The first time they fuck, it's hot, immolating, all slick skin and Cuddy's breasts, finally free to do as they wish cupped in the palms of House's hands, nipples hard against his skin. She's not a screamer--House only has time for a moment of vague disappointment at that--but she makes an amazing, throaty gasp in the back of her mouth before she closes it over House's in an open-mouthed kiss that makes House groan into her mouth.
*
The second time they fuck, it's awkward and uncomfortable and House has a moment of horrifying hesitation when he remembers having to call Wilson and begging for him to come over in shivering, babbling pain the morning after the last time Cuddy had attacked him with her vagina.
("You fucking moron," Wilson had said, flicking the morphine syringe into the garbage before sliding down House's body to his leg and rolling his large, hot hands over House's dead muscle, his voice a murmuring comfort in the background.)
But she's ovulating and House tries not to make any jokes about laying back and thinking about Princeton-Plainsboro and mostly manages not to and by the time he hisses through his teeth and grasps her hips, he can feel the crawling ache of his leg again.
"You know," House says after as Cuddy lays on the floor, legs kicked up over the side of the bed, red-toenailed feet all he can see of her, "in Lifetime movies, girls always get pregnant the first time they give into their boyfriends."
"Life is not bad cable, House," Cuddy laughs.
"I feel so cheated," House retorts, and closes his eyes. When he wakes up, Cuddy's gone and his bed smells vaguely like her stale perfume. He spends his whole day doing laundry and pages Wilson at five minute intervals for the rest of the day until he gets the message and comes over, Chinese food and a copy of Empire Records in each hand.
"You are so high maintanence," Wilson complains, bringing forks and plates from the kitchen that House won't use.
As Wilson is cracking up at over-the-hill pop idols, House watches him indiscretely from the corner of his eye and wonders how he's going to tell Wilson or alternately how much money he'd have to pay Cuddy never to reveal the paternity of the baby.
"Oh thank God," is what House says when Cuddy calls and tells him that she's spawned. He thinks about buying her flowers but dismisses it as the sort of thing you'd (a) have to be an attentive husband or (b) the fag to your hag to do in congratulations for contributing to the overpopulation problem.
Cuddy's glowing on Monday and House is paranoid, trying to keep Wilson and Cuddy as far away from one another as humanly possible in stomach-churning fear that she'll say something motherly and pregnant and Wilson will figure it out, because despite marriage being totally over his head, Wilson's sort of bright.
House forgets, of course, that Wilson and Cuddy are friends, and curses these traitorous human relationships as he hobbles faster than humanly possible toward her office--but by the time he gets there, Wilson's already got Cuddy in a big, warm hug.
For about half a second, he thinks it's going to be okay, but then House catches Wilson's gaze through the glass of Cuddy's office doors.
For the same reasons Wilson is an exceptional and exceptionally well-liked doctor, he is a dream of a friend for Cuddy during her early pregnancy. He brings her decaffienated tea and saltines and one memorable night, drags House over to make Cuddy dinner in her own home, and she and Wilson spend the night telling Mortifying Stories About House, which is actually kind of amazing because House thought he'd abandoned shame years ago.
When Wilson had pressed a kiss to Cuddy's cheek and pulled on his jacket, it takes until House has followed Wilson to his car to realize that the man has no intention of taking him home.
"You can't leave me here with her!" House hisses. "What if she tries to use me for sex again?"
"Because Cuddy can't keep her hands off of you," Wilson smiles, but it's absent something and House tries not to throw a fit and yell, 'Why are you breaking up with me?' because that would be wrong and juvenile. "Look--you're a father now, well, you're going to be a father. Shouldn't you spend some time with her?"
House's expression of unparalled horror must be very descriptive because Wilson bursts into unrepentant laughter and manages, "You'll be fine. And if the conversation slows down, drop a quarter and take a really long time to pick it up," before he gets into his car and autolocks all the doors from the inside before House can make a dive for the driver's side seat.
When House realizes that waiting angrily in the driveway isn't going to make Wilson feel guilty enough to come back and get him, he limps back into the house where he finds Cuddy paging through baby magazines.
"Wilson thought we should bond," House reports miserably.
Cuddy makes a disgusted noise and hands him a copy of Martha, Baby. "Just--don't talk."
The thing is, Cuddy does like House, and House does like Cuddy--even if he still thinks she's the devil and has privately started referring to their spawn as Rosemary's Baby--but he's starting to like her less and less the more and more time Wilson inflicts them on one another.
House always knew Wilson was a lying weasel, though never the extent. Wilson manufactures situations where House has to give Cuddy a ride home, or she comes over with groceries that--hello--are clearly Wilson's responsibilities to bring, and makes himself completely unavailable when House needs entertainment. Wilson feeds House lies like, "I'm meeting with my divorce lawyer," and "I'm visiting my parents," and "House, I have patients!"
"I understand you're operating on some really remarkably false assumptions about how Cuddy and I must be MFEO, but if you keep this up, I'm telling Angela Holly from third period you totally told all the guys she was a ho," House says, finally trapping Wilson in the last stall of the third floor men's room.
Wilson just sighs and stands there, pants hanging low around his hips because part of House's brilliant plan had involved dragging Wilson into a stall by his belt and then stealing it to facilitate a mature discussion between adults.
House frowns, asking, "Have you lost weight?"
Wilson scowls, saying, "No--and the point is that I'm doing it so that you and Cuddy will--" he makes a hand gesture that could mean any of a dozen dirty things "--develop a relationship! You're obviously too emotionally retarded to do it on your own."
"Hey," House says seriously. "We're called differently abled."
Wilson rolls his eyes, putting his hands on his hips, which are obviously bonier than before and House cannot help but feel a twinge of worry, because Wilson loses weight when his divorces are going badly.
"You're going to be a father, House. You're going to be parents together. No amount of your bitching and acting out is going to change that at this point." Wilson glares. "So shape up."
"Oh my God," House mutters. "What, are you going to check me into rehab next?"
"Would you let me?" Wilson asks, totally serious.
"I'm taking this," House informs him, and bangs out of the men's room stall as he shoves Wilson's belt down the front of his trousers.
After the intense nausea and instant hormonal changes, Cuddy actually does start to show a little pregnancy glow, which makes her deadly attractive to Wilson, who spoils her near constantly now. House nearly bites off one of his fingers trying not to point out that if there's anybody that Wilson should be spoiling rotten, it's clearly House, and since when did their palimony agreement allow Wilson to provide Cuddy the lifