Many thanks to everybody who read, reviewed and favourited after I posted the last chapter. I know this is a bit of an angsty one, but I've left it deliberately open-ended. If you guys want a sequel let me know.

Still don't own them.

Sneakily House stole a spring roll from Cuddy's plate and grinned smugly in her direction when she turned to confront him about it, slumping further into her sofa.

"I didn't even get to try that."

"You snooze, you lose," he retorted, stuffing it into his mouth victoriously.

Putting her plate down she glanced around at the array of empty containers on the coffee table, unable to believe how much he'd eaten. When they'd gone into the shop on the way back House had greeted the man behind the counter and then effortlessly ordered dish after dish in Mandarin as she sat on the bench a couple of feet away, paranoid that he was only doing it to piss her off because she'd offered to pay. In reality he was just insanely hungry after eating little for days.

"You've eaten enough to feed a small army."

In response he casually kicked off his shoes and draped his legs over her lap, patting his stomach happily and secretly waiting for her to protest against the violation of her personal space. She didn't. In fact she barely seemed to notice.

"I've decided to let myself go… You can tell them if they want a non-CGI Jabba the Hut for a new film I'll be available in a few days."

Blankly Cuddy stared back at him.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Why am I not surprised you've never watched Star Wars?" he said with mock indignation, slotting his hands behind his head and creasing one corner of his mouth up into a lop-sided smirk. "It's a miracle I didn't dump you."

"Just because I have a more sophisticated taste in film…"

"Oh please! The only reason you watch films with subtitles is because you think men with accents are hot… The only reason I watched them with you was because the women almost always took their clothes off at some point."

"You are unbelievable!" she replied in exasperation.

He shrugged.

"I was allowed to look. It's not as if I would have touched anybody else."

Returning his steely gaze, Cuddy nodded sheepishly. It wasn't a lie. In spite of his other flaws House wasn't the type of guy to cheat. He might devote most of his waking hours trying to fathom out a patient's illness or contemplating the execution of his own agenda at the hands of the people around him, but in no way, shape or form would he have been capable of going behind her back and sleeping with someone else. He was strictly monogamous and in that respect they had been well suited. It would have been too easy to allow something to happen between them when she was still with Lucas, and yet she couldn't do it. She'd had to finish with the P.I. before she'd allowed herself to go to House's apartment and tell him that she was in love with him. The pain and humiliation she'd experienced in the aftermath of her ill-fated marriage had left her with no intention of ever inflicting the same on anybody else.

Laying her forearms across his shins, she looked thoughtfully at the ground and revelled in the strangely laid-back atmosphere between them.

"This is the most relaxed we've been around each other since before we got together… Why didn't we allow ourselves to just enjoy it?"

"We both had a lot to lose, I guess," House offered with a thoughtful pout. "Most of the time I felt like I was sitting an exam I hadn't revised for."

"You always used to be good at that."

"This time I couldn't wing it." Feeing a twinge in his thigh, he reached into his pocket, popped the lid on his Vicodin bottle and dry swallowed two pills, in the process catching Cuddy look away uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye. Sensing a sermon brewing under the surface he decided to act pre-emptively. "So come on then?"

"What?"

"I'm bracing myself for the 'just say no' lecture."

"There isn't going to be one… You of all people know that it isn't even just the risks to your mental health. Eventually your liver will stop working and I can pull as many strings as I want to, but there's no guarantee I could get you a new one."

"And that's not a lecture?" he asked agitatedly, adjusting his leg slightly so it wouldn't start to cramp. "You know this is pretty rich coming from the reason I fell off the wagon."

"So you're forgetting the pills you had in your hand when I found you on the bathroom floor about a year ago? That was all my fault too?"

"I'd just found out you were getting married to Lucas!"

"And it had nothing at all to do with losing a patient you'd bonded with?" House glared at her, but didn't respond. That night he'd opened so much of himself up to a stranger in the hope of convincing her to go ahead with something he hadn't had the courage to do himself. When she'd died everything had seemed so completely futile. No matter how hard he tried to be better, something would always come along to knock him back into his pit of misery and hopelessness again. Desperate to numb himself from everything around him, he'd broken into his last stash of Vicodin and then she'd stepped into his bathroom like some kind of guardian angel. For a few minutes everything in his life had seemingly clicked into place.

