last night: 7:30… 7:45... 10:15... 10:20… and 3:00ish—though technically, that was this morning…."

All he put her through every single day for years, and she had never been more completely filled with the urge to kill him in order to wipe that cocky smile from his face—or was it kiss? such an easy mistake to make, a single repeated letter.

"You kept track…?"

"No," he admitted, the vowel stretching forever through that sideways grin, "but I know you didn't." He was right, damn him, coherent speech had been beyond her, forget anything as complicated as telling time. "Rebuttal? Or have I already won?"

She tried to concoct an argument: something involving biology and refractory periods—neither of which she had any control over—but that was as far as thought could take her, and his closeness wasn't helping. Pushing against his chest to keep the air that surrounded them from pressing into her—stickily, heavily, so that every breath was thick and sweet as syrup—she gave herself some room to edge away from him, gripping the cart with both hands. "It's not a competition."

"Since when? Everything is a comp—"

Throwing a quick glance at the empty aisle, she decided to screw rules and decorum, and yanked at the collar of his t-shirt, pressing a quick kiss to the first spot on his face her mouth lips hit—more his chin than his mouth, the prick of stubble tingling her lips. It was a move so uncharacteristic of her, as exposed as they were in the store, that his eyes widened comically—a reaction that made even the butterflies of embarrassment that burst into her stomach worth every flutter.

Desperate times called for desperate measures—she couldn't win if she didn't play.

"Five reasons." It was ridiculous that she was somewhat breathless, her voice almost a purr. "That's the only one I can give you here."

Her senses were heightened—everything crystal-clear, magnified—and she could practically see his pupils dilate, the pulse beat just that much faster in his neck. He had recovered from his initial surprise, swapping cartoonlike shock for seriousness—they could've been discussing politics, religion, the treatment (or lack thereof) of his latest almost-dead patient, except….

"Insatiable," he all but growled, and maybe she was for the moment (after a seemingly never-ending drought), but then so was he, in his own way. "You did get sex food, right?"

"Sex food? House…."

"We'll need sustenance. Whipped cream. Chocolate sauce…." As he spoke, a young mother entered the aisle and came up close beside them, staring confusedly at the condom-and-diaper array on the nearby shelf while bouncing a fussing baby on her shoulder. Of course, the appearance of other people only encouraged House to raise his voice. "Anything I can slather all over you and—"

"Fruit?" she interrupted with a quick glance into their cart and an apologetic smile at the scandalized young woman.

"You've had that food group covered since puberty." He ignored their audience completely. One second. Two. And there went the eyes, sliding from hers, down her jaw, the curve of her neck, resting on the chest—a trail so familiar to her and to him that it had nearly been blazed into her skin. He swallowed, took a deep breath, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand while his gaze took a nosedive to his shoes. "It's time to go."

There. Insatiable.

"What—all this grocery shopping worn you out?" It was her turn to play innocent now, and she was going to slip in all the coyness she could muster.

Scowling, House grabbed the cart from her almost roughly and began to push it down the aisle, pausing only long enough to turn back and hook her with his cane when she didn't immediately follow (a move that really should've seem much more annoying than sexy). "What're you waiting for, woman? Your allotted shopping minutes are up."

She wasn't going to fight it—or, for once, him—and fell easily into step beside him, her hand landing half on top of his when she placed it on the handlebar (of the cart he was pushing, which contained almost everything she had intended to get, in spite of his antics). He didn't pull away, twisted a finger over one of hers—a victory in her favor if she ever saw one.

"You didn't," House muttered pointedly as they exited the aisle, scanning the row of registers for the shortest line.

"What?"

"Win."

Was he really that in tune with her thoughts or had she actually spoken aloud? Dipping her chin, she tried to hide her silly smile, grateful for the curtain of hair that cascaded over her shoulders and the pretense of sanctuary even if she knew that he could see straight through it—straight through her. "We'll see."

Thank you so much for reading! If you have a chance, I'd love to hear what you thought!