Originally posted on 8 August, 2009.

A/N: Occurs some time after “Joy” in its own little universe where the remainder of S5 hasn’t happened. Many thanks to wendelah1 for proofing my medical research and making me do it over when I got it wrong. Thanks also to lightlack for that-voodoo-that-you-do-so-well.

Now look objectively. You have to
admit the cancer cell is beautiful.
If it were a flower, you’d say, How pretty,
with its mauve centre and pink petals

She finds the lump on a Tuesday.

It’s the time of year when winter is grudgingly giving way to spring. On her morning runs, she watches the sun rise, listens to the day-birds waking with all their voices.

That morning she finds a small sparrow dead on the path, its body still warm. She stops to move it onto the grass and is astonished at its softness, the nothingness of its weight. In the cup of her palm its belly is a tiny hill of fluff and she has a sudden visceral memory of holding Joy–fingertips steepled to support the fragile neck, one little foot kicking her chest.

All the way home she feels the delicate feathers against her skin.

*

Once a month Lisa Cuddy lies naked on her bed and examines her breasts for changes. She has scrubbed away the sweat until her body tingles pleasantly. She has smoothed lotion in long strokes over her legs, arms and belly. Her hair is cool and wet against her scalp.

After more than forty years, she knows her body well. The serendipity of genetics and the discipline of effort have kept her limber and graceful, but the human body, she knows, tells its own time.

She begins with her left breast, palpating with the pads of her fingers, working inwards toward the nipple in a spiral. Part of her mind remains engaged in measuring the texture of skin and tissue, but the rest runs quickly ahead through the day. What she will wear. The quarterly budget review. The empty yellow room down the hall. House kissing her.

House. Kissing her.

Switching to her right breast, she allows herself to dwell on the yellow room, on House and the confusion on his face that night. She allows herself to imagine kissing him, and laying him down on this bed, and letting him put his big hands all over her one more time.

Then the lump. And a short, sharp pulse of fear. They register in her consciousness so closely together that she almost cannot say which one comes first.

Lemony sunlight streams through the curtains; birds call. The curve of her breast in her palm is the shape of the sparrow’s belly.

She palpates again, more consciously, feeling for depth and breadth. The same area of her left breast is subject to a second examination for comparison.

In the last month this cluster of cells has grown large enough for her to feel with her fingers. For her brain to recognize it as something new, something that should not exist. It is firm and hard, deep in the center of the tissue, behind the nipple. A bad place for surgical options.

Even though she knows the small likelihood of the mass being malignant, the idea of it causes a pang inside her, like the sound of a stone dropped into an empty well. Like this lump is a stone that has lodged in her chest.

For a few minutes, she allows herself to be afraid. Then she puts it firmly from her mind while she dresses, dries her hair and drives to the hospital.

*

At 7.30 she’s behind her desk, armed with her morning coffee. It’s early enough that House won’t be in for hours yet. Waiting for her computer to boot up, she calls Oncology and asks the nurse to notify her when Dr Wilson arrives.

At 8.15 her phone rings. She takes the stairs and doesn’t think about how it’s a brief and futile delay. It is, instead, good cardiovascular exercise, and excellent toning for her legs and ass.

Wilson’s door is open, but she knocks anyway. “Dr. Wilson, do you have a moment?”

His smile falters as she shuts the door behind her. “Something’s wrong,” he says, slowly. “And since you’re not yelling, I assume it’s not about House.”

“I found a lump this morning,” she says. “In my right breast.”

He takes a long, deliberate breath and leans back in his chair.

“There’s no family history of breast cancer,” she continues. “I don’t have atypical hyperplasia or LCIS.”

“Any visual changes or discharge?” he asks.

“No.”

“When was your last mammogram?”

“Eighteen months ago.”

“It’s unlikely to be cancer, Cuddy,” he tells her.

She nods. “I know. But I’d like your opinion anyway. Just in case.”

“All right.” He rises to stand in front of her, the composed and reassuring doctor that all his patients must know. “Do you want to do the exam now?”

“If you have the time. I’d like to have it done before–” A pause. “While it’s still early.” Neither of them mentions House.

Ever the gentleman, Wilson escorts her to an exam room. While he washes his hands -warm water, she notes – she removes her jacket, blouse and bra, and dons the standard hospital gown.

Lying down, she is acutely aware of her own vulnerability; of how long it’s been since anyone’s hands but her own have touched her.

Wilson’s touch is gentle but firm, clinical. The warmth of his fingers is soothing against nipples that are hard with chill. He performs his examination in silence, for which she is grateful. They are both aware of how awkward this is, as friends, as colleagues, as employee and employer. She envies him his cloak of professionalism. Prone and half-naked, she is without her usual armor.

“It’s a palpable lump,” he says, confirming her own findings. “It’s highly likely that it’s a benign mass.” Wilson’s using his patient voice: soothing, confident. It makes her want to snap at him that she knows; she’s a doctor, too.

Instead, she says, “Yes.”

“You’ll need to have a diagnostic mammogram.”

“I’ll check my schedule.”

He nods and shuts the door gently as he leaves. Unpeeling the stiff hospital cotton, she is grateful to sheath herself in the familiar softness of her own clothes. In the small mirror above the sink, she inspects her hair and face, searching for a sign that anything is amiss. There is nothing.

For the rest of the day, she pushes it out of her thoughts. She makes phone calls, fills out paperwork, argues with House about his latest case, avoids Wilson’s overly solicitous offer of lunch. In the evening, she goes home to more paperwork over tea and lamplight. Before bed, she removes her makeup and moisturizes with her usual care. She turns the lights off before changing into her pajamas, touching herself as little as possible.

She will need the distance if her body has betrayed her.

or if a cover for a pulpy thirties
sci-fi magazine, How striking;
as an alien, a success,
all purple eye and jelly tentacles
and spines, or are they gills,
creeping around on granular Martian
dirt red as the inside of the body,

One of the advantages of being Administrator is having overriding authority over scheduling. Her pride won’t allow her to go to a different hospital, so she takes a deep breath and holds her head up as she removes her clothes for yet another employee.

Later, sore and discomposed, she sits in Wilson’s office. He passes her the radiologist’s report without preamble. Holding the paper in her hands feels comforting, ordinary.

“The mammogram indicates pleomorphic microcalcifications. It also indicates two other suspicious lesions.”

It is easier to treat this as a consult, as just another patient. She retreats into the formality of medical discussion that concerns itself with theory and numbers, not with bodies. Not with her body.

“I’ll need a biopsy,” she says. “Vacuum-assisted?”

Wilson nods. “We have two experienced radiologists.”

“All right.” She places the chart on his desk and straightens her jacket. “I appreciate you taking the time for this.”

Wilson moves around the desk to take her hand and squeeze it. She stiffens slightly, an instinctive recoil she can’t control.

“If you want someone to talk to, you know where I am,” is all he says.

She nods and pulls her hand away, not meeting his eyes. Standing, she smooths her skirt. Wilson retrieves the file from his desk.

“I’ll make the arrangements for tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

*

At home, she leaves the light off in the bathroom while she washes her face. Her entire body is one more shadow in the dark.

while its tender walls
expand and burst, its spores
scatter elsewhere, take root, like money,
drifting like a fiction or
miasma in and out of people’s
brains, digging themselves
industriously in.

The sting of the lidocaine is followed by a muted, shifting sensation. She focuses on breathing evenly and remaining still. Her mind is carefully blank.

After the biopsy, she dresses, reflecting with no small amount of irony on the number of times she’s been undressed at work in the last few days. The puncture site throbs dully, a reminder of damage and what is growing inside her so insidiously.

Even in her own hospital, wielding the utmost discretion, there are so many people privy to the happenings of her body. She goes back to work, thankful that House has a case.

*

Wilson’s face tells her first.

“Malignant?” Some might be impressed with the steadiness of her voice. But then, she’s had a lot of practice.

“I’m so sorry, Lisa,” he says, handing her the pathology report. Her rarely-used first name is a slightly discordant note.

She scans the document. “Ductal carcinoma in situ.”

“Grade 2 comedocarcinomas.”

It could be worse. It could be much, much worse. “Treatment recommendations?”

“Lumpectomy with radiation or a total mastectomy.” He pauses for a moment and then meets her eyes. “We could do a partial mastectomy, or a quadrantectomy, but the amount of tissue to be removed would be extensive, given the number and placement of the lesions.”

“I think a total mastectomy would be best,” she says. As if she is not talking about cutting off her own flesh; as if this has nothing to do with her at all.

“You should take some time to think about this, Lisa.” His tone is mildly reproachful – he is talking to her as a patient – and it rankles.

“Do you honestly think I haven’t thought about this, James?” She places deliberate stress on his own first name.

Wilson runs a hand through his hair, his expression slightly wounded. “I just–”

The door swings open. “Jimmy, are you having a play date without me?”

“House, do you ever knock?”

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question.”

Cuddy rises from the sofa and hands the file to Wilson. “Thank you, Dr Wilson. I’ll get back to you about that patient later today.” As she walks down the hallway she hears House’s overly loud voice. “Consorting with the devil again, Jimmy?”

The lab technician

says, It has forgotten
how to die.

She leaves work early and wanders barefoot through her home, unable to settle. In the bedroom she examines her wardrobe, the clothes in drawers. All the pretty bras she’s bought to shape and enhance, to reveal and conceal.

In the mirror she examines her naked self. There is no outward sign of the clustered tumors in her breast. Her face and body are still attractive, even beautiful on a good day, and she long ago learned how to use them to her advantage. She takes no small amount of pride in her appearance; she hones it and wields it like any useful tool and, occasionally, like a weapon.

Now the weapon is inside her.

In the bathroom, she searches for bath salts and knocks a box of tampons from the shelf. Every month her body moves through its useless menstrual cycle, preparing for the fetus she cannot seem to carry, that she has almost given up on. Almost.

House was wrong.

But instead of an embryo, she has cancer. She cannot help thinking of this as her own failure. Despite all her knowledge and experience as a doctor, the thought of what is growing inside her fills her with revulsion. She feels contaminated.

The room becomes hazy with scented steam as the tub fills. She lights candles and sinks into water hot enough to sting. Laying back, she lets her arms float, watches her breasts rise in the buoyancy of the water. If she closes her eyes she can almost imagine the flat, puckered surface of the mastectomy scar, like a crater on the moon; like House’s thigh.