"It's like we hit pause for the time we were together," Cuddy continued. "We held our breath waiting for it all to come crashing down around our ears when the next crisis came along." She paused for a minute and thought about the night he'd turned up at the house to drunkenly declare that being in love with her made him a worse doctor. It hadn't been the romantic gesture he'd thought it was, but rather a shifting of guilt and responsibility onto her. As his boss as well as his girlfriend how was she meant to deal with that? "I can't be the reason you stop taking Vicodin. The same way I can't make you care enough about yourself to not want to… It wasn't fair of you to treat me like a replacement high, in the same way it wasn't fair of me to tell you I didn't want you to change."

For a long time House kept his own counsel, mulling over what she'd just said and letting his eyes rest on where her hand now cupped his knee. He'd missed this emotional intimacy and not the approximation of it that had increasingly become a problem after they'd become a couple. In spite of the games they played with each other over the years, when things got bad they always used to be able to rely on each other. She'd sat in court and perjured herself when the on-going situation with Tritter was almost certainly going to land him in jail, and he'd been there to give her the fertility injections he'd teased her about, but nevertheless kept to himself. Somehow moving closer together had driven them further apart.

"I don't understand why you didn't wash your hands of me years ago."

"The fact that you don't know is exactly why you keep on pouring that crap into yourself."

"Because cryptic is exactly what we need right now, Cuddy," he spat back sarcastically.

"You want me to be blunt? Fine… I've never met anybody like you. I doubt I ever will and I feel lucky because of that. You're brilliant, funny, attractive, exciting and yet you choose to focus on all the pain in your life like it's some sort of comfort blanket… I wish you could take a step back and see what I see."

"Which is?"

"A good man who deserves better for himself, regardless of whether he's in a relationship or not."

"I'm a mess."

"So am I," she breathed wearily. "Let's face it, who do we know who isn't?"

"You're less of a mess."

"Really?… From where I'm sitting it sure does seem like I'm a single parent in her forties, who works too much and has no idea how to make a relationship work… This isn't exactly what I had planned for myself when I was a kid."

"And that's half your problem."

"Now who's being cryptic?" she quizzed, rolling her eyes.

"You'd rather be playing full-time Mom like your sister just so Arlene could pat you on the head and tell you what a good daughter you are?"

She thought for a moment. There had been times when she'd been jealous of her younger sister and the relationship she had with their Mom, but if she was entirely honest the thought of leading that life horrified her. She wanted more than that and probably always would.

"No, I guess not."

"You're worth ten of Julia."

"I don't know whether to thank you or slap you on my sister's behalf," she cracked, more than a little taken aback by the effusiveness of the compliment.

Swinging his legs back down to the floor, he nervously shuffled a little closer to her on the sofa inexplicably feeling like a teenager again.

"You're special, Cuddy." He'd known that from the moment he'd set eyes on her in the bookstore back at college. So few people held his interest for more than a few minutes and yet here she was, still in his life twenty years later. "Whenever we're in the same room I can't take my eyes off you, and it's not just because most of the time I want to bend you over the nearest surface..." Feigning annoyance she coughed and smirked at him. The sexual tension between them had always been palpable. "You're super hot, smart, determined and, unlike most of the pen pushing asses in that hospital, you actually give a crap about everybody who comes through those doors every day… For some reason you give a crap about me."

Coyly she leaned even closer to him.

"I'm a pen pushing ass?"

"Uh-huh." He opened his mouth to speak again, but nothing came out, his train of thought lost when he realised just how close her mouth was to his now, the woody notes of her perfume assaulting his senses and contributing to his rapid heat rate. "Can I kiss you?"

Painfully slowly she shook her head and bit her lip provocatively.

"I've got a better idea."

"It'll complicate things."

"It doesn't have to. We both know where we stand… I just want us to have one time where neither of us is scared about what the other one is thinking, or worried about what tomorrow is going to bring."

House faltered. Any token resistance he had against them sleeping together was crumbling away fast.

