This is just a little early-season 7 scenario in which I thought about crabby, lonely House adjusting to being happily in love. Oh and, um… rated M for a reason.

[H] [H] [H]

"Where the hell are you?" was all Wilson had to say before House's error came rushing into his mind. "Um," he stalled, since lying with my head against Cuddy's breasts while we watch tv seemed an unwise answer. "I've been calling you," Wilson complained.

House had turned the ringer off when he was helping Cuddy put Rachel to bed and had forgotten to turn it back on. He'd only noticed the call when the display lit up and caught his eye during a commercial.

"I'm on my way," he said, standing up and startling Cuddy, then searching for his shoes.

"Forget it," Wilson replied. "It's too late. We just forfeit the game." There was an expectant pause where House was supposed to apologize.

"Traffic," he said into the phone, meeting Cuddy's confused gaze. "A case… I overslept."

"Yeah, you're getting warmer." Wilson grumbled. "I think your sleeping situation is getting closer to the truth."

House plopped back down on the couch next to Cuddy. "It's just bowling, Wilson."

"Two weeks ago it was 'just bowling' too, but at least then you had the decency to tell me you were ditching me and I wasn't left sitting in a smoky alley wearing goofy shoes for no reason."

"Oh, boo hoo. Like you had anything better to do."

"Thanks. You're always so good at softening the blow," Wilson sniped. "And may I remind you that six months ago you didn't have anything better to do either, and waaay back then it wasn't 'just bowling.'" There was a short silence while Wilson puffed into the phone a few times, letting out his ire.

"Are you done with your tantrum now?" House asked in a fake "mommy" voice.

"Yes," Wilson replied, but he still sounded pouty.

"Why don't you go find something better to do and tell me all about it tomorrow?"

"Good night, House."

"She could still smell like smoke, but make sure she's not in goofy shoes."

"Good night, House," he repeated and hung up.

"What was that all about?" Cuddy asked as House tossed his phone on the table and returned to his spot against her.

"Wilson's jealous that I'm getting more action than him and he's left alone playing with his balls." House dismissed the whole thing, so Cuddy did too, too comfortable and content to bother digging for more details. She returned her hand to his hair, curled her leg back over his hip, and forgot the whole thing. House tried to do the same.

[H] [H] [H]

The next day, House was leaning against the lobby balcony railing, watching people come and go as he mulled over his case. The team was still white-boarding, but he had grown irritated with their inane suggestions and helpless expressions and decided to stare at some other idiots for a while, waiting for the "click" that would bring it all together. He watched some techs moving a dialysis machine through the hall and thought about the patient's slowly-failing kidneys. He saw a mother enter the clinic carrying a toddler with a wet cloth pressed to her forehead and thought about the patient's persistent fever. He saw a fellow cane-wielder leaving the clinic and was irritated that the patient's rheumatoid arthritis treatment – immuno suppressants – was further complicating the diagnosis. Something about the immuno suppressants nagged at him and he was considering taking her off of them, weighing it against the complication of returning joint pain that would distract the team from other, pertinent symptoms, when he saw Cuddy come out of her office, pulling on her long white coat. He was watching her talk to one of the nurses, her brow furrowed in that concerned way, as it was fifty percent of the time, when Wilson sidled up next to him.

House glanced at him briefly, returning his gaze quickly to Cuddy as she pulled her curls back into an elastic and grabbed a file from the nurse.

"You know, there's a book about it," Wilson told him.

"About whining oncologists who bother you when you're trying to think?"

"Think or stalk?" Wilson teased, following his gaze.

"It's not stalking if you're dating," House retorted.

"I think many stalkers think they're dating their stalkees."

"Is that why people think I'm dating you?" House asked, arching an eyebrow at him briefly. "You think I'm hot for your constant monitoring of my daily activities."

"It's called 'Bowling Alone.'"

House shook his head back and forth, confused by the non-sequitor. "What is?

"The book."