An eye for an eye, a breast for a thigh, she thinks with a tiny huff of amusement. One huff becomes another and another and then a sob. Harsh, choking sounds ricochet off the tile as the animal part of herself succumbs to helpless terror and grief. Arms wrapped around her chest, she rocks, mourning the death of all her chances.

Cocooned in the soft, damp light of the bathroom and the gentle slosh of water, she allows herself to feel how much it hurts.

Hours later, dressed in her softest pajamas, she boils water for tea. When the kettle screeches, she fills a cup and cradles it between her palms.

There are plans she has to make, people who must be told. She reaches out for the phone and dials a familiar number. Waits.

“Mom, it’s Lisa.”

               But why remember? All it wants is more
amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. To take
more. To eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on
doing those things forever.

The meeting with the Board is exhausting; she feels battered by the effort of remaining composed in the face of the appraising looks and cloying sympathy. She is, of course, expertly prepared for their questions and doubts. Yes, she has every confidence in her staff and her treatment. Yes, she has selected a number of temporary replacements for the Board’s approval. Yes, she will still be an excellent administrator with only one breast.

That last is not asked aloud, but she knows they’re all wondering.

On the drive home she finally has time to wonder about House. She knows from Wilson that he finished up his case more than a day ago. Yet there have been no complaints, no staff members storming in to her office threatening to quit, and she hasn’t had to chase him down to do his clinic duty. She hopes, tiredly, that he’s not doing anything illegal. Again.

When she turns into her driveway, she discovers that he is–if loitering is still considered illegal. She slams the car door more out of habit than any real anger. At least he waited outside this time.

“House, what are you doing here?”

“You have cancer.”

She pauses in her effort to get the front door open and takes a steadying breath. There’s no point arguing with him about privacy or doctor-patient privilege. “Thank you for the update on my health situation, but that doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

He follows her into the house with his lopsided gait. “Well I was concerned that my friend had fallen into the clutches of the Bride of Satan and I was planning an exorcism. Had to get a hair sample for the voodoo doll.”

She doesn’t even bother to roll her eyes, just drops her bag to the floor as she hangs up her coat. Trying not to think about what happened the last time he was in her home, she faces him with an expectant look.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks. There is no accusation in his tone. It is just a question.

“I was going to,” she says, looking at the floor. “It was important that I speak to the Board first, before informing hospital staff.”

“I’m not talking about hospital staff,” he puts a bitter twist on the words. “I’m talking about me.”

And what about you? she wants to ask, but knows it would be hypocrisy. They are both aware of the rare, if unacknowledged, places they have in each other’s lives.

“I don’t know,” she says, feeling raw and weak. “There’s so much to do and I’m trying–I wasn’t prepared for this, House.” It comes out accusatory.

“No one’s prepared, Cuddy.”

“I am. I have to be.”

He nods but doesn’t say anything else. The throbbing in her temples eases and she feels the small muscles in her neck and face unclench. Without acknowledging or
understanding it, she has been dreading this moment. And now it’s over.

They stand together in the hallway for a few minutes. The evening is quiet. Occasionally she hears the sound of an engine, or a door slamming, or a dog barking. The shift of House’s jacket and the rasp of her nylons seem both loud and intimate. It is a very ordinary silence.

“You could take up archery,” he says suddenly.

She is much too weary to attempt to make the strange leaps of his brain with him tonight. “What?”

“Don’t you know your ancient history, Cuddy? Herodotus wrote about the Amazons: women warriors who cut off their right breasts so they could hunt and fight like men.”

The laugh that bubbles up inside her is as startling as it is genuine. She realizes that she hasn’t laughed in days.

“Of course,” he continues with a smirk. “The popular etymology of the word ‘amazon’ being from a-mazos, or “without breast,” is an etiological myth. Which would explain a lot about you.”

“I’m sure I don’t want to know, but tell me anyway. Why?”

He leans in and looks pointedly at her chest. “Because you already hunt and fight like a man.”

It is a compliment only House could give. She smiles and shakes her head at him.

“So when’s the surgery? I want to make sure to be prepared to mourn the loss of one of the hospital’s greatest assets.”

This time she does roll her eyes. “Go home, House.”

“I thought a black armband would be a nice touch. Of course I won’t be able to do any work due to being prostrate with grief.”

She shoos him toward the door. “You’ll do your clinic duty or I’ll sic Cameron on you.”

“Ouch. Loss of body part totally trumps existing cripple. Devious woman.”

In the doorway, he stops and turns. There is a look on his face not unlike the one he wore the night he kissed her. Cupping her head gently, he presses his lips to her cheek. For a moment they are suspended in a warm space made of breath, and she feels a sweet ache pierce her heart.

When he pulls back and looks down at her, there is such warmth in his eyes. “Goodnight, Cuddy,” he says.

She leans up on her toes and presses her own kiss to his cheek, with a smile.

“Goodnight.”

*

Lisa Cuddy dreams of sparrows; of speed and hollow bones. She hears the wind passing over their wings like keening, or triumph, or both. In her dream she holds the fallen sparrow and smooths the feathers on its breast. The bird’s heart begins to flutter as she strokes. Its tiny black eyes open to the light.

                                               Such desires
are not unknown. Look in the mirror.

-End-

–

More notes: The poem is “Cell” by Margaret Atwood. The title comes from “Beneath My Hands” by Leonard Cohen.

Originally posted on 5 January, 2009.

Disclaimer: References to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

A/N: Thanks to a. for poking encouragement and beta, and sarken for the stolen borrowed disclaimer text.  This is for wendelah1, with love.

It’s magical and difficult, and wondrous and painful, and frustrating and joyous, as any intense, intimate relationship is.
David on his relationship with Gillian – Entertainment Weekly, 2000

- 1993 -

For thou has borne a universe
Entirely away.

His motel room smells like her, like three days of sex and sweat and room service.   His balls and his dick ache when he takes a piss, takes a shower, pulls on his jeans.  He can’t imagine how she must feel.

She opens her door and he finds himself having to adjust his gaze down to her.  She’s so much smaller than he is, so much smaller than he seems capable of remembering.  In his bed she was the whole world.

He follows her into the room.  “Almost ready?”

She nods.  “My flight’s in two hours.”

Her hair is still wet and curling at the ends.  Without makeup, her skin is translucent, her freckles bold against it.  Two days ago he’d told her he wanted to lick them all and she’d laughed.  Before he was halfway done she was moaning and digging her nails into his shoulders.  The memory sends a pulse to his groin.

“So,” she says.

“So,” he says, uncomfortable and stupid with it.

She smiles like a rose unfurling.  “I had a really good time, David.”

“Me too,” he says. His hands are stuffed in his pockets so he can’t touch her.  Inside he’s cringing.  He has degrees from several fancy schools–he’s an actor for fuck’s sake–but he can’t seem to find anything to say to the pretty woman who just spent three days screwing his brains out.

“This is awkward, huh?” she says after a few moments, and begins to laugh.  Her laughter is like no one else’s: intoxicating, contagious.  With her, laughing is almost as good sex.  Almost.

The laughter shakes loose his tongue, pries his hands out of his pockets, and then she’s in his arms and he’s holding her tightly against him, like he’s trying to imprint her on his body.

She reaches up and kisses him softly on the mouth.  “Take care of yourself, okay?”

He’s eight years older than her, but there’s something maternal in the way she says it, the way she touches his cheek.

“You too. Do you want some help with that?” He gestures at her suitcase.

She shakes her head and they stand, looking at each other for a few moments until he forces himself to pull away.

“Good luck with the audition,” he says, playing with her right hand.  Nobody, not even the rain.

“Thanks.  And thanks for all of your help.  For everything.”

It feels wrong to accept thanks for doing something that gave him so much pleasure.  He’s not sure he’s ever had so much fun acting with anyone before.  So he smiles and shrugs.  “I should go, get out of your way.”  His fingers are telling hers, I think I’m in love with you.

She squeezes back once and then her palm slides away from his.  He tries not to feel the emptiness left where she was.

- 1997 -

Lest they should come – is all my fear
When sweet incarcerated here

They find a secluded alcove away from the throng of reporters, celebrities and hangers-on.  Their statues clink together heavily and they snicker like children.

“I’m sorry I forgot to thank you in my speech,” she says.

“Make it up to me later with sexual favors.”

She snorts her amazing, goofy laugh and he can’t help but grin back.

“After you kissed me in front of all those reporters, that’s what everyone’s going to think we’re doing.”

“They’ve been thinking that for years.  Anyway, you kissed me first.”

“Yeah,” she says with a wide smile.  “I did.”

Tonight she glows, more luminous than anything in the sky.  He thinks about the way she reached for him, held his face and kissed him directly on the mouth.  That’s how it happened the first time, too.

They lean against the wall companionably and he watches her body relax as she closes her eyes.

“Am I really the best co-star anybody could have?” she asks.

“Actually, I meant to say Mitch, but – hey!”  He throws her an injured look when she slaps him on the shoulder and laughs.  Part of him wishes they could just hide here forever.

His kiss was ostensibly a joke, playing up to the reporters and their ridiculous questions, but it was as much for the pleasure of her skin under his lips as it was for humour.  All the attention makes her uncomfortable, he knows.  He wanted to make her relax, make her laugh.

In four years he has never quite managed to fall completely out of love with her.  He suspects he never will.  Even during the days, weeks, months, when he hates her, when the angle of her sharp little chin makes him want to do violence, he knows that whatever he’s feeling is only a part of everything else he feels for her.

“Thank you for tonight,” she says, squeezing his hand.

“You’re welcome.”

Even with her mascara smeared a little and her skin shiny with the heat from the lights, she’s still incredibly lovely.   Sometimes her beauty startles him.

She turns and drops her head against his chest, sweet and kitteny.  He rubs her back gently, careful of her Armani dress.

“Tired?” he asks.

“Mmm.”

“Why don’t you take off?  If anyone asks I’ll tell them you got a call from the nanny.”

She lifts her head and offers him a grateful smile.  “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.  I’ll probably get going soon myself.”

She yawns and hugs him around the waist, small and warm in his arms.  “Goodnight, Best Actor David Duchovny.”

He drops a kiss on top of her curls.  “Goodnight, Best Actress Gillian Anderson.”

- 2000 -

Oh Sumptuous moment
Slower go

It’s the last day, the last scene, the last shot.  Mulder moves in to kiss Scully and she hesitates for a moment before kissing him back.  Her right arm comes up to hold his left elbow and she opens her mouth to him.  It is slow and loving and the culmination of eight years of struggle.