"If Wilson found out he'd try to browbeat us into getting back together… Anybody he sleeps with he's programmed to marry them."

"Then he's not going to find out. Everything that happens tonight stays between you and me." Finally she closed the gap between them, grazing her lips against his in a delicate kiss that promised much more to come, soon pulling away to watch his eyelashes flutter as his lids opened abruptly in a non-verbal complaint. "Take me to bed, House."

Barely getting her into the bedroom, House pressed her against the door and embraced her hungrily, his hands deftly unbuttoning her blouse as she kissed back with equal fervour. Then something changed between them abruptly: a subtle, sudden passivity in her response to him. Unable to ignore it he broke away and frowned at her, confused by the unreadable expression on her face.

"What?" She broke eye contact and looked over his shoulder evasively, unnerving him even more. She was the one who'd initiated this. It wasn't as if he was pushing her into something she didn't really want. "What?"

"Is this different?" she eventually stuttered. "Different to when you pay for it?"

Straight away his hands fell back to his sides. He felt like he'd been punched in the gut.

"I can't believe you just asked me that." Stunned, he took a step away from her and clasped his hands together into the nape of his neck, all the while his mind racing to find an explanation. What the hell would possess her to ask that? "If this is some kind of trick…"

"It's not a trick."

"Then I'm not dignifying it with a fucking answer!" he intoned, raising his voice angrily.

"Please," Cuddy responded softly. "After the last couple of weeks, I think I need to hear it."

Realising why she wanted to know, House screwed his eyes shut and breathed out forcefully. All the hookers he'd slept with and rubbed her face in it since the break-up had achieved exactly what he'd wanted at the time; he'd hurt her. Now he felt like a dick, a dick who was taking advantage.

"Which part of "You're special" do you not understand? It's not even the same thing… This was a bad idea. I'm gonna go."

"I don't want you to." She stepped closer to him, pushed her blouse off her shoulders and then unzipped her skirt, allowing the material to pool at her feet as it skimmed over her hips and thighs. "I just had to hear you say it."

Exploratively House reached out and touched her side, his line of vision falling to the place where his thumb was sweeping over the small scar the biopsy had left. Out of nowhere he felt overwhelmed. He could have lost her, not just as his girlfriend, but for good. If the tumour hadn't been benign, right now he could have been watching her go through chemo feeing completely useless as her body gradually gave up on her. Worse still, he wouldn't have known what to say or do to make it any better for her. She'd always been strong enough to pick him up when he fell down, and this one time he couldn't do the same for her without bolstering himself chemically.

"I froze," he blurted out.

Soothingly she ran her fingers along his chest.

"It's ok."

"It's not ok... I do care about you. I just can't…" The rest of the sentence hung in the air like an unfinished thought. He couldn't what? Ultimately put his own needs before somebody else's? Leave himself that open to heartache after everything that had already happened in his life? Or was he simply selfish through and through? He didn't know the answer. Perhaps he'd never be able to put himself in a position to find out.

"It doesn't matter now," she pacified. "It's done. I'm sick of going over and over in my head where we went wrong… Not everything was bad."

The corners of House's mouth slid upwards into a mischievous grin. He couldn't miss an opportunity to tease her.

"You have a one track mind."

"That wasn't what I meant, but now you mention it…"

Not moving her eyes from his, she finished undoing the buttons on his shirt and slipped his arms out of the sleeves, discarding the garment behind her without looking back. They'd started out this way in the early hours of the morning after the crane accident, stood before one another in a room and the irony that it was going to end in the same way wasn't at all lost on her. Snaking her fingers from his cheek to his clavicle she regarded the remnants of the scar he'd sustained that night, the absolute terror she'd experienced when the rubble had fallen in on him all flooding back. After he'd performed the amputation and managed to get out, that look they'd given each other before he closed the ambulance doors had confirmed two things to her: she couldn't marry Lucas and she was kidding herself that she wasn't in love with him. Now all of that seemed like a lifetime ago. Somehow they'd managed to condense more than one couple's fair share of fighting, frustration and temporary resolutions into less than a year.