"What book?"

"The book about the collapse of the American community, as people choose the narrow personal benefits of getting laid over broader social engagement. Coincidental title, no?"

"A. It's not coincidental if you Googled 'support group for people who overreact to a friend forgetting bowling,'" House groused. "And B. Putnam was criticizing the isolating effects of technological development for its part in the decline of civic and political participation, not putting 'hoes before bros.'"

"You've read it?"

"Face it, Wilson. You haven't had a thought I haven't already had."

"Well, hopefully I'll be spared many of the ones you've had too," he retorted, leaning down onto the railing next to House. But House had fallen silent in the snark-fest. After Cuddy had walked into an exam room with a patient, and his eyes were roaming the lobby again, he'd spotted Chase, leaning flirtatiously toward a nurse who was just coming in for her shift and had paused by the doors to Cuddy's office to talk to him. House was getting giddy with the idea that he was seeing something he wasn't meant to see, gathering details of the encounter to taunt Chase with later. He elbowed Wilson.

"Hey. Look at that." He nodded toward Chase and the nurse.

"What?" Wilson asked. "Chase and Becca?"

"Becca?" House asked. "Oooh, this is good." He rubbed his hands together with glee. "Knowing her name will make harassing him about this even better."

"Harassing him about what?" Wilson asked, confused.

"About this," House said, disgusted with Wilson's denseness. "About him hitting on a nurse. When he's supposed to be working on a case, no less."

"Um, A.," Wilson said, mocking House's earlier condescending tone, "If he's supposed to be working on a case, aren't you supposed to be working on a case?"

"I was until you came along."

"Imagining playing doctor with Cuddy is not the same as actually being a doctor."

"It doesn't matter," House replied shortly, "cuz Chase will have no idea how I even know." He was relishing it. "Trying to get laid while on the clock."

"Which brings me to B. Chase isn't trying to get laid. He's pretty much got it in the bag since he's been dating her for four months."

House looked at Wilson, shocked. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

House looked back down at the couple and saw the woman smile broadly, then go up to her tiptoes to kiss Chase lightly before walking across the lobby. "Seriously?" House murmured to himself. Chase went into the outer office of Cuddy's suite and had a brief exchange with her administrative assistant. When he came right back out House shouted, "Hey!" and everyone looked up. But House just looked directly at Chase and shouted again. "Why don't you quit trying to score an afternoon delight with Becca and get me a diagnosis?"

Chase put his hands in his pockets and gave House his best bored and humoring look. "Funny, I was just checking to see if I could be accusing you of the same thing," he said, jerking his head back toward Cuddy's office. "We're trying to find you."

"I have a phone," House chided.

"Maybe you should - I don't know - answer it?" Chase replied coolly.

House pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw four missed calls from various team members. He'd forgotten to turn the ringer back on, even after Wilson's call last night. He made his best pissed off face and looked at Chase. "So what do you have for me?"

"Lupus."

House covered his face with one large hand, dragging it down in exasperation. "That's why I didn't answer my phone."

"It's lupus," Chases insisted.

"It's. Never. Lupus."

"We think the RA isn't RA. It's the elephant."

"The what?" House asked.

"The elephant someone tells you not to think about," Chase answered. "We were hyper-aware that the RA symptoms would distract us, so we kept telling ourselves not to think about them, to not think about the elephant. But in this case, the diagnosis is 'a zoo,' and the elephant fits right in."

"You think I need a metaphor?" House snapped.

Chase rolled his eyes. "The immuno suppressant regimen slowed the progression of symptoms over the years, but they aren't the best cocktail for lupus, so it eventually got out of control. We need to switch her immuno suppressant therapy and she'll improve."

House rolled it over in his mind. It did seem plausible. Lupus fit. They hadn't asked enough about her RA treatment to know if her doctors had done the right confirmatory tests.

"House?" Chase called up, breaking his reverie. "Are you convinced enough to treat?"