Separating himself from his character has become reflex for David, but for a moment he allows himself the luxury of believing it’s not just Mulder kissing Scully anymore; it’s him kissing Gillian, too.  How long has it been since he’s kissed her like this?  It’s almost unbearably sweet.

Then from somewhere far away, Kim says, “Cut.”

Gillian pulls away first and their lips cling together for a moment before releasing with a soft sound.  She is so close he can see every stria in her blue, blue eyes.  The doll in his arm drops to the ground as he moves in to hold her fully.  The cameras are off and it’s nothing but them.

“How do I do this without you?” she whispers into his shirt.

He knows there’s nothing he can say.  For eight years they’ve been in this strange forced marriage, eight years of being other people together.  There’s no way to mend the bond that he’s breaking.

The crew is still out beyond the doorway, allowing them this moment.  Their voices are hushed.

It was easier at the end of the seventh season.  He was worn out, worn thin, every nerve stretched and desperate for it to be over.  He wanted – wants – a chance to do different work, to write, direct, be someone other than Mulder for five damn minutes.  But now he knows that he doesn’t want this to be over: this, them, her.

So he holds her and is held, rubs her wet cheek with his own, and grieves for what he’s losing in this mourning ceremony for two.  The fabric of her costume is slippery under his hands as he pulls her tighter against him.  Her breath hitches softly.

He can feel himself shaking, the fine tremors of his muscles.  He’s saying goodbye to Mulder and to Scully, to Gillian, to the part of himself that will be left here with her when he goes.  I cannot hold thee close enough.

Later there’ll be a wrap party; there’ll be food and laughter and public goodbyes.  But for now David holds on to one of the surest things in his world.  It’s going to have to last him a long time.

- 2007 -

I know not which, Desire, or Grant –
Be wholly beautiful –

After the read-through they stay for dinner.  It’s sunset; the same colours are shifting in her hair and in the sky.  When she came through the door he’d hugged her and said, “You’re really short, aren’t you?”  Made her laugh.

Despite the passage of years it had been surprisingly easy to slide into their well-worn groove.  He’d watched Chris’ eyes fill and felt a pressure in his own chest at the solid familiarity of being with these people, of being who he is with her.

But now it’s sunset and they’re drinking beer on Chris’ patio and it’s wonderful.  It’s like a homecoming when you hadn’t even realised you’d been gone.  All the divides have been bridged.

She walks up to stand next to him and he puts his arm around her.  She’s barefoot, the top of her head not even reaching his shoulder.  Just as high as my heart, he thinks.  Such a little body to house so much.

“I’ve missed this,” she tells him.  “I didn’t think I would.”

The breeze off the Pacific is cool and salty; it blows away the sounds of Chris and Frank talking behind them.  “It feels good again,” he says.

Her hair is longer now than he’s ever seen it, even longer than when they first met.  It whips around his arm, so soft he almost doesn’t feel it.  It seems inappropriate to say the words I missed you because he spent six years away from her, six years not seeing her movies, not looking at photos, not calling or even thinking.  But there’s no denying that she is as big a reason as any for his campaign to get this movie made.  And now they’re here for this one day and it’s a small and perfect gift, a wish granted.

She burrows into his armpit with a yawn.  “Jet lag?” he asks.

“Mmm,” she mumbles.  “I shouldn’t have had that beer.”  She lifts the arm with her watch up to her eyes.  “And I should go.  Oscar’s been sick and cranky and Mark is coming down with whatever he had.”

She pulls away and looks up at him, her eyes as wide and blue as ever.  “See you in December?”

With a nod, he kisses her quickly on the cheek.  He watches her find her shoes, say goodbye to Chris, to Frank.  Something he always admired about her was the way she could move differently, in character.  Scully doesn’t walk like Gillian, but Mulder walks exactly like David.  He’s always known Gillian is the better actor.  But he appreciates it more now than he ever did before, being able to tell so clearly the difference between what is fiction with her and what is real.

- 2008 -

Sweet – You forgot – but I remembered
Every time – for Two –

Christ, he’s tired.  The last eight months have been a beautiful, exhausting high: the premieres, the press junkets, trying to wrap Californication, too much caffeine and too little sleep.  He misses his family.

They’re sitting together at the foot of his bed and it reminds him of the first time he said goodbye to her in a hotel room.  Only this time he’s the one who’s leaving.  It’s an odd book-ending of their sixteen-year relationship, a weirdly appropriate metaphor.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says, eventually.  “I wish you’d stayed with us.”

She’d offered him a room at her place for the London premiere and though he’d been sorely tempted, he’d refused.  Everything was already so fucked up and complicated, he didn’t need to add to it.

“You know why I didn’t,” he says.

She laces her fingers through his.  “I know.”

The way she fits against him is so familiar; his hand automatically knows where to sit on her back, her shoulder.  He used to know exactly how she smelled underneath her perfume and how she tasted under her lipstick.  He used to know what she sounded like when she came.  Now he wonders if time and their distances have changed any of that.  What hasn’t changed is her sparkle, her radiance.  Sometimes she shines so brightly it’s hard to look at her.

He remembers when, after three weeks of filming separately, they finally looked at each other in front of a camera as Mulder and Scully for the first time in six years.  He’d recognised her and he’d recognised himself and the world settled with an inaudible click.  Getting on that plane this afternoon will be like flying back in time.  He wonders if he’ll know it the moment when the world un-clicks.

“Everything will be okay,” she tells him with her solemn voice, the one she used with Piper; the one she must use with Oscar now, and soon this little one, too.

“I’m not so sure,” he says.

“I’m sure of you. You’re a good man, David, and you’re doing the best you can.”

“What if my best isn’t enough?”

She touches his cheek and holds his gaze.  “It will be.”

Perhaps it’s because he still sometimes watches old episodes on TV, or perhaps it’s because of some quirk of memory, but he suddenly recalls a line from one of the earlier seasons.  Although multidimensionality suggests infinite outcomes in an infinite number of universes, each universe can produce only one outcome.

The outcome for this universe has already been determined, he knows.  And he wouldn’t really have it any other way.  Sometimes, though, he wonders about the others.  If there is one in which he doesn’t have to keep telling her goodbye, in which he made a phone call in 1993 that he hadn’t had the guts to make in this universe.  And while a beginning is no guarantee of any particular end, he knows – still, he wonders.

-Fin-

Notes:

I am entirely derivative!

The epigraphs are from poems by Emily Dickinson: numbers 1517, 1169, 1125, 801 and 523 respectively.

nobody,not even the rain – e.e. cummings, #225
I cannot hold thee close enough – Edna St. Vincent Millay, God’s World
Just as high as my heart – Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act III, Scene II
All the divides have been bridged – paraphrase of an interview with Chris Carter
Imaginary!David is quoting from Synchrony.

Originally posted on 31 December, 2008.

A/N:  Thanks to wendelah1 for last minute beta, Americanising my spelling, and encouragement.  Title is from the Stone Temple Pilots song of the same name.

 

He’s sitting at the piano, just sitting, when the knocking begins.  He ignores it, just as he’s ignored his ringing phone (both of them) and the drone of his pager (seven at last count).  He’s not playing hard to get this time; he’s not playing at all.

“House, if you don’t open the door, I’m going to call the police.”

A flicker of surprise runs through him because it’s Cuddy’s voice and not Wilson’s.  It’s that flicker that gets him up, gets him moving, gets him wrenching open the door.

“Why are you here, Cuddy?  Trying to assuage your guilt?”  His voice lacks the bite he’d intended.

“You haven’t answered your phone or returned any messages.  You didn’t call in sick and no one’s heard from you since Friday,” she says, her voice as flat as her eyes.  “I thought I should check on you before the neighbours started to complain of the smell.”

He shrugs and turns away, leaving her standing in the hall.  “Didn’t think I had to call in cripple.”

There’s a rustle behind him and the solid click of the door.  He waits.

“I know what today is,” she says, finally.

“The first anniversary of our glorious whimper,” he mutters, and there’s no irony in it, only bitterness.  He moves back to the piano and sits.  The bottle of scotch in front of him is still half full and he pours himself another finger.  “I’d offer you some, but you’ll have to find your own glass.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing all day?  Self-medicating?”

With his eyes closed, the sounds of her in his apartment are amplified.  The rustle of her taking off her coat.  The light click of her shoes against the wood.  The slight buzz of her nylons as her thighs brush together.  All the soft sounds of another body in his space that he doesn’t want to have been missing, that he doesn’t want to be grateful for, now.

He opens his eyes at the clink of glass on glass and watches her pour her own drink.  She sips with her blue eyes on his.  Stacy’s eyes are brown.  Tonight Cuddy is dressed in black, funereal, and he wonders if the color was a conscious choice.  It would be just like her to try to share in his mourning.

“She walked out on me a year ago,” he says.  He runs a slow arpeggio with his left hand.  “But she left me long before that.  And what I’m still wondering is why I was so surprised.”

Cuddy sets her glass down next to his.  “She couldn’t stand you blaming her.  Hating her.”

“You can,” he says, belligerent.

“Yes,” she says with a little nod, as if he’s just told her something obvious, like the time.

“Why is that?”  And it’s something he really wants to know, a puzzle he can’t quite figure out.

When he stands, she doesn’t move away, just follows him with her eyes.  Stacy is almost as tall as him and he is disconcerted by how far down he has to look at Cuddy, even in her heels.  Her lipstick is almost gone and her lips are a little shiny from the scotch.  The pulse at the base of her throat gently shifts the delicate strand of pearls she’s wearing.  It’s suddenly the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen, the creamy white pearls against the paleness of her skin, the flutter of blue underneath.

“Why are you here?” he asks against her mouth.  So close.  A challenge, a dare.

“I don’t know,” she says, and kisses him.  It’s soft and tentative at first, as if she expects him to push her away.  But he lets her lick his lips open and slide her tongue inside to touch his own.  It’s so wet and sweet that he groans and grabs the back of her head to get her closer.

He feels her hands sliding around his waist and the light press of her body as she moves into him.  She keeps kissing him, kissing him, until he’s half hard in his jeans, his first real arousal in longer than he wants to remember.  He’d like to sink into the sensation and let it take him away.

Cuddy is smaller and curvier than he’s used to and he doesn’t even try to pretend that he’s never considered what it would be like to get his hands on her.  When he drags his hand from her head to palm her breast, he understands that his imagination’s not as great as he’s always thought.  When he finds her nipple she makes a high, breathy moan into his mouth that sends a rush of heat to his balls.  Her hands clench on his ass and pull his hips tight against hers.  Even through both their clothes, the soft resiliency of her belly against his cock is so good it almost makes him want to cry.