Trailing her fingertips further down his chest and abdomen and then lower, she started when his hand grasped her wrist and prevented her from popping the button on his pants. Questioningly she frowned at him.

"I might be fucking useless at taking care of you in most ways, but this isn't one of them."

Without warning he scooped her up and dumped her on the bed unceremoniously, her entire body bouncing as it hit the mattress.

"Oh wow!" Cuddy giggled as he slung one leg over her hip and straddled her. "Will Tarzan be beating his chest soon?"

"I'd prefer to focus on yours."

Reaching behind her he unclasped her bra and threw it on the floor, unashamedly staring at her breasts and then cupping them, his thumbs brushing over her nipples as he marvelled at how she was reacting to him. Sensing her eyes on him expectantly, he bent forward and nuzzled her neck, his mouth moving progressively down her body until his tongue swirled around her areola and he caught her nub gently in between his teeth, the sensation making her keen underneath him. Smiling to himself he turned his attentions to the other breast and repeated the action, this time causing her to out and out moan her appreciation, before he snaked his lips down further still, feathering kisses down her abdomen and pausing to hook his fingers into the sides of her black panties.

Raising his head to look at her, he saw the uninhibited lust in her eyes and he knew he had her, the realisation fuelling his own need. Scooting down the bed, he inched her underwear over her legs and casually flung them over his shoulder, pressing his lips against the crook of her ankle and running his palms along the inside of her thighs as he stared down at the evidence of her arousal. Suddenly an obscure memory hit him.

"I used to have this dream about you all the time."

"One of those dreams?"

"Well I don't have dreams that involve you changing bed pans," he joked acerbically. "You'd wanted to see me in your office because I'd broken the MRI or blown up a patient or whatever and when I got there your chair was always turned towards the window."

Cuddy snorted.

"Don't tell me. White cat and a scar down my face?"

Irritated, House sighed and pursed his lips.

"I should tie you up, leave you here and then call 911… I can see the headlines now: Dean of Medicine at local hospital involved in sex game gone wrong."

"Try it, Buster," she retorted, seductively trailing her foot over his chest. "Then see what happens to your balls." Warningly she let her eyes linger over the bulge in his pants, which only succeeded in turning him on even more.

"Funnily enough that's pretty much what you said in my dream. We argued, you took off your clothes, I got down on my knees in front of you and then I did this…"

Wedging her legs further apart he craned himself forward and splayed his fingers across her rib cage as his tongue teased it's way inside her and his nose nudged her clit. Instantly Cuddy's hips rose in response to the stimulus, forcing him to move his hands lower and press her hips back into the mattress. Drawing it out as long as he could House continued to torment her, the pads of her fingers eventually digging into his scalp when her muscles began to quake and a string of pleas to God flew from her mouth. Minutes passed and finally she couldn't hold out any longer, her entire body jolting as she verbalized her orgasm and called out his name.

Gently coming back down to Earth, she felt a shifting on the bed and heard a zip being undone as she kept her eyes shut and tried to get her breathing back to normal. Again she sensed movement above her and hazily fluttered her eyelids open to see House's face above her, his hair muzzed, his skin flushed and the mirth from a little while ago all but vanished.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his fingers brushing her hair away from her damp forehead, the sincerity of his words plain to see.

"I'm sorry too."

Drawing him towards her, she embraced him as he entered her, her legs instinctively wrapping around him as they found a steady rhythm with little urgency, both of them desperate to make this last as long as they possibly could. Words, touches and looks of appreciation enveloped them as nothing outside their bubble seemed to exist until it became impossible to force back the tide: nothing that intense could last forever. Burying his head into her shoulder House finally fell over the edge and took her with him, her heels digging into his back as she came for the second time and everything faded to black momentarily.

Conscious that his full weight was on her, House summoned the energy to flip onto his back and drowsily slung an arm over her back as she turned over and laid her head on his chest just like she always had after they'd made love. Time ticked by and neither of them said a word, both unwilling to break the spell.

Her stomach starting to knot, nervous energy eventually propelled Cuddy to say something.

"You're counting my vertebrae again." It was something she used to catch him doing when his mind was preoccupied.