House nodded, then turned away, leaning his back against the railing. Wilson stood up and looked at him. "Well, now you can stalk Cuddy guilt-free for the rest of the day." He grinned, but House didn't. "What's the matter?"

House bit his thumbnail, then pushed off the railing and began walking.

"House?" Wilson asked, following him like a puppy.

"How did I miss lupus?" he asked rhetorically. But nothing with Wilson was rhetorical.

"Easily. You're right that it's almost never lupus. It's usually the red herring, so it's easy to get used to dismissing it."

"I don't do that." House grew silent as he walked. Then, "I don't dismiss symptoms and diagnoses without thinking them through." His walk slowed. "And I know who my team members are dating before they even do," he added. He stopped and Wilson stopped beside him. "And you're right," he conceded. "I used to remind you about bowling." He looked stricken. "Cuddy broke my brain."

Wilson frowned his concerned frown. "House?" he said tentatively. "Now, maybe you're making a little too much of this? I mean, I know you never blow things out of proportion," he teased. But House didn't answer him, lost in thought. So Wilson continued. "House, even if these things do have any connection to you being distracted by Cuddy, it's totally normal. And temporary. Everyone is like this in the beginning of a relationship, losing themselves into it because it's new and exciting."

"Yeah? Then why were you giving me shit for it?" House accused.

Wilson shrugged. "Because I was pissed at you and…" he trailed off.

"And what?"

"I just wanted to draw your attention to it. Look, it's like Cuddy is your brand new huge flat-screen tv, and you can't stop watching her, right? Cuz she's awesome. But… I just wanted you to be mindful about it. I don't want someone to steal everything else in your house without you even noticing because you can't stop watching the damn tv."

House raised his head from his thoughtful gaze at the floor and looked at Wilson. "Well, you drew my attention to it." He sighed. "And this sucks."

"What sucks?" Wilson was panicking that House was going to overreact to his deduction and do something rash.

"I… I gotta… get some space."

"What does that mean?" Wilson asked.

House began walking again. "I don't know yet."

[H] [H] [H]

Later, in the evening, Cuddy came up to House's office and saw him bent over his desk in the dim yellow light. "Hey, stranger," she said, leaning in his doorway. He looked up at her and couldn't help smiling. She always just lit the place up.

"Hey," he replied, removing his glasses and tossing them on the desk.

"I'm heading out," she said. Then there was a silence, grown awkward because he didn't fill it in with the usual reply. "See you later?" she asked.

"Um, well," he rubbed the back of his neck. "I think I'm gonna just sleep at my place tonight."

Cuddy frowned. "Okay."

"That okay?" he asked, a note of hopefulness in his voice.

Cuddy nodded slowly. "Yeah," she answered. "If you're okay."

"Yeah, I'm okay." He rolled his ball along the plane of his desk with the palm of his hand, averting his eyes from her.

More silence.

"Is there a problem or anything?" she asked. "You mad at me?"

"No!" he said. He folded his hands on his stomach, leaning back in his chair. He looked at her again. "I'm mad at myself."

Cuddy looked surprised. "Now, I'm worried." She laughed her throaty laugh.

"Last night, when Wilson called," he began. Cuddy nodded patiently. "I forgot about bowling. And Chase is boning a nurse in orthopedics and I totally missed that. And today it took six hours to diagnosis fucking lupus. And I didn't even diagnose it."

Cuddy nodded as if this all made perfect sense. "So you're going to your apartment to… self-flagellate? Get your hairshirt?"

He smirked at her briefly, then his face grew serious. "Maybe we need some space."

"What does that mean?"

House swallowed hard. "I don't know yet," he repeated. He watched her eyes for something – anger, tears, anything. But Cuddy was stoic, save a hand that he noticed trembling slightly at her side.

"Okay, House." She shifted her purse higher on her shoulder and tightened the belt on her trench, readying herself to depart. Then she looked at him again. "Call me when you want… less space." She didn't sound angry, or even sad. If anything, she sounded professional. He watched her turn and click down the hall to the elevator without looking back.

