Title: he could be your whole life if you got past one night

Summary: He was incredibly brilliant, sarcastic to the point of hilarious and still arrogant as all hell, but that was somehow endearing too. Huddy.

A/N: Because I love college fics. Also, the title's stolen from "Fuck Me Pumps" by Amy Winehouse.

Disclaimer: Yeah. I don't own 'em.

----

He arrived at UMich the same year you did. He, however, was known before he even arrived, while you were fighting tooth and nail for any recognition you could get. He was brilliant, sarcastic, arrogant and the best lacrosse player the school had seen in years. Rumors flew around campus about him—what professor he proved wrong or made cry that week, which party he'd be at on Friday, procedures he already knew how to perform, and so on and so forth. Med and pre-med students buzzed about Greg House almost constantly.

You tried to ignore him—you didn't even know him, so why should you care? But you started going to the lacrosse games. You didn't sit with the rest of the groupies who giggled and cheered and made signs. You were on your own, standing at the top of the bleachers, simply observing. You told yourself it was a study break, a time where you could think about things other than school. And you began studying in the library more than in your room—which you never used to do—simply because there was a chance you might see him. Of course, you never admitted that to yourself; you simply claimed it was because your room had too many distractions.

One day, while you were immersed in your Prentice Hall chemistry book, a pair of dripping, muddy cleats landed on the table next to you.

"How goes it, Cuddy?" he asked, swinging his bag off his shoulder and dropping into the other chair at your table.

He spread out like molasses. You just looked at him for a moment, drinking in his long legs that he stretched over the table nonchalantly. He was covered in dirt—it was smudged on his cheek and stained his clothes. How did he manage to look so damn attractive like that?

"Lacrosse?" you asked, not bothering to question how he knew your name.

"You're observant, Cuddles."

"Oh, gee, thanks, Greg," you shot back, knowing he only went by House.

He grinned, a little impressed, and pulled out his books.

"Are we studying together now?"

"You looked lonely," he said.

"I wasn't."

He just kept grinning and opened a book, carelessly skimming the pages.

You glared at him for a while before giving up and going back to your own books.
"So," he said as soon as you got back into the groove of studying, "you're the overachieving freshman who has been to all of no parties this year."

He didn't even ask it as a question, just a statement of fact.

"Trying to show how amazing you are because you know things about me?" you asked, wishing you actually were completely unimpressed.

"You are spitfire, aren't you?" he grinned. His blue eyes killed you.

"Either let me study or move to another table," you said, pushing his dirty cleats toward him. "I'm not interested in or impressed by you, and I'm not afraid to stand up to you."

He stood, then, towering over you, still grinning, always grinning. Smirking maybe.

You stood as well, and though he was well over half a foot taller than you, you stuck your chin out and looked him square in the eye.

"Test this week?" he asked, gesturing to your books.

You nodded.
"I'll help you study."

"For what?" you replied, knowing it wasn't for free.

He did that grin—smirk?—again and shrugged. "Got a Coke?"

---

And later, you had been at it for three hours and you drank too much Coke, laughed too hard, learned more about Chapters 7, 8 and 9 than you thought you ever could, and perhaps become a little starstruck.

You didn't really understand. Greg House was—what?—hanging out with you? And he was helping you. And really, all you had given him was six cans of Coke. (Why you decided to split an entire twelve pack, you're still not quite sure.) The thing was, he was fun. He was incredibly brilliant, sarcastic to the point of hilarious and still arrogant as all hell, but that was somehow endearing too.

He came over every night that week—even if you didn't have Coke—and helped you study. You got one hundred percent.

There was a biology test two weeks later, and though you never asked, he showed up Sunday night. You said nothing, just let him in and the studying began.

The test was Thursday, but he showed up that night anyway. You had decided from the beginning not to ask questions, so you let him in and went about your standard routine—editing essays, emailing professors, finishing your reading that wasn't due for days. Out of the corner of your eye you watched him. He was strung over your chair, too big for it—too big for your room it seemed—reading a medical journal.

This became your new routine. After a while, he didn't even knock, just showed up sometime after eight and took his place in your chair.

One night in December he jumped into the bed with you when he came in, burying his feet under your calves. He put his hands on your neck.

"Oh God! Greg!" you screamed. "You're freezing!"

He grinned—a real grin this time, no smirk. "Really?"

"Not funny! Get some gloves and—my God, are you not even wearing socks?"