Using his body, he crowds her against the piano and moves his mouth away from hers to taste the delicate skin behind her ears, under her jaw.  The hand on her breast meanders down until it can reach up under her skirt.  She smells like the hospital and the last gasps of perfume and her own arousal.  His hand roams the heated landscape of her inner thigh, fingers buzzing slightly against the texture of her hose.  He’s working hard not to hump her like a dog.

“Gonna fuck me and make me better?” he murmurs in her ear.

She flinches against him, but her voice is steady.  “If that’s what you want.”

“I think it’s what you want,” he tells her and presses the heel of his hand against her mons.  Her hips jerk and she makes a choked noise in the back of her throat.  “A pity fuck, Cuddy?  I didn’t think you’d lower your standards so far.”

“What I’m feeling right now is nothing like pity, House.”

Her eyes are closed and her head tipped slightly back so that he can see the long, vulnerable line of her throat.  For an animal to bear its throat at you takes immeasurable trust.  He could rip out her jugular right now.  Instead, he slips his hand from between her legs and yanks on her skirt.  “Take it off.”

He moves back and rests his hips on the back of the sofa to watch her undress.  That she does it so matter-of-factly somehow makes it that much more erotic.  She doesn’t turn her face away, doesn’t break eye contact, even when he starts rubbing his dick through his jeans.  Finally, she’s standing before him in nothing but her pearls, her skin fiercely pale against the black piano.

“Put the shoes back on,” he growls.  And she does, and fuck it’s the hottest thing he’s seen in his life.  What he wouldn’t give to be able to do her right there against the piano.  Instead, he pushes himself up and over to her, mashing his mouth down on hers.  This time their kisses are fierce, almost violent, his tongue like a battering ram.  It’s her fault that he can’t fuck her like he wants to but if things were different he wouldn’t be fucking her at all.

He pushes her legs apart and slides his hand up to where she’s slick and swollen for him.  Her thighs are sticky with it and that alone almost makes him come in his pants.  He’s not gentle when he shoves two fingers into her cunt; they moan in unison as her muscles tighten around him.  Using his thumb to circle her clit, he drops his cane and grabs onto the piano for balance so he can get a nipple into his mouth.  Cuddy is panting above him and her sweated skin squeaks as she squirms between him and the piano.  He sucks and nips at her nipples, her breasts, her clavicles.  She’s making soft little cries and undulating against his hand.  It’s so hot he can hardly breathe; his balls are aching.

Suddenly her eyes fly open and she’s straining against him.  “Yeah,” he says, low and fierce.  “Come on.”  He loops his thumb through the string of pearls around her neck until it snaps.  He will forever associate the tinkling patter of their fall to the floor with the feel of her coming around his fingers.

She shakes against him, her hands clutched on his shoulders, while he slips his fingers from between her legs and sucks them into his mouth.  She tastes musky and sharp and he doesn’t think he can stand not to come for one more second.  Grabbing one of her hands, he shoves it against his crotch and grinds, the sensation both relief and torture.

“Want you.”

“I never would have guessed.”  Her low chuckle infuriates him.  He wants to pound into her until something breaks open.   She takes his hand and helps him around to the sofa, but he bats her away when she goes for his fly, unable to risk the ignominy of coming before he even gets inside her.

Pants around his ankles, he looks up to find her opening a condom packet.  “So this was a booty call, Doctor Cuddy.”

She straddles him, shaking her head.  “You would think that.  Hold still.”  She gets the condom on before he embarrasses himself and now he’s the one who’s shaking.

“Just do it, Lisa.  Please.”

She looks him in the eye as she guides his cock to her opening and slides down slowly.  It’s almost more than he can bear and he has to pant like a woman in a Lamaze class to stay on top of the sensation.

“Okay?” she asks.

He nods, jerkily, fingers digging into her thighs.   Then she begins to ride him and he’s lost, head thrown back against the cushions, eyes squinting up at her like she’s the too-bright sun.  She’s lifting up slowly and coming back down on him so hard it feels like she might break his cock, but it’s so fucking good he never wants it to end.  Above him, Cuddy is flushed and sheened with sweat, her amazing breasts jiggling right in his face.  He wants to crush his face against them and root around like a hog but all his concentration is focused on not coming, not coming, not coming.  And then it’s too late, too soon, he can feel the tightness in his balls and then the warm rush of orgasm overtakes him like a flash flood, leaving him blind and deaf and limp.

He barely notices her pulling away and rolling the condom off him.  Dimly, he hears her moving around the apartment, her rustles and clinks an odd reversal of the sounds she made on the way in.

“House,” she says in his ear, and he opens his eyes to find her fully dressed before him.  “Here, lie down.”  He lets her maneuver him into a horizontal position and cover him with a blanket.  There is the distant tug of her pulling his jeans and boxers off his ankles.  He feels so fucking good it doesn’t even hurt.  On the coffee table in front of him are a glass of water and a bottle of Vicodin.   Thanks, doc, he thinks, not sure if he says it aloud.  His eyes are already closed.

“Get some sleep,” she says, and he thinks he feels a soft kiss on his temple.  “Oh, and you owe me a new necklace.”  The last makes him grin.

Then there’s the click of the door closing and the rising velvet of sleep.  Maybe he’ll go in to work tomorrow.  After all, what are the chances that he’ll get lucky like this two nights in a row?

Written as part of round two, the leftovers, at Get House Laid for prompt 164: House/Cuddy — pregnancy.

A/N: Italicised portions are from the poem “August” by Esta Spalding.  I seem to be constitutionally incapable of just writing smut.  Feh.  This was sort of an experiment.  It may have, um, failed horribly.  Thanks to Wendy, who was gracious enough to give me her thoughts on parts I-III.  None of this is her fault.

                                  she rowed

against the escaping tide
fighting to stay afloat.

To find the sea she had to turn her back to it,
stroke.

I

The conversation went something like this:

“You said I should find someone I trust.  I trust you.”

“I also said it should be someone you like.”

“I like you.”

II

It was a secret they held even from themselves.  He masturbated in a small white room and saved his semen in a cup for her.  She lay on an examination table with her feet in stirrups so that their combined genetic material could be inserted via catheter into her uterus.

They did not speak of these things.

But after the third attempt, when her blood work came back positive for hCG, Cuddy walked into House’s office and laid a cherry lollipop on his desk with a note that read, simply, thank you.

III

The weekend forecast called for heavy rains and high winds all along the eastern seaboard.  Tropical cyclone, said the meteorologist, hurricane season.

In the kitchen, she mixed batter for pancakes.  Her bare feet curled and stretched pleasantly against the cool floor as she measured, sifted, stirred.  She was sixteen weeks pregnant and brimful of a delicious, private joy.   Her body felt lush and promissory as the dark soil of a river delta.

That he would knock on her door now seemed to make an odd sort of sense.

*

She licked the last drops of syrup from the tines of her fork and set it down.  “House, why are you here?”

He swirled a finger through the sticky residue on his plate.  “No case.  Thought I’d come by and watch you gestate for a while.”

Rain pattered at the window and the room smelled of sugar.  She rose and ran the water until it burned her fingers.  She rinsed the plates and mixing bowl; let the sink fill with a riot of soapy bubbles.  “Are you having second thoughts?” she asked, watching water fall inside and out.

Behind her, a chair scraped and footsteps shuffled.  “I don’t know,” he answered from somewhere near her left ear.  “We’ve never talked about this.”

“I didn’t think you wanted to.”  She bent her head into the steam.

“I didn’t,” he said.  “I didn’t then.”

“And now?”

He stood behind her, the length of him pressed lightly against her back, and rested his arms against the counter on either side of her waist.  A slight scrape of teeth against her skin made her shiver and drop the spoon she was washing.

“House, what are you doing?” She held very still.

“I’m biting your neck,” he told her in a tone that said the answer should have been obvious.  She could feel the movement of his lips against her as he formed the words.  Her awareness narrowed to the small patch of her body where his breath sparked tiny paroxysms on her afferent nerves.

So gently, again and again, his teeth caught at her skin.

“Don’t,” she murmured, even though her eyes had closed and her hands were limp in the dishwater.

“You liked it last time.”  He was licking her, slow draws of his tongue along the ridge of her cervical vertebrae.  “I’m so glad you’re wearing your hair up today.”

It’s the heat, she told herself, the heavy weight of the air that was making it so difficult to lift her arms, to push him away.  “House, this isn’t talking.”

His right hand dipped up from her waist, over her ribs, to cup her breast.  “Talk later,” he muttered.

She moaned, she couldn’t help it, and arched into his hand as sensation rippled down to land bright and hot between her legs.  Over her t-shirt and bra he circled his palm against her nipple until the pleasure of it teetered at the edge of pain.  She gripped the edge of the sink and heard herself panting.

“Sensitive, aren’t you?” he whispered, switching to the other breast.  His mouth continued to nip and suck at her neck, her shoulders, under her jaw.  His rough stubble pinpricked and stung in counterpoint to the soft swipes of his tongue.

The world had narrowed to sensation; the ache in her belly became a burn.  He tugged at the waist of her shorts until the seam rode up between her thighs and she whimpered.  He moved his left hand down to cup her over the shorts, the pressure so good.  She could only rock against him and hold herself up with shaking arms.

Everything in and around her was hot as a furnace. His weight against her back, the water in the sink, the thick pleasure coursing through her, the air in her lungs.  He was biting her harder now, pinching her nipples between his fingers, squeezing her whole breast with his hand.

Climax gnawed at her, its roots and tendrils unfurling under the beautiful friction.  Some part of her was dimly aware that she was humping House’s hand as he groped her in the kitchen.  But he was solid behind her, made of heat and clever fingers, and she was voracious in her desire.  Outside, the sky was an upturned ocean, falling, a cup spilling over, too full to contain. And inside, the terrible, wonderful bloom and burst of orgasm rushed through her til she was gasping, sobbing her release, dissolving in his hands.

IV

Light from her bedside lamp silvered the edges of his downcast eyelashes, flashed against his teeth bared in an agonised rictus.  In her mouth, his cock was smooth and hot on her tongue, the skin of his testicles delicate and sweet.  When he came she had to close her eyes against the sheer physicality of it, the yearning tenderness it made her feel.

His eyes opened as she slipped him out of her mouth.  The irises were very blue.  She rose to lie beside him.  “How’s your leg?”

“Which one?”  He leaned up on one elbow and made a show of looking down at his body.

She shook her head, amused despite herself.