So a few hours later, there he sat - in his fucking "space" - trying to figure out if he could have Cuddy and still have the life he was used to, if he could change his mindset without changing his behavior, if he could be happy and still be House. By one in the morning, he had decided.

[H] [H] [H]

"You realize that people usually throw rocks at windows on the second floor," Cuddy teased as she slid her bedroom window open. House smirked at her and tossed another pebble right in the center of her chest, which rolled down the front of her nightie. Cuddy rolled her eyes. "Why can't you just come to the door like a normal boyfriend?"

"I didn't think you'd answer," he said, fussing with the pebbles in his hand, choosing the next one to tease her with.

"I always answer."

His eyes flickered up to her face for a moment before returning to his distraction. "I didn't think you'd let me in." He threw another pebble at her.

Cuddy crouched now, tired of bending awkwardly into the window frame. She propped her hands on the sill, her chin on her hands, and looked up at him. "I always let you in," she sighed.

There was a pause while he studied her features, dimly lit in the yellow light of the streetlamps. "This is more romantic," he said, a sheepish grin playing on his lips. Then he stepped forward and Cuddy stepped back as he began climbing in her window, which was awkward to begin with for his tall frame, and grew downright cumbersome as he tried to maneuver his bum leg through.

"Can you just go to the goddamn door?" Cuddy said, both annoyed and amused by his struggle.

"This… is more…" He stammered between grunts, finally making it into the room but bumping a small table by the window and knocking a vase down which cracked in two on the floor. "Romantic?" he finished, eyebrows raised.

Cuddy sat on the corner of the bed, just watching the spectacle and having no idea where this was all going. "So…" she ventured. "Now you're going for romantic tonight?"

House sighed. "Wilson says -"

"Here we go," Cuddy groused, and she threw her hands in the air in disgust.

House grinned at her complicit irritation with Wilson's "expert" advice on relationships. "He says that you're like my brand new flat screen television, and that I am so obsessed with watching you, I don't notice the burglers stealing all of my other furniture."

Cuddy blinked, wrapping her head around the metaphor. "The stolen furniture being your bowling night and Chase's love life?" she snarked. House shrugged. "Has Wilson considered that bowling night is a metaphorical futon? That your obsession with meddling with your team's personal lives is the equivalent of those shelves made with boards and cinder blocks?" She grinned at him playfully, then her face grew more serious. "He's right, maybe I'm distracting you. But has it occurred to you that I'm the first piece of real furniture you've got?"

"It's occurred to me, Cuddy," he said, clearing his throat to cover the slight crack in his voice when he said her name, "that you're the whole damn house." He averted his eyes after saying it, but they quickly returned to hers again, drawn to her.

"Then that's what I'll be. Your home," she told him. "I know you, House. I knew you'd never be easy to tame. I know that you're attached to your unattached life. So you can have your freak outs and get your 'space' when you somehow think you've lost this edge you're so fond of, but I'm not going anywhere. And when you want to come home… Come home." She winked at him. "Through the door."

He studied her, looking for the catch, the condition of this deal. "Why would you do that for me?"

"Because I know you will," she told him. "I know what we've got is… better than what you're afraid of losing." He stepped toward her and put a hand on her cheek. She smirked up at him. "Can't watch porn on a futon." She grinned. He bent down and kissed her lightly, then pulled back.

"I still missed lupus."

"It's never lupus," she complained. "Your diagnostic skills are still intact, megalomaniac." Cuddy lay back onto the bed and flashed him a seductive smile. "Maybe you just need to get more sleep," she suggested mischieviously. She reached down to the hem of her nightie and hiked it slowly up her legs. He watched her while all the blood rushed out of his head. Then she abruptly pulled the fabric back into place and wagged a finger at him. "Come on, House. Focus. Shouldn't you be thinking about Wilson?"