"Yeah. All present and correct."

"You are by far the strangest guy I ever dated."

House half smiled, finding himself unable to ignore the past tense in her sentence.

"That's some comedown from being the most incredible man you've ever known. That kind of downward trajectory is impressive even for me."

"It's still true," she reaffirmed, lifting her head to check on him. Most of the time she suspected her words to him went in one ear and came out the other, but evidently what she'd told him that day had stuck with him. "I thought it then and I think it now."

Processing what she'd said, he continued to focus on a tiny blemish in the plaster on her bedroom ceiling. Incredible really wasn't all it was cracked up to be, especially when it brought with it bucket loads of pain, misery and loneliness.

"This would be way easier if I wasn't still in love with you."

"I know," she agreed forlornly. Of course she was in the same situation. She could barely remember a time when she hadn't been.

"Do you think we'll ever be able to try again?"

Cuddy didn't answer straight away, instead taking time to mull the question over. Giving him false hope would be cruel, but then again could she categorically rule out them getting back together at some point in the future? In their case anything was conceivable.

"I honestly don't know. So much would have to happen for that to even be a possibility." She looked up and saw the crease in his forehead grow deeper, the notion obviously troubling him. "I hope so, but timing has never exactly been on our side, has it?"

Silently he acknowledged she was right. Either he was being kicked out of college, she was becoming a Mother, or one of them found themselves in a relationship when the other was single. Even when they'd finally decided to give it a go, deep down neither of them had really been ready for that leap of faith.

"You'll find somebody else… You should find somebody else."

"I've just been in two relationships that ended badly, House, I'm not about to fall into another one… Rachel's the most important person in my life. I need to concentrate on her." She hesitated for a second before changing the topic to him. "There's no reason why you can't be happy with another person. You were with Stacy for a long time."

"And that was mostly before the infarction… These days I have to pay most women to tolerate spending an hour with me. Come to think of it there aren't many women I can tolerate spending that length of time with anyway."

"You've still got Wilson," she offered.

"Wilson looks awful wearing lipstick and a skirt."

Promptly Cuddy snickered heartily at the mental image, House's own chuckle echoing hers as their thoughts turned to the oncologist who was no doubt getting himself into a lather over the potential consequences of locking them in his office. When the laughter died down he suddenly realised now was the perfect moment to make his exit.

Kissing her on the top of her head he extracted himself from underneath her and moved to the side of the bed.

"You're going?" The disappointment in her voice made him want to crawl back beside her, but he had to do this.

"If I don't, if I let myself sleep on this, I'll end up embarrassing myself and we'll be right back where we were." Sliding next to him and covering herself with the sheet, she nodded solemnly. "I'm going to need some time off. We could do with some time apart to let things get back to normal and I need to get clean again… I'll give Nolan a call when I get home."

"It's gone midnight."

He shrugged.

"If he didn't want me to call him after bedtime, he shouldn't have given me his personal number."

"Ok. I'll take care of things at work… Give me five minutes and I'll drive you back home."

"No," he answered forcefully, reaching out to skim the backs of his fingers against her cheek. This had to end now before his resolve broke. "I'll get dressed and call a cab."

With the light from the lamp illuminating her face he saw her eyes water and her lip wobble, as her head bobbed in agreement.

When she came out of the bathroom and there was no sign of him in the bedroom her first thought was that he'd gone without saying goodbye. She'd told him to wait a few minutes, but then this was House. He wasn't exactly one for jovial farewells. Feeing a shiver course through herself she fastened the belt on her gown and stepped out of the bedroom into the hall, surprised by the soft light striking out into the corridor from Rachel's room. Even before she actually saw him leaning against the inside wall and staring at the home-made, pink stars that hung in streams from the ceiling she could practically hear him thinking, brooding.

"What did you tell her?" he asked quietly, not bothering to look at her as she stood in the doorway and folded her arms, apparently still mesmerised by the paper cut-outs.

"That we had a disagreement. That we weren't together anymore." Cuddy couldn't help but picture the look of confusion on her daughter's face when she'd finally sat her down to talk to her a couple of days after they'd split. Confusion and then distress. "She doesn't understand. She keeps on asking when you're coming back to play."