“Oh you mean that leg.  If you were a real doctor you’d know that endorphins are peptides that activate the body’s opiate receptors, causing an analgesic effect.”

“Thank you for that fascinating biochemistry lesson.”  She pushed at his shoulder until he flopped back against the bed.  “You look tired, House.  Go to sleep.”

He snorted and shifted away, finally settling on his right side, facing her.  For a time she listened to his steady breathing and watched his eyes twitch under their papery lids like insect wings.  In repose, his mouth was slack and vulnerable, as honest and eloquent in its silence as any word he had ever said.  She was filled with something more profound than love; she was filled with hope.  With one hand on her belly and one against his hip, she allowed herself to sink into sleep.

Through the wet, grey afternoon they lay together, a palimpsest, reinscribing.

V

Thunder, and a hand in her hair.  “What?” she murmured, half awake.

He was propped against the headboard, untangling the pins in her curls.  “It’s time to start gathering the animals two by two.”

“That bad already?”

“Your backyard is full of puddles.”

She yawned and pushed her face against his side.  “I guess you won’t be going home.”

“Guess not.”

Long fingers massaged her scalp until she hummed in approval and rubbed her cheek against him like a cat.

“I never wanted to be a father,” he said softly.

She opened her eyes to the landscape of his chest gilded by lamplight.  In sleep, her hand had held to the curvature of her abdomen, fingers spread wide over the life growing there.  “I know,” she responded in the same low tone.  “That’s why I was so surprised when you—“ she lifted her head to look at him.  “Not that I’m not grateful.”

“I didn’t do it for your gratitude, Lisa.”

He so rarely used her first name that it made her smile, its unfamiliarity almost like an endearment.  “Then why?”  She was genuinely curious.

“At first, because you asked.”  His eyes shifted to the window, as if the answer were out there, being washed away by the rain.  “I… care about you.  I didn’t want you to do something you’d later regret.  The kid should at least know the name of its father.  You should know the name of its father.”

“And then?”

“And then…” he trailed off, seeming almost reluctant.  Finally, he met her eyes.  “You were so damn happy.  And I was a part of that, of making you happy instead of miserable.”  He cupped her jaw.  “Some days I hate it that you know me so well, that you know when to push and when to leave it – leave me – alone.  You’ve been happy, even when you were puking your guts out, not asking for anything, not expecting anything.  And I realised I wanted you to ask for things, to expect things.  From me.”

It was, she thought, the most backward, inept, lovely declaration of feeling she’d ever heard.  Smiling, light with joy, she kissed him.  It began sweetly, an expression of all she held inside.  Then his mouth opened and she tasted the soft, inner shell of his lip.  A shock of desire slithered through her.

Breaking the kiss, she moved so she was straddling his lap, careful, always careful, of his thigh.  Under her palm, his abdominal muscles clenched when she licked his flat nipple.  She stroked his hardening cock and watched his pupils dilate, felt his grip on her hips.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” she whispered.

“No, ‘s good.”

Her hips began to undulate in time to the movement of her hand on him.  She bit her lip as her head fell back and her eyes closed.  It felt… it felt like she was stroking herself somehow.  Stroking her own cock, she thought, and moaned.

“Christ you’re sexy,” he muttered.

His mouth closed over her breast, suckling strongly, and her head shot up to find him staring at her.  Pupils huge, stubbled cheeks hollowed.

“I love you,” she told him hoarsely.  “I can’t help it, I do.”

He kissed her then, his hands on her face as though he’d swallow her whole.  Her hand kept up its rhythm as she lowered herself to him.  She rubbed the head of his penis against her swollen clitoris, through her labia, against her entrance.  His hips jerked upwards, seeking blindly, and he shuddered as she sank down.

The sensation was extravagant.  She was so wet, so swollen, so close.  He pushed against her once, twice, his pelvis so perfectly aligned, and she was gone.

“Oh,” she crooned, as the pleasure pulsed and ricocheted through her.  “Oh.”

He grunted as he came inside her, fingers clutched and bruising on her hips.  She slumped against him, grinning, and the room was filled with the sounds of their gasping breaths and the steady thrum of rain.

VI

Lisa Cuddy wakes to her alarm on a Tuesday morning in August.  She is alone in the wide expanse of her bed.  The sky outside the window is flat and pale in the first light of early dawn, completely cloudless.  A light wind stirs the dusty, dry leaves of the taller trees, while closer to earth the air is still.

Under the sheet, she slides her hand down the declivity of her ribs to the taut plane of her belly.  It is as empty as her bed, her heart.

She does not cry.

                                                                  The sea is a wound
                                                                  & in loving it
                                                                  she learned to love what goes missing.

I’ve often felt that dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask. – Fox Mulder.

Originally posted on March 20th, 2008.

Spoilers: Missing scene from 3.14 ‘Insensitive’.
A/N: Thanks to Wendy for her always-insightful comments and catching my non-American spelling.

*

You’re like trying to divide by zero
after everybody says

You can’t

–Use the Following Construction in a Sentence, Belle Waring

*

In the light from the doorway, she was radiant. Hair mussed, lips swollen, she was more erotic fully-clothed than any naked woman, real or celluloid, House had ever seen. The sight of her rich with desire shocked him, as if she’d ripped off her clothes in the middle of the Clinic and begun belting out show tunes. Only Cuddy’s voice was familiar, coming from the mouth of this disheveled woman with no bra and no shoes; the curves of her breasts and belly sleekly displayed in black. Standing on her step, towering above her, he had laughed and dodged her accusations. But sitting in the dark of his car, fingers wrapped tight around the cold leather of the steering wheel, House can admit it to himself. He wants her.

He hadn’t quite known how much until that moment when she’d smiled up at him and asked him, so artlessly, if he liked her. Suddenly he was a teenager again: his mouth dry, palms sweaty, the beginnings of an erection tenting his pants. Lisa Cuddy was the most luscious thing on earth at that moment and he desperately needed to take a bite, to feel the juice run down his chin and let the sweet flesh of her fill the spaces between his teeth. In another lifetime he would have dropped to his knees right there in worship.

He’d had that once, the tart taste of her under his tongue. And in the headlong rush for oblivion, for the too-brief dissolution, he’d let so many opportunities pass by. There are days now when he wishes he’d kissed her – just kissed her for hours – searing the memories forever in his taste buds, lodging them permanently within his tangled neural connections. Instead, all he remembers is his own bitterness, impressions of softness and heat, and how she looked at him afterwards: as if she knew, even then, everything he regretted.

She has been a part of his life for so long now that he’s grown accustomed to believing she always will be; his foil, his temptress, the bastion he is perpetually pushing against; his for the taking whenever he makes up his mind. He forgets that she has a will, desires, of her own. That they might not coincide with his.

Gregory House has never been accused of lacking arrogance. But it pisses him off that he didn’t realize then how extraordinary she is; that he has never told her even now.

The car is cooling rapidly and he tries to quell the surge of irritation he feels at the image of Cuddy kissing another man. Don of the turtleneck and ballroomdancinglovers.com. The situation, the man, seems patently ridiculous. How can she want a guy like that? Someone who makes her smile, who makes her eyes shine, who has her braless and breathless on the first date. Yes, why would she want that? Why something simple and smooth when she could have the jagged edges and whip-snap of Greg House? He shakes his head against the burn in his throat, doing his best not to imagine Don in there with her, feeling the soft weight of her breasts, the lovely camber of her hips and ass. He breathes deeply and lists the twenty-six bones of the foot from smallest to largest. He’s made it to the cuboid tarsal when Cuddy’s front door opens and closes.

Don is in his car and out of the driveway within seconds. House is left wondering if the other man is insane. Lisa Cuddy is in that house firelit and willing. Who walks away from that?

In that moment the two possible paths open to him are clearly articulated in his mind. He can sit in this car and grow slowly colder until the pain in his thigh forces him to drive home. Or he can go back to her door and use the spare key to let himself in. House may be a fool but he’s never been a coward, and tonight has been too full of revelations for him to start now. Maybe they’ll fight, maybe they’ll fuck. Either way Cuddy will be there, all spine and bristle, tender all the way through.

The key is right where he knew it’d be and it prompts a small grin. He knows her so well in these small intimacies. Inside, the fire is no more than soot and all the lights have been turned off. She must be in the bedroom, he thinks, but there’s no way she’s already asleep. Visions of skimpy nighties and lacy underthings fill his head as House stalks down the hall. He’s not aiming for silence, but nor does he want to announce his presence in advance. A little surprise is good for the soul.

As his eyes adjust to the low light, the plaintive tone of a piano draws him on. The music muffles the sounds of his approach and he feels his smile turn wolfish. All the better to eat you with, my dear.

But the wolf is gone the moment he enters the bedroom. House stands at the doorway, rooted firmly to the floor in sudden paralysis. Before him on the high, wide bed is Lisa Cuddy, naked, her eyes closed and the fingertips of both hands tracing slow circles on her abdomen. The sight of her so flagrantly displayed is staggering. He wonders briefly if he’s still sitting in his car having a Vicodin-induced hallucination.

Her hands trail slowly up to her breasts and begin to pluck at the nipples as the piano notes crescendo. In the moonlight her body is washed silvery but he knows that her skin is flushed cream and her areolae are dusky rose. Her low, delicious moan goes straight to his cock and he has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself becoming her echo.

What the hell is he doing in Cuddy’s bedroom watching her masturbate? He is caught between an urgent pleasure and the exquisite agony of looking but not touching. Christ, he wants to touch her.

She licks a finger and flicks at one nipple while her other hand continues to massage her breast. Her legs shift together, the rasp of her thighs making him gasp. He knows what it’s like to be there, to feel those long muscles gripping him, pulling him down and in; tensing and quivering against him. The air in the room has thickened so that he can barely force it in and out of his lungs. He’s terrified she’ll hear him over her own little mewls of pleasure and the throb of the music; he’s afraid he might hyperventilate.

“Mmm,” she moans, one hand sliding down the sleek length of her and into the dark nest of hair between her thighs. “Oh, god.”

House presses a hand against his jeans, the friction closing his eyes with pleasure. He’s so close he’s gonna come in his pants if she keeps making those noises. Forcing his eyes open, he sees she’s now rocking slowly against her hand, mouth open and the breath moving harshly through it. The hand on her breast shifts then, follows its partner, takes up residence against her clit, while the other hand delves further between her legs. He’s been there and he wants to be there again so much he’s salivating with it, pumping against his hand and trying desperately not to close his eyes.