"No need to. I can just come here and you'll warm me up."

You raised an eyebrow at him and he actually blushed a little.

"I didn't mean—" he started but you took his hands in yours and rubbed them, which served to shut him up.

He just looked at you, and you smiling, rubbing his hands until they were warm again.

"Thanks Lise."

Oh, God, when he called you that. You leaned in and kissed him gently.

No one ever believed that—that you were the on to make the first move. But it was true. It was your chin that tilted forward, your eyes that closed first and your lips that searched for his.

That first kiss was a little awkward and fumbling. He had been coming to your dorm for over a month now, and there had never been more than innuendo and glances at him through your lashes.

He pulled away to look at you, questions in those blue eyes of his. He tasted like too-sweet cherry lollipops and you smiled up at him, through your lashes once more, and the second kiss was less awkward. As was the third, and the fourth, and the….

---

The next month's nights all began innocently enough. He stayed in his own chair and you in your bed or at your desk. But they always ended with one of you on top of the other, kissing until you couldn't breathe.

Only thing was, he never moved past second base. It was Greg House—rumors of the girls he had bedded were everywhere—but he never so much as removed one piece of your clothing.

It actually got to be pretty annoying.

"Greg," you said nervously one day, "do you not want to have sex with me?"

His head snapped up to look at you. He beamed. "Of course I want to have sex with you. A guy'd have to be crazy to not want to have sex with you."

"Then why don't you ever…I mean why don't…" You trailed off.

"Lise." He interlaced his fingers with yours and kissed your hand. "You're a virgin. I didn't want to pressure you into anything. I figured when you were ready, you'd tell me."

You pulled him into your lap. It was only possible because he was already half-leaning on you and wasn't expecting it. Your hands threaded through his mess of hair and you kissed him, deeply, hungrily.

"How's this for telling you?" you asked breathlessly when you came up for air.

He grinned down at you. "We're taking this slowly and we're doing this right. But I have a feeling you're going to like it."

"I damn well better," you challenged.

Because everything between you was always a challenge. He had been second in his high school class—he swore it was only because he never went to class once he got into college—and you were first in yours. He could run faster than you—his legs that went up to your chest had that effect—but you could always run longer. So of course, even the sex was a challenge.

Eventually you fought over who got control, who could make the other lose control, who came first and hardest. You were never truly sure if he let you win—because he certainly did enjoy you in control—or you actually beat him, but none of it mattered.

---

Greg was sweet when he was with you. Arrogant still, of course, but in a gently teasing sort of way. He was Greg to you, and only to you. He'd even hold your hand while you were alone—"I have a reputation to uphold!" he insisted when you tried to do it in public.

It was different in public, in front of people, but you were okay with that. You trotted along more behind him than beside him. You let him live the big life of Gregory House, while you maintained a reputation of "the girl he'll dump within days" that developed into "within weeks" and then "within months" and sophomore year rested on "the girl who stayed with him."

Girls were jealous and guys still simply ogled your breasts and legs. It was the professors' reactions that surprised you. They were summed up by your inorganic chemistry professor sophomore year.

"You're the girl with Greg House," he said, looking at you over his wire-rimmed glasses. You nodded. "You must be crazy to stay with him, but also brilliant—he wouldn't date anything less."

You blushed and thanked him and hoped it was true.

---

When his senior year of med school was coming to a close, you refused to be the one to bring up what would happen. You had been together three years, and for two of them, when he thought you were asleep, he'd whisper that he loved you.

One Sunday morning, as you were doing your separate crosswords, you asked him, "What's the monetary unit of India?"

"Paisa," he replied without looking up.

"Thanks."

"I know. What are you ever going to do without me?" he sighed, clearly joking.

But you looked at him over your newspaper and he realized what he had said. His blue eyes were like ice. You would have actually shivered if you weren't so determined to not let him phase you.

"It's not going to work, Lise."

The fact that he had said that, used that name, made you know that he had thought about it—a lot probably. That was enough for you, because you knew that was all you would get.

"It's fine," you shrugged.

He crawled into bed with you and kissed you tenderly. You smiled.

"Really, I'm okay."

He kissed you again. Maybe I'm not, you heard behind his tongue, his lips, his teeth.

It wasn't until he left that you curled into a ball and cried for the better half of an hour.