Desolately House's head thumped back against the multi-coloured alphabet poster behind him. He wasn't entirely sure why he was stood where he was, but he'd felt drawn to the darkened room as he'd passed it, compelled to take a look at a room that had become familiar territory with bedtime stories and the games the little girl had roped him into playing. At the time he'd felt it was all under duress: you date a woman with a kid, and at least appearing to bond with their offspring was par for the course. Now he wasn't so sure.

"You remember when I sat in here and made those stars with her?"

Cuddy nodded.

"It took hours. Rachel kept on gluing her fingers to the card."

"I did it to get laid," he sighed, for the first time making eye contact with her. "Every time I babysat, agreed to pick her up from school or even played with her it was to either get you off my back or get you into bed." Shifting awkwardly on the spot, his ex looked down at her feet having no idea what to say. She'd suspected it was the case, but hearing him say that Rachel had been used as a pawn was unpleasant nevertheless.

"And you know what the ironic thing is?" he continued. She shook her head. "It's that it took you breaking up with me to realise that I actually liked her… I mean how insane is that? I can count the number of people I actually like on one hand, and one of them ends up being a three year old."

"She likes you too."

"She likes apple juice and pirates."

"She doesn't like pirates," Cuddy scoffed. It was such a random thing to say.

"She kind of does," he responded insistently. "Sometimes she used to wander in the bedroom when you were asleep and we'd watch this pirate cartoon. Had to practically smother her when she started giggling whenever one of the characters walked the plank."

Genuinely surprised that he knew something she didn't about her own daughter, suddenly all of those times she'd woken up and found Rachel tucked up in between them seemed all the more poignant. Even if he hadn't necessarily done it consciously, he had gotten attached to her and vice versa.

"Just because we're not together anymore it doesn't mean you can't see her… You're still going to be part of my life."

"The pretend uncle thing isn't really my bag… I'll leave that to Wilson."

"She misses you."

House rolled his eyes.

"She won't even remember who I am by the time I get back from Mayfield… When she's older I'll just be the crazy guy with a limp, who works for you and bangs on your door in the middle of the night to get a signature." About to open her mouth to contradict him, the sound of a car pulling up in front of the house interrupted her. Hearing the same thing he pushed himself off the wall and stood upright, wincing slightly at the throbbing in his leg. "My cab's here."

Squeezing past her, he walked down the hall with her in tow and opened the front door to gesture to the driver he'd be there in a minute, before turning to face her again.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"For kicking my ass. For dinner." He shrugged. "For everything."

"You're welcome," she replied with a warm smile that belied her own inner turmoil. Unable to stand on ceremony any longer she moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his torso, soon feeling his fingers grip her waist tightly. As per her usual M.O. a pang of guilt began to creep up on her at the thought of what he was about to go through, in spite of the logical part of her brain telling her he had to do this on his own. She'd always been innately protective of him and she probably always would be. "Take care of yourself."

"I always do." Cheekily he smirked into her hair. "And of course if you ever need me to take care of you, I'm wide open to booty calls."

Pulling away from him, Cuddy laughed and playfully struck him on the arm.

"In your dreams, jackass."

Backing out the door he gave her a boyish grin reminiscent of all those times he'd given her the same look over the years as he'd walked away after sparring with her. This was their 'normal', and going back there pained and relieved them both in equal measure.

"Every night, Cuddles."

"Goodnight, House," she called after him as he navigated his way down the path, his gait a little more laboured than it had been when they'd gone in.

"Night, boss," he shouted back, sliding into the cab and watching as she hesitantly closed the door.

Telling the driver where he wanted to go, he rested his chin on his curled up fist and looked out the car window, observing the rows of darkened houses in Suburbia as they drove away and unable to stop himself from thinking about all the parents, grandparents and children who were currently sleeping in their beds.

"She your girlfriend?" the man sat next to him asked inquisitively, keeping one eye on the road and drawing his passenger out of his thoughts.

Wavering over whether or not to tell him to mind his own business, House eventually cleared his throat and shook his head.

"No, she's a friend. A really good friend."