Cuddy’s hands are working faster now, the one buried in her cunt stabbing hard, while the fingers against her clit make endless, endless circles. Her face is flushed and a tiny straining frown deepens as she surges against the sheets.

Come on, he thinks, half delirious. Come on.

His own hips are rocking in time with her thrusts, their separate rhythms bringing them closer and closer together. House hears her whimpering, soft little ohs of desperation and entreaty, and then suddenly she is there, and her voice rises, strengthens, until the world is filled with his own splintering pleasure and “Oh god, oh god, Greg.”

And he comes to the sound of her calling his name, over and over again.

*

He can barely breathe, let alone walk, but he hurls himself out of her house as if chased. The sight of Lisa Cuddy writhing in abandonment and saying his name is burned into his retinas. He may never be able to see past its shadow. Gasping and stumbling, he makes it to his car, and sits, shaking and covered in his own semen.

Jesus christ, he thinks. Jesus fucking christ. His brain has short-circuited, and loops like Steve on his exercise wheel. When his cellphone rings, he answers automatically.

“House.”

And in his ear, Cuddy’s throaty, just-fucked voice asks, “Did you enjoy the show?”

What a pretty thing, what a pretty and so soft. This little hill will be my kingdom now that I will not be queen. And here this flower of blood come up to greet me, so warm but in the grave so cold. Sleep now, Father, I shall make your bed and watch you over. A crown of flowers about my head. Or a crown of thorns? There is that which will save us, truly, for the Kingdom of Heaven awaits. And brother, you must await the coming of my Lord, and My Lord who is no more to be mine.

See how I gather these flowers, my Lord. Are they not fair as a maiden in first blush? Then tear their pretty skirting petals til they are bare. Rip, rip their stems with hungry, pinching fingers. My teeth, my sharp white teeth, white as bones and pearls. Bones, Father. Where are your bones? Where are my claws? How shall I find you deep down hidden in that dark wormy earth? I am searching for the bright, white light of your bones. Lay me down upon your breast, Father, and I shall sleep.

Flutter, flutter, the evening fills with wings. My skin grows earthen and worn. Youth is fading like the light, so quickly! Father, I am lost. Whispers, whispers, I can hear you all! I know of what you speak. The sorrowful prince will not be appeased. Not chamomile nor lemon balm will soothe his wounded soul. His words are sharp as bee-sting, as the barbs of nettles. Nettles sting and maidens fear, hey non nony, nony, hey nony, and angels they shed not a tear. Fare you well my dove.

Scratch this itch my dove, my little raven. Oh Father, my dress is dirty and my nails are torn. Do not be angry. See this lovely silver ribbon, I will wash in it. Cold as a grave is it against my skin and see how it rises! Stars on my eyelids now, fallen from the sky. Sing songs to me Father as I lay in my cold bed. Brush your rough, tender fingers across my brow. I am sinking softly, softly into the down. How heavy it all seems.

Fair prince, come and kiss me awake!

—

Note: Title comes from Laertes in Act IV, Scene 7

It took Eliza many months to recover from her imprisonment and the wild fight to save her brothers. One by one they came to her to say goodbye, to leave the kingdom and begin their stolen lives anew. One by one they gave her their thanks and their love and promised her that if she ever needed them, they would return. Only her youngest, her one-winged brother remained.

The Archbishop came to her chambers to bow low before her with apologies honeyed and profuse. Eliza forgave him because of the purity of her heart, though she knew she would never trust him. The King, too, came before her daily. He brought her sweetmeats and flowers from the palace gardens, and once a beautiful singing bird in a golden cage. The creature made her so sad that, when the King had retired, she opened the cage and watched as it flew away.

Eliza spent many hours with her youngest brother, sharing tales of the lives they had lived whilst apart. He told her of his life as a swan, of how he had flown with their brothers above the waves, their wings strong and white. He told her of the glorious freedom he had felt being at one with the sky, soaring on warm uprisings of air. In return, Eliza told him of living in the forest with the leaves and the sunlight as her playmates. She told him of the longing she had felt in the days and nights spent watching for the wild swans to come back to her from over the sea.

They clung to each other as they wept, Eliza cocooned in a soft, bright warmth by her brother’s wing.

“I am sorry,” she told him as she stroked the feathers.

“Do not be, Little One,” he reassured her. “This way I will always be reminded of the joy of flight and also of the love of the sister who saved us.”

*

As winter slowly passed into spring, Eliza walked in the walled gardens of the castle and spoke to her brother of leaving the kingdom.

“But where will we go?” he asked. “Surely you do not wish to return to our father’s kingdom.”

“No,” she replied. “But neither can I stay here. The King is very kind and I do care for him, but I cannot forget his betrayal.”

“He loves you,” said her brother.

“Does he? Who am I to him? It is only my beauty he loves. What will be left when that fades?” She plucked a rose from a nearby bush and allowed its scent to soothe her. “I feel that I do not belong anywhere now,” she said softly. “I long only to feel the wind rushing about me and the spray of salt on my face.”

Her brother watched her now, his eyes intent. “What is it you wish, Eliza?”

“Once I prayed for a way to break the enchantment our step-mother had placed upon you and our brothers. I dreamed an answer to my prayer. Perhaps if I offer up my prayers once more, I will receive the answer to another question.”

Crouching low before her on the stone bench, her brother took both of her hands. “You must be very sure, my dear sister, that you wish this to be your fate. I could not bear to see you unhappy.”

“I do wish it,” Eliza told him, with a steady voice. She turned her hands in his so that their fingers were entwined. “And you, brother? What do you wish?”

“I wish to be free again in the golden sunlight and the star-spotted blackness of night, to be taken by the wind anywhere it pleases.”

Brother and sister smiled at each other in the weak winter light, united by blood and fervent desire.

*

For three nights Eliza prayed, and on the third night her prayers were answered. Once more she dreamt of the fairy who was like the old woman in the wood. “We are come full circle,” she said. “You have proven your courage and perseverance through the power of your actions. Now, only this remains. Take hold of the thorny stem of a rose so that it cuts your palm. Your brother should do the same. Press your hands together and as the blood mingles, you shall both be set free. But know this: once this transformation has taken place, it will be complete and can never be undone. Never again will you walk the world as a woman.”

With those words in her mind, Eliza woke. In the first light of dawn she stole to her brother’s room and woke him. He knew at once that she had dreamed. Together, they entered the garden, the stones cold against their bare feet. In silence, Eliza grasped the largest branch of the rosebush and let the thorns pierce her skin.

“Now you,” she said, and watched the blood well up around her brother’s fingers. He turned to face her.

“You are sure?”

Eliza nodded and stepped forward to grasp his wounded hand with her own. They watched the mingled blood drip from their clasped fingers to form a shallow pool by their feet. They breathed together softly and she felt the rush of life pump between their hands for several heartbeats..

A tingling moved its way up her arm and across her shoulders. With widened eyes she looked at her brother and saw a similar awareness in his own.

“Is this how it happened before?” she asked.

“No,” he shook his head. “The last change was all at once. We had no time even to cry out.”

The tingling became an itching across her back and chest like fiery sparks. She both felt it in her body and saw its echo in her brother as the changes began. The hands they were holding lost their fingers and elongated. Feathers sprouted in great tufts along both of her arms and the human arm of her brother. One blood-red feather nestled amidst the white.

Pain shot through Eliza’s temples and down her spine. Her legs curled up beneath her as she sank to the ground. For a moment she was blind and choked with panic. Then her vision cleared and before her where her brother had been stood a swan. Looking down at her own body, she saw feathers and down, the whitest shining white. With a tentative sweep, she tested her wings a beat, and then another, stronger. A heady feeling of power rose within her and, with a triumphant cry, flung herself into the sky. She sensed, rather than saw, her brother rising behind her until he came along side and they flew wingtip to wingtip across the kingdom.

There was no sorrow in her heart, no regret. This first, pure act of freedom tasted luscious as a ripe peach. Below them, the human world shrank into insignificance. Ahead was the horizon and the glorious blue of the sea.

Exaltation leapt in Eliza’s breast as she lead her brother in flight. Together they winged into a new day and the farthest reaches of the sky.

—

Note:
Title quote by John Burroughs, from Birds and Poets:

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds — how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives — and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!

The unearthly bonds
Of the singular

Which is the bright light of shipwreck

-George Oppen

—

Perseus killed her because I could not. That is what you should remember.

*

The owls in the wood behind me call once, twice. It seems too sleepy a sound for hunters. Rosemary and olive scent the air in these last, brief days before winter. Above me in the dark is Pegasus, a small scattering of distant light. In the still night air I can almost hear the glow of his stars.

He sprang from her, when she died, fully formed and shining. We share that parallel genesis. My father bore me like fruit bears the worm. I bore myself like a seed spit from his soft, over-ripe skin, grown and ready for battle. Zeus, mighty god of sky and thunder, feared me before I ever was, feared a prophecy. Yet here I stand, thought- child, daughter of his reason more than his loins.

There are those who pray to me still, he thea of wisdom and war; call me Atrytone, the unwearied. But tonight I am wearied, in truth. Long has it been since we began dying away, flung into stars or to dust. Few of us remain and we are dying, alone.

Medusa did not die alone. Perseus was there, he who struck the killing blow, and I, who guided his hand. We saw the rich violence of her lifeblood sink into stone and the children of Poseidon rise from her throat. Those twin seeds which spun her madness.

And there was something like gratitude in her eyes. I cannot forget how she begged me.

*

In the end, her grief could turn living men to stone. Her sorrow was relentless, watching their statues crumble with each lick of the sea. Poseidon’s violation was the first horror, her transfiguration the second.

“Kill me,” she said, when the last of the amber strands of her hair had fallen. The crows snatched each one up for their nests as they fell. In time, they plucked hairs straight from her head. For months after she was gone, I saw glints of fire on branches in the sunlight and the brightness was an ache in my heart.

“Kill me,” she said, and I grieved.

*

She had been beautiful among the wild hyssop, the olive trees; had smelled always of lavender and vervain; filled the silences with the sweetness of her singing. But the poison within her spread a grotesque path over her body, her face. She smelled of putrescence and her eyes were death. For what was this torment?

Jealous Poseidon, licentious Poseidon, vengeful Poseidon; god of the sea, the ever- present sea. He came upon her in my temple, raped her, left her for me to find. He made her a sacrifice to his unrealised desire Ð his anger at the people of Athens who had refused him. His anger at me.

Medusa was the instrument of my punishment.