House smiled broadly at her. "I've got better things to think about." He crawled on top of her, peeling her nightie off as he did so, leaving her naked beneath him. She wound her arms around his neck and looked up at him. "Were you sad?" he asked. "Did I make you sad when I didn't come over?"

"You did come over." She grinned at him.

"I mean… Sorry if you thought I was…" he trailed off.

"If I thought you were being House and exhibiting exactly the kind of behavior I've grown to expect from a man I've known twenty years?" He pressed his forehead to hers briefly, before sitting up to shrug off his jacket. He looked at her exposed body then, running his hands over the dips and rises before returning to look in the eyes, his face again growing hesitantly apologetic. "House, I told you. I knew the man I was getting involved with and I accept you as you are, crazy parts included." She propped herself up on her elbows. "Besides, I usually know what you're up to."

He raised an eyebrow. "And yet you let me crawl in your window," he teased. His hands dipped in at her waist and circled it, lifting her hips slightly up against his body. He watched her as her eyes fell closed and her mouth fell open and a tiny sigh escaped her. "God, you're beautiful." Cuddy smiled broadly, but her eyes stayed closed. He loved that she loved that he loved her.

He kissed her smile, then across her jaw to her neck, burying his face in the smell of her hair and skin. He couldn't believe he'd requested space a few hours earlier and now all he wanted was to melt with her, pressed against her body forever. Cuddy's fingers were now fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, but he sat up for a brief second to yank it over his head, then returned to her, the heat of their bodies mingling as their fingers roamed over each other. "I don't want space," he murmured against her skin as he kissed down her chest. "I want the opposite of space." He took her breast in his mouth and Cuddy writhed beneath him, making him so hot for her it was getting painful. He moved his tongue over her nipple until she was clawing gently at his head.

He kissed down her belly. "Space is for suckers," he continued musing aloud, though she was having a more silent, carnal conversation with him at the moment. As he moved between her thighs he realized that much of the time in the past he'd been thinking of this anyway, whether bowling or diagnosing, or watching tv alone. She'd always distracted him. He tasted her and she made a crazy noise – "Pfwa!" – and arched up to meet him, and he loved every second of making her squirm and moan, and grip sheets. He loved dipping his tongue into her and hearing her grow perfectly silent, save the short gaspy intake of air every ten seconds. He loved sucking gently on her heat and feeling her wrap her legs around his shoulders and push her feet flat against the flank of his body. He stopped for moment, his breath still hot against her, and looked up at her, a model of near-ecstasy, eyes clenched and mouth gasping for air. "Do you ever need space?" he asked innocently, a playful grin on his face.

Cuddy sat up a little and looked down at him with a death stare. "Dammit, House. Stop talking or you're going back out that fucking window and I'll do this myself!"

House laughed. "What happened to, 'I accept who you are, House,'?"

"I know you're too egotistical to let me get myself off after kicking you out for being annoying." She flopped back on the bed and arched her back luxuriously. "Now just do what we both know you're gonna do."

"Bossy, bossy," he teased, kissing each thigh.

"You're wasting time," she chided, "And I've had to get even more efficient, what with you distracting me from my T-crossing and I-dotti-"

The end of her quip was lost in the sound of a moan as House pressed his mouth to her again. His tongue moved along her folds and found its place again, no longer teasing her, but directing her to a very specific place. House's hands snaked over her thighs and gripped her hips, pulling her harder against him as she paradoxically fought the impulses to let go, trying to pull away if it felt like too much, if it felt like it would take her over. But he knew it was fine, perfect even, to be taken over, and he showed her. Her crying out ceased when there was nothing but the pleasure. She was silent at that moment, at the crest of her orgasm, with absolutely nothing in her brain except his presence with her. She shook. Her hips bucked up toward him. Her breath was erratic. She was swallowed by this and not looking back.

