House MD Oneshots + Imagines

Catharsis (James Wilson x Lisa Cuddy) (NSFW)

Lisa Cuddy reminds James Wilson of all the little things he enjoys in life; a hot cup of coffee on a bitter winter morning, a cast iron tub full of scalding water to soak his muscles in and remind himself he's still alive on a cold and lonely night, that special sort of warmth that floods his chest and consumes his entire body when he looks at her- her and only her .

She's beautiful. She's not perfect- she's exhausted, she's tense, and she drowns herself in work- but she's beautiful . James can't hold a candle to that kind of beauty, and honestly, he doesn't want to. All he wants is to revel in her warm glow for as long as he can get away with it.

They're at her home, the fireplace crackling behind them. They've been sharing a cup of hot chocolate for about a half hour now. It's lukewarm, so he drinks what's left and leaves the marshmallows especially for her. Half-baked sentences fall from between shaky lips as he tries to talk even half as eloquently to Cuddy as she talks to him.

Cuddy looks like a goddess with the warm glow of the flames behind her shining upon that smooth, porcelain skin. He imagines slipping the thin straps of the brunette's red silk dress off of her shoulders with his large, soft hands and kissing each and every freckle that lines the narrow structures. She's dainty in appearance; lanky, graceful body, thin, rose pink lips, meticulously plucked and shaped eyebrows, high, defined cheekbones, and pretty doe eyes. But she's wise, too, and that fact trumps over the impression he got when he first laid his eyes upon her. Cuddy's calm demeanor is like ice while the passion inside of her burns like fire. She isn't dainty, nor is she weak. In fact, she's the kind of woman that could tear James's entire life apart in minutes if she wished to do so. He just trusts her not to hurt him.

Wilson stares at Lisa with what he's sure is the most pathetic expression he's ever worn on his face. His eyes are wide, his lips are parted, and his cheeks are red, while all she's doing is drinking the half-melted marshmallows left in their mug of hot chocolate.

They just got back from a play- another one, that is. The first one they went to see was about a week ago. House gave him the tickets for it, so naturally, he took Cuddy, who he's been pathetically crushing on since starting his job at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House was clearly jealous, too, antagonizing Wilson about it while trying to play his envious antics off as a joke. In a flash of genius, Wilson decided to screw with the older man and make him think that he'd actually slept with Cuddy. Later that day, he had some flowers from the dean delivered to him and, against his better judgment, walked right into her office and asked to kiss her.

It was after the kiss that he found out the flowers were actually from House as part of some practical joke, but it worked out for him in the end, so it doesn't matter. That whole debacle is how he ended up here in Lisa's living room, just days after that kiss in her office.

"James," Lisa says, and her voice sounds like gold melting in James's ears. Heat shoots straight to the oncologist's chest as his eyes meet hers, chocolate brown crashing into a shade of blue-green that he can only compare to the seafoam that bubbles along the cusp of the ocean on the west coast. "Do you like me?"

Compared to Cuddy, Wilson feels like a fish out of water. She's not flustered and bashful around him like the younger nurses that fawn over him, nor is she apathetic and unenthusiastic like his ex-wives. She's authoritative, she's intelligent, she's eloquent, she takes initiative. She's everything he's missed his entire life, and he can't get enough of it, so he tries to match her energy- even if he knows he'll fail miserably.

"What makes you ask?" He retorts with a sort of half smile.

"It's obvious," Lisa points out in a matter-of-fact tone that makes Wilson want to bow to her in front of the crackling fireplace. She pauses, not because she needs time to think about what to say next, but because she likes leaving James hanging on the edge of every word, hungry for more. "Part of me just wants to hear it."