I found her bloodied, naked, cold as a winter dawn in battle. He had left her splayed with only the scent of saltwater to answer my questions, as Helios drove his chariot across the western sky. “Who did this to you? Who?”

And when she discovered that she was with child, that was the third violation. The Moirae always work in threes.

*

In time men came, drawn by word of her metamorphosis. She wandered, mad with pain and fear, and where she wandered, men turned to stone. She begged for death by day and prayed by night. But the memory of Pallas weighed too heavily upon me. As much as I loved Medusa, I could not grant her the fate she sought, the end to her misery.

So it was that Perseus became the tool of my mercy. He slew Medusa on a bright summer morning, while she was great with child. Her vast wings fluttered once and were still, then her sons burst forth from the wounded ruin of her throat. Blinded with tears, I cradled her terrible head to my breast, heard the mourning wails of her sisters.

We buried her under an olive tree in the gardens by the temple. Within days the grave was covered with the riotous colours of poppies. They grew in the turned earth as if seeded from her skin and the wind rushing through them was sweet as music.

*

My flute song was sorrow through breath, a wordless elegy. In the ripples of the Hippokrene I saw Medusa’s face and mine commingled. I heard her in the high, clear notes as they spilled into the air. Bright and sharp as crystal, they cut at my heart. Something deeper was in their tone, too, like shadows at the bottom of a clear lake. That sound was the low moan of her last days and the soft sigh of her passing; the sound of a severed thread.

Not all my skill at weaving can repair what Lachesis has measured and Atropos has cut, nor all my wisdom. In this we gods are impotent as mortals.

Euterpe kept the flute and I left the mountain. I have not played since.

*

Selene wanes low in the west overhead and dawn will soon be upon us. Tomorrow I will begin my journey again to Corfu, where she died. I travel there once each year in her memory. This year will be my last.

There are lighthouses on the headlands now, fuelled by electricity and not men. It seems but a moment since there were signal fires blazing against the darkness to guide sailors safely home. The sea is strange to me now without Poseidon to rule its waves. My ancient enmity has become brittle in my breast, tied so strongly to love and longing that it will not be undone.

Medusa I have carried with me this long while. And Pallas too. Soon I will let them go, and I to follow.

The sea calls to me and the immensity of sky. I will stand in the temple at Corfu and release my burdens. I will wait, a solitary vessel heading into shore.

—
Notes:
he thea = the goddess
The title and epigraph are from George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous #9.
This is a bricolage of multiple aspects of the Athena myths from various sources, but primarily Wikipedia. Thank heavens for the internet!

All characters and recognisable phrases are the property of Guy Gavriel Kay. The words of the poem Desire belong to Joy Harjo. The title of section one is from the song Low Red Moon by Belly. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

Thank you to: Aspen for letting me play in this fandom – it was as difficult and rewarding as all the best experiences are; ricepaper – for booty-shaking, cheerleading and helpful suggestions; ivyenglish for reassurance and helpful suggestions; and ginger_delirium for all around handholding and putting up with me.

I – Low red moon

Say I chew desire and water is an explosion
of sure wings in my mouth.

She felt the moon’s arrival before it rose on the third night. The small measure of Dana’s power within her beat heavy and deep as drumming, a calling just beyond the reach of sound. And so she was in the courtyard beyond the sanctuary of the Temple in Paras Derval at moonrise to witness and give praise to the goddess’ full, blood-red intercession. A call to war, a reply to the Unraveller’s gauntlet, a light in the dark. And to know, better than almost anyone living, its true nature. The infinite double-edged grace of all of Dana’s gifts.

She took six of her women, in the darkness, in the blessed, blessing rain, to the Godwood and the Summer Tree. And found the stranger alive.

Gently, reverently, they gathered his body and took him to the Temple. His skin was scoured and raw from two days under the burning sun, terribly pale below the wounds. His lips were cracked and bloodied, his eyes sunken deep into his skull. They bathed him, anointed him with salves and fresh linens, lay him in the High Priestess’s own chamber.

And all the while, Jaelle burned with a bright fury. When the women left her, she sat across from his sleeping body, a fist lodged in her chest squeezing the breath from her lungs. A hot ache bloomed in her throat and the scent of rain, so longed for, so hard won, brought her no joy. Who was this otherworlder, this man, to be vouchsafed the double gift of Her blessing and voice? It was more, so much more, than she could bear. Fiery tears spilled onto her cheeks as she shook and shook in the sanctuary while the God’s rain poured down. Red rain in the light of a full moon on new moon night.

“Who are you?” she whispered to the man sleeping in her bed. In bitterness, in a kind of wonder.

Oh Dana, she cried in the silence of her heart, grieving as she never had before. Why not me?

II – A streaming as of moonlight

Say it tastes of you.

She could not hate him as she wanted; could not, would not question the will of the Goddess whose child and servant she had always been. And she was, in some strange way, drawn to him. This child of the God, Lord of the Summer Tree, Pwyll. His presence invaded some still place inside her until it was too difficult to hold herself so very far away. There was something both peaceful and frightening in the grey of his eyes. It unsettled her, all the more so because she had no defence against the unsettling. Somehow he was always, always pulling her closer, into his own deep quiet.

She spilled her own blood to send him out of Fionavar and back into his own world. He and Jennifer, who had borne the Unraveller’s babe. It had been her way of honouring him, she understood in the dawn of the following morning, for his sacrifice and for something else.

Touching Dun Maura had always taken her out of herself, flung her far into the dark arms of the Goddess. She slept long and deep and dreaming whenever she tapped the earthroot. And in the depths of the sleep that came over her after the spinning of such power, she dreamed of him.

It was very bright in the dream, so bright she could barely see. Yet his face, his eyes, were as clear to her as any sight had ever been. Their grey was the colour of the sky, of the sea, in the soft light before sunrise. And Dana had no power at sea.

In the too-bright dream-light, she studied Pwyll’s features as she had not allowed herself to do before. No longer the broken offering on the Tree, his dark hair was a striking contrast to the paleness of his skin. His nose was an elegant slope, his forehead high and smooth, and his mouth – oh. His mouth. In the dream she felt her heart quicken as her eyes fell on his slightly parted lips. Could not, could not, look away even as she felt the flush creep into her cheeks. She was High Priestess of Dana in Fionavar and he only a man, Twiceborn though he was. And yet she wondered what it would be like to touch his lips with her fingertips, to press her mouth against his own.

A hand touched her hair and she realised it was unbound, without even her circlet to hold it back. A second hand reached out and she felt his fingers sifting through the strands against her face. His hands in her hair. His thumbs tracing soft patterns on her temples, her cheeks. Jaelle raised her eyes to meet Pwyll’s and felt the ground fall away at her feet. Something bright unfolded, blossomed in her belly and she knew she was anchored to the earth only by the warm reality of his skin on hers. In his eyes she saw the movement of the wind, the dizzying motion of wings. She closed her own.

III – Maidaladan

Say I could drown because you left
for the time it takes a blackbird to understand
a pine tree.

He was the wind wearing away at the earth of her.

At fifteen she had donned the brown robes of an acolyte and, at seventeen, the red of the Mormae. There was joy in the Temple then, music and laughter and above all the bone-deep, soul-deep knowledge of her place in the Tapestry, the endless movement reaching always onward. Toward the Goddess.

But even she knew what it was to have men look at her with desire. For Dana was also the bride, lover of the God. In time, Jaelle had learned to use her beauty as a weapon, to instil fear rather than lust. She made herself cool as an icy river, sharp as a keen blade – her face and voice daggers, the spears of her eyes.

Jennifer had been right. She had never been in love.

Yet in the days following the Bael Andarien, Jaelle would remember Kevin Laine, who was Liadon, with sorrow, with joy, with something like love. In her bed in Gwen Ystrat, under the full moon at the heart of midsummer, she woke in the early hours to grieve and to rejoice for the Beloved Son, the sacrifice come freely.

The ecstasy, the terrible sadness, flowed through her like moonlit water. An exultant quake of pleasure wracked her body and left her shuddering, left her tossed and pitched on a dark sea of release.

In time, the joy of the melting snow was dimmed by the pale and broken grief in the eyes of Pwyll. I am only her Priestess, she had told him once, so long ago it now seemed. You are only a man. What she would not now give to have those words unsaid. To have some comfort to offer.

What had always seemed so solid and sure had begun to shift on the night she took his body from the Tree. The power of the Goddess had nothing to do with any man, was sourced in the wildness and fecundity of the earth. In the Temple, Jaelle had learned scorn for the other sex, and scorn for those who followed them. Ysanne had cast aside her service to the Goddess to live in the cottage by the lake before Jaelle was born, but the sting of the betrayal was a never-healing wound. Ysanne, youngest to wear the red of the Mormae, who had forsaken Dana for a man. A mage, a wielder of skylore, a child of Mörnir. As the seasons had turned and the killing summer brought its terrible burdens to bear upon the land, that fierce anger kept Jaelle tall and cold and bright.

No man moved her, not the light prince, nor the dark. Not the High King himself, though he demanded and was granted her respect.

No man.

Until Pwyll.

IV – The light against the dark

Say we enter the pine woods at dawn.

We never slept and the only opium we smoked
was what became of our mingled breath.

The Loom shuttled faster and faster through the warm nights of summer until she could almost hear its clicking.

She felt restless, bereft. At Taerlindel, in the Temple, with the dead on seas that swelled a thousand years ago. She felt her thread in the Tapestry winding away from the Goddess and mourned, caught and balanced in a heartbeat between two longings.

At last, on the ruined plain of Andarien, with the sound of wings in her ears, she took the final step toward heart’s desire. And understood, at long last, the true will of the Goddess.

She watched Pwyll, wrapped in the power of Mörnir, go deep, so deep, and knew that she loved him. She, who was High Priestess of Dana in Fionavar, untouched and untouchable. Between the drawing in of a breath and its exhalation she was changed, irrevocably, all her sharp edges worn smooth.

Her future became clear, in that swift and shining moment, and Jaelle made the only choice left her to make. With the soft and glorious light of Dana’s full moon shining upon her, she accepted the Goddess’ gift, each of its edges, and offered up thanksgiving and tears.

V – Interwoven

Say the stars have never learned
to say good-bye. (One is a jewel
of blue magic in your perfect ear.)

She waited, not knowing if he would come. She promised herself she would not beg.

But in the end all her imagined pride was for naught. The agony of his leaving shattered the cool impassivity which was her last, desperate defence.