---

When you met him again, he was your patient. You always expected the first time you saw each other again to involve nostalgic smiles and comments only the two of you understood. Instead he was screaming in pain and you were trying to remember how to be a doctor and there was a new woman, white pale and huddled in a corner of the room. Unconsciously, you started calling him House; it was the only way to detach.

---

He became your employee soon thereafter. Down a good leg and, possibly, a desire to live, and he embodied everything the professors hated about him at UMich. But now you took on the role of professor—of superior. You were the one in charge and it wasn't a challenge or a game. He could kill people or save them, and it was your job to make sure he did the latter.

Within a week he had been "unable" to hire a team, and therefore refused every case offered to him, because, after all, "How can I do a differential without a team?"

A day after you gave him an ultimatum—"Hire a team or you won't have a job next Monday"—he showed up on your doorstep.

He was already drunk when he arrived, which explained why he was on foot, no car in sight. House is reckless with his life but he's always been the savior of everyone else.

His drunk was always a classy drunk—never one to drunk dial or make an ass of himself. It was more a social lubricant drunk, where his mouth said the things he couldn't say sober. The pure, human truths his reputation would never allow him to reveal unless intoxicated.

"She left," he said, sitting on your couch and procuring a half-empty whiskey bottle from his coat.

"I heard," you replied. Not quietly, not sympathetically. It was the truth, and you knew House didn't come here for your pity.

"I loved her."

The sharp intake of breath showed you that it still hurt, that maybe you weren't over him after all. How were you supposed to respond? "I know" or "I'm sorry"? Neither were true.

"House, you have to hire a team."

"I know," he said, taking a long drag from the bottle. "This is just like med school—except you're the professor forcing me to work in a group and—"

"You claim you can't work without the group," you cut in, not wanting him to expand on just how it was unlike his med school years.

"They called you 'the girl who stayed with him.' D'you know that?" he asked.

You meet his eyes—blue on blue, oceans crashing together, powerful and fierce.

"They still do," you said.

That night was the second time you waited to get away from him before dissolving into tears.

---

You made it through too many years of abuse, of fighting for him, of smoothing over anywhere he ruffled—which was everywhere he touched. He continued to spark something in you—anger, frustration, lust—and you bickered and bantered your way through every conversation. He blatantly stared at your breasts, simply to bother you and please himself all in one. He was good at that combination.

He somehow managed to make friends with Wilson, and they stood by each other even when Wilson had every reason and right to leave. He had ostracized the two men on his team, and the woman had fallen in…something with him.

But he had cost less in dollars and frustrated sighs than he made up for through reputation and mortality rates, so you kept him around.

---

And now he's crashing your dates. It would simply be annoying, but the thing is, you're thinking about it, thinking about what would happen if it was him on these dates, what would happen if he didn't backtrack immediately when you claimed he liked you. And that makes it dangerous.

It would never work, you tell yourself. We wouldn't make it through one night, one date, one hour. Because he'd say something so very House and you'd get upset and he'd make a comment about how your chest heaves when you're angry.

Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd try to be a gentleman, maybe he wouldn't stare at your breasts or make inappropriate comments about your ass. That would probably be worse.

---

Your first date isn't one. Wilson comes to pick you up, and when you get in the car House sticks his head between the seats and you scream.

"Heya Cuddles," he grins.

Wilson apologizes to you with his eyes and you roll yours at him.

House makes an effort of sitting next to you when you get to the play, and you roll your eyes again.
"Maybe you could find a donor here," he says, scanning the crowd. "Clearly he would have the culture you desire, and hey!" He points. "There's a cute one!"

"Shut up," you order through clenched teeth.

This was supposed to be your night away from work, your nice, quiet, civilized night. But work followed you, he followed you. And he is anything but civilized.

He and Wilson trade gossip about the hospital—apparently Dr. Jamison has been doing things you never needed to know about with Hot Nurse #3. It's strange to see House outside of the hospital. He's smiling and might even be enjoying himself.

The play is amazing. Afterward, as you're walking to the car, House even makes some insightful, mature comments before mentioning how nice the main character's legs were.

"Probably's a stripper on the side. Pays better."

"Not a hooker?" Wilson asks nonchalantly, as though this is normal conversation. You realize that it is, with House anyway. This is what he's like.

As he rationalizes why she wasn't a hooker, somehow it's not nearly as bad as it seems at the hospital.