He guided her back down, easing away from her and running his hands lightly over her body while she became reacquainted with reality. He slid up her body, still pressing her to him, and watched her every twitch and flutter. Eventually her eyes slid open and she grinned at him. "Alright. You can leave now," she teased. House half-pouted, half-grinned.

Cuddy laughed and rolled a little, stretching on her side with her back toward House. He pressed his fingers into her shoulder, his thumb making small deep circles alongside her spine. Cuddy moaned in appreciation, and House moaned in frustration. So Cuddy reached behind her and began tugging at his belt and pants, loosening them enough to start pushing them down his legs a bit. But she was too lazy and sexed to give it much effort, so House helped her along and she rolled onto her stomach more, giving him a whole other view to greedily take in.

He returned one hand to her shoulder, but the other slid along her side and snuck between her body and the mattress, and then between her legs. Her appreciative sighs became more urgent sounding, more pleading, and he forgot about giving her muscular relief when she drew her legs in, sitting on her knees more, her perfect ass now a magnet for his free hand. He pushed up and knelt behind her and she ground against his hand as he pressed himself against her, groaning now in anticipation of feeling the "opposite of space."

Cuddy pushed up now, on her hands and knees in front of him. When he moved forward, she moved back and he was instantly deep inside of her, which they each acknowledged very inarticulately. He slid away from her only to relish entering her again. Cuddy turned her head back to attempt to meet his mouth, which was tasting every inch of her skin within reach, but she soon fell to her chest again, letting his movements take the lead while she just basked in the sensation of them. House closed his eyes and felt her taking him in, holding him close, each time he left her body and pushed back for more of her. He was lost in his own pleasure and felt Cuddy's hand press over his, holding it tighter against her heat as they rocked together. And when she sucked in her breath and whispered his name he was beyond control and held one side of her hips as he fell over the edge, saying things he never said about love and need and want and forever, eventually curling over her and laying his head on her back, legs still shaking, head still reeling. They spoke in gibberish to each other and collapsed, and House smothered her small frame with his.

"House?" she grunted.

"Hmm."

"I need space." He moved his head to face her, nose to nose, still smushing her beneath him.

"Why are you afraid of intimacy, Cuddy?"

She squirmed beneath him. "I'm afraid of suffocation." He rolled off of her onto his back, grinning at the ceiling with one arm thrown behind his head and the other between Cuddy and the bed.

"Maybe you have broken my brain, but I've decided I really don't care," he told her.

"It's not like I haven't been distracted by you too," she murmured.

"Oh, yeah, right. I know you, Cuddy, and you're still dotting every I and crossing every T that comes across your desk."

"Not true," she protested. "Just the other day, I dotted a T because I was thinking about you on your motorcycle."

House laughed. "Well, I forgot bowling with Wilson."

"I forgot my sister's birthday."

"I haven't called my mom in a month."

"You never call your mom."

"I'm completely neglecting my drug addiction. And you won't like Vicodin when they're jealous, Cuddy."

She laughed and the sound of her laugh made him laugh and somewhere in the laughing and the satiation they fell asleep.

House woke a couple hours later, always the fitful sleeper, and looked at Cuddy, who was breathing evenly, her back curled up against his side. He felt suddenly anxious, like maybe he'd let his illogical romantic feelings cloud his judgment, and maybe he should be more concerned about the ideas Wilson had been harassing him for. He stood up quietly and walked to the bathroom to pee. When he returned, he didn't get right back in bed, but stood at the window, looking out at the night. He turned back to look at Cuddy, still lying peacefully, and wondered why it was so damn hard for him to admit he was like everyone else in love. But he concluded that even if he'd never admit out loud that he was like everyone else - never tell Wilson, "find a new bowling partner I just wanna hang out with my girlfriend" – he could be at peace with acting like everyone else and denying it vehemently. He turned back to the bed and got in. Cuddy rolled toward him and wrapped her arms around him and he nestled his head under her chin.

"Welcome home," she whispered.