And she was in his arms, his, and he in hers. The moment his mouth touched her, she remembered the long-ago dream and the brightness inside her was an explosion of joy and water and wings. She wept and whispered his name, Pwyll, Paul, oh Paul. His hands were in her hair, softly, softly and his mouth was on hers and the silver slide of his tongue against her own until she was dizzy with desire. Pressed to his beating heart, and his hands sifted through her hair.

Later, she and Teyrnon joined the powers of Goddess and God to send Kim and Davor home. Their goodbyes were bittersweet as she thought of all Paul was leaving behind to remain in Fionavar. With her.

And when it was over, when she was filled with moonlight and exhaustion, he took her hand and lead her to her chamber, whispered Sleep as she sank deep. Stay, she thought before she tumbled, not knowing if she said it aloud. Stay with me.

VI – The children of the Goddess and the God

Say all of this is true and more

In the darkness before morning, she woke to his face soft with slumber. She could not stop herself from touching him lightly, in wonder: his cheek, his hair, a slow slide from shoulder to wrist. He was still fully clothed, but the warmth of his body had spread around her, like light.

She kissed his brow and the tip of his nose, felt a smile overtake her face when he opened his eyes. The look in them stole her breath, love and desire and sorrow and joy. It was almost too much to bear. It filled her to overflowing.

“You stayed,” she murmured, voice still muzzy with sleep.

At that, he smiled, wide, wild. “You asked me to.”

“Yes,” she said, solemnly. “I did.”

And then they both were laughing with the pure, airy joy of it. He kissed her and his lips were as warm as his body, wrapped around her like a second skin. She closed her eyes to feel everything more fully, to breathe him deep into the heart of her.

The day before she had been awash with fear and exhilaration and the too-bright newness of what was almost taken away. But in this moment she was whole and aware. No longer High Priestess of Dana, now she was only Jaelle, only a woman, and that was so much, so much.

She could not help pressing herself against his body as they kissed, and pleasure coursed a hot path through her limbs. One of her hands found its way under his shirt to the smooth skin of his back and the contact echoed within her everywhere. She remembered the great wave she had felt at Maidaladan when Kevin had done what he had done. And she found that somehow this was more, so much more. This desire was hers, hers and Paul’s, closed as a circle flowing from one to the other. It was wild with love and gentleness and understanding. It was steeped in every word they’d ever spoken, harsh or gentle, in every experience.

They were panting now and his own hands were wandering restlessly over her robe. One knee inserted itself between her thighs, a delicious weight, and she gasped into his mouth.

Paul pulled away gently, scattering kisses across her cheek and into her hair. “Jaelle,” he whispered. “There’s no need to rush.”

She pulled back to look into his eyes, then. “You know?”

He clasped her hand and drew it over his heart, nodding. “Everything doesn’t have to come at once. This, just this is enough. More than I ever hoped.”

And so it was, she saw. “I do not usually cry so easily,” she told him, laughing a little, as saltwater coated her cheeks.

Pulling her tightly to him, Paul kissed her tears, and they lay together until she calmed. Jaelle breathed in the warm scent of him, steeped in the sleepy pleasure of being held so close. They drifted as the sun rose higher in the sky.

“I have two brothers,” he told her later. “Both younger than me.”

She could not see his face behind her, so she took one of his hands instead and kissed its palm. “You miss them.”

He pulled her tighter against him and pushed his face into the warm curve of her neck. “I do. But,” after a pause, “it’s the same way I’ve been missing them for a long time. Since before any of this.”

“It is the nature of all of Dana’s gifts to be equal parts pain and joy,” she told him. “And now it is something I truly understand.” Rolling to face him, she touched a hand to his cheek. “I had thought that belonging to the Goddess could mean only one way, one path. Now I understand that I’ve been blind. I had to lose everything before I could learn to see.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “I know.”

And he did. She could feel it, see it. He was Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree.

There was a hint of humour in his eyes as he asked her, “So I’m your reward?” And then they were both laughing, wriggling like children under the covers, young and joyful and bright.

When she finally caught her breath, he was above her, all the plains of his body covering hers. His eyes were infinitely gentle in the early light as she heard his beloved voice offer her the formal words of love.

“Jaelle, the sun rises in your eyes.”

VI

then there are blackbirds
in a heaven of blackbirds.

Originally posted on August 14th, 2007.

The first time she took him into the very throes of passion, the sensation was like shock, he was overcome by her hands and her mouth; he had never before given over the control of his own self and he was able only to hold her and feel.
– Forces of Passion by Alison

Darcy slept little in those first days in Dorset, greedy for her skin and lips and eyes; his hunger for her whole self pure and ferocious. The rhythm of her heartbeat, her breath, blended with the susurrations of the sea, soothing him until he felt them as part of his own blood. His wife, his Elizabeth.

Late in the night, she moved against him in gentle awakening. He watched her lashes flutter as she turned her face up to his. “Are you not sleeping, love?” she asked drowsily.

“Not at present,” he murmured, slipping a hand through her dark curls.

A mischievous smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “Do I keep you from your slumber, Mr Darcy?” She slid one hand from his shoulder to his wrist, tangling their fingers.

Chuckling softly, he pressed a warm kiss to her mouth. “Indeed Mrs Darcy, you are most distracting.”

“Even in sleep?” she asked in mock incredulousness.

“Especially in sleep.” He rubbed his thumb over their joined knuckles, his tone becoming earnest. “I have hardly any rest with you lying so close to me, with nothing between us.”

Elizabeth had not yet accustomed herself to the ease with which he could arouse her desire, using nothing more than a touch and the timbre of his voice. Although they had made love only hours before, she found herself again aware of a heavy, liquid feeling rising in her belly. His thumb continued its maddening path over her knuckles and she was mesmerised by the expression in his dark eyes. She wondered absently just who was in thrall to whom.

With a slight tug, she pulled her hand free, rising up on her elbows and drawing her body slowly over his own. “And are you distracted now, sir?”

He scarcely needed to respond as she could feel the evidence of his distraction hard against her thigh. She traced the strong line of his jaw with two fingers, luxuriating in the familiar heat at each point their bodies met. For a moment she closed her eyes and rocked her hips against him once, twice; bit her lip as the movement produced a moan from her husband.

“Elizabeth,” he rasped, hands moving restlessly on her back, through her hair.

She opened her eyes then and kissed him. His mouth was hot and ravenous and she let herself sink into it, into the warmth of his body. It was a buoyancy like swimming, with his breath and the soft rush of the sea in her ears. Darcy’s arms came around her, strong and purposeful, but she pulled back and shook her head. “No. Let me.”

He looked at her in confusion for a moment, until she bent her head to kiss beneath his ear, down his neck to his chest. Her mouth moved to his flat nipple and he gasped at the sharp pleasure, felt it thrum all the way through him. Wanting to kiss her mouth again, wanting to press her down fully upon him, he reached for her, but she pulled back and took both of his hands in hers.

“Let me,” she whispered, his own beautiful siren, all depthless eyes and midnight hair. “Let me give you pleasure.”

He wanted to ask her what she meant, wanted to tell her that she could not help but give him pleasure, but suddenly the world diminished to the sensation of her hot mouth against the inside of his thigh. The very air he breathed strangled in his throat. Her lips were scorching, her tongue a brand. When her small hand began to trace his sex, the sensation was torment. “Elizabeth, stop,” he begged. It was not the first time she had touched him in such a fashion, but the first time she had used her mouth. The look in her eyes both thrilled and terrified him.

“Do you not like it?” Her voice was unsure.

“There is no need…” he trailed off, stumbling over the words as she traced the bones of his hips. His own hands, he found, were clasped into fists at his sides. Opening them, he tried to pull her down to him. Again she resisted. “But I want to do this for you,” she told him quietly. “The way you do for me.”

Fear was choking him, fear and an almost intolerable desire. He had given her his heart, and his body, but now she was asking for something more as well. In her arms he had lost control before, but it would be nothing like this. Here she would have all the power. He would be at her mercy, just as he had been all those months when he was unable to rid himself of his obsession with her. And yet, he reminded himself, they were united as man and wife now, united in true communion. There was nothing he would not do for her. Nothing.

Lightly, her hands began again to touch him, then with growing purpose. Before long, all misgiving ceased and his only thought was that he must have more. Helplessly, he thrust himself against her hand, attempting to increase the delicious pressure. His every sense had heightened almost unbearably so that he could hear the frantic beating of his own heart and his heaving breaths over Elizabeth’s own, lighter ones. Underneath it all he could hear the sea, its movements wild and terrible as his desire.

Darcy watched her, the heavy curls over her shoulders, the softly rounded limbs, the way she glowed in the moonlight through the bed curtains. Her eyes held his for a moment and then dropped to where her hands caressed him. She began to dip her head and his body went rigid, his eyes clamping shut and his hands fisting desperately in the sheets for fear he would be flung somewhere far away at the first touch of her lips. A wild and distant shore where only she could take him.

The soft brush of her hair against his skin was followed by the moist heat of her breath. She withdrew her hands and for long moments he thought he would go mad with anticipation. And then he felt it, the searing heat of her tongue licking him from root to tip. A moan erupted from somewhere deep within him as she took him inside her mouth. He thought he would die from the pleasure if she continued and die from the lack of it if she did not.

Elizabeth let one hand drift over his stomach and thighs as the other steadied her on the bed. She was surrounded by him, his scent all around her, the sharp, slightly bitter taste of his sex on her tongue. The love she felt for him at this moment was huge in her chest, and her arousal almost as great. Although she could not see his expression, she judged her husband’s pleasure from the sounds he made and the movements he could not seem to prevent. She used her lips and tongue, sucking and licking and once or twice scraping her teeth along him until he emitted another tortured moan. It was perhaps the most intimate act she had ever performed, devoting herself solely to his pleasure. Being joined with him, having him inside her body, was as beautiful as it was exciting. But this, this was something she could not even name.

Although he tried desperately to still the surging of his hips, control eventually escaped him. Every muscle in his body had tightened almost to the point of pain. The sounds he emitted would have shamed him at any other time, but every sense, every thought was caught in the keen web of pleasure she spun over him until he could not remember when he had not felt this obliterating need. And then it began. He felt the release welling up from the base of his spine, from his toes. Rushing, rushing like an immense wave, it gathered under Elizabeth’s ministrations until with a great shudder, he spent himself in her mouth.

Afterwards he lay boneless and panting and she rose up over him once more, laughing delightedly, kissing his face and hair, telling him how she loved him. He held her tightly to him as he regained control of his limbs, dazed and awed and replete.