He jumps out of the car and opens your door for you when you reach your house, and you're almost pleasantly surprised before he grabs your ass and jumps into the front seat as soon as you're out.

You roll your eyes and Wilson apologizes and everything seems normal again.

---

Your second date isn't supposed to be one. Wilson's car pulls up and you slip your earrings in, pull on your coat and head for the door. But when you open it, it's House standing on your porch.

He looks cold, and maybe a little nervous.

"Jimmy doesn't feel well," he explains. "That or wife number-who-counts-anymore decided she didn't want him taking his hot boss to plays."

"You're driving his car," is your only response.

"I thought your dress might wrinkle on my bike."

It's somewhat considerate and you're pretty sure it was Wilson who came up with it, but you play along anyway.

He opens your door for you and he definitely looks nervous. You laugh.

"For heaven's sake, House, this isn't a date!" you say. "Settle down, and you don't have to open doors for me."

"It's just that charming, gentlemanly part of me I can't squelch," he says.

He's looking at you with a crooked smile and you realize you haven't gotten your other leg in the car with you and you're beaming at him and you wonder if maybe it is a date after all.

The play is good. Wilson always had good taste. You laugh and House's knee brushes your leg and it is all a little too familiar.

House takes you to coffee afterward and you let him. He's opening doors for you and even pushes your chair in, and you're enjoying it in spite of yourself.

Coffee is nice. There's the standard banter and you threatening him with bodily harm if he keeps bribing his way to the front of the MRI line.

You decide it's time to leave when his hand brushes yours too accidentally as he reaches for his napkin. At least he doesn't attempt to pay.

Outside the New England winter chill hits you harder than you expected. He slips out of his coat and holds it out to you. You just look at him.

"C'mon," is all he says.

You slide your arms into the sleeves and wrap the too-big coat around your front. The sleeves hang past your fingers. But the coat is warm and it smells of him and you forgot how much you liked that smell.

"The play reminded me of college," he says, and the arrogance in his voice is lost.

You glance at him and he's looking determinedly ahead and you wonder if he waited until you were walking to say this so he wouldn't have to look at you.

"Pianos and sex and love songs written for girls who you know you'll lose in the end."

"You never wrote me a love song," you reply quietly.

"Yes, Lisa, I did. I told you it was a Bach piece no one ever played because I didn't want you to know how much I loved you."

You blush and your cheeks are so hot you're pretty sure you haven't been this color since your professor freshman year announced halfway through semester than you had missed your first point on a test.

"Lisa," you repeat, rolling it around like toffee in your mouth.

"Yeah," he says. "When'd we stop calling each other by our names?"

"When you became my patient," you almost whisper.

"Lisa, I just told you I loved you for the first time and all you can focus on is the fact that I called you by your first name. There is something wrong with this situation."

"You told me you loved me the last two years of our relationship," you smile (sadly?). "You always thought I fell asleep first."

He falls silent. You're walking next to him now, not behind him. And you don't have to rush to keep up. The cane has brought his speed to your level, but all you want to do is race him again.

"Did you really love Stacy?"

As long as you're admitting things and calling each other by first names, you figure you'll pry for information.

"Yes, but she simply needed someone who wasn't going to treat her like she was special and fragile. She was never in it for the long haul."

You nod and stay in stride with him.

"You really want any of the guys you go on dates with?"

"Depends," you reply. "Does this count as a date?"

He looks at you sideways, out of the corner of one eye. You beam because he's smirking. It's not as if he hasn't smirked over the years—of course he has, every time he comments on your breasts or your legs, every time he gets you flustered or angry. But this is a different smirk. This is the smirk, from that first day in the library with muddy cleats and Coca Cola. It's the smirk he shot you when Mary Alice asked if you liked piano music not thirty minutes after he had made you come on top of one. It's the smirk you haven't seen since he kissed you goodbye before hopping on his motorcycle, his luggage piled in the sidecar, and drove out of your life for the first time.

He moves to push you against the brick wall of whatever building you're passing at the moment. He's slower than he used to be, and you predict it coming, but you pretend you don't. You let him think he takes you by surprise, and the reluctant force behind his lips actually does.

You pull away from him. "Don't go easy on me, Greg." God, you didn't realize how much you missed calling him that until this moment. "I can take you. I have before."

"I know," he grins—the grin that follows the smirk and your body shatters into a thousand cherry-flavored splinters as his lips land on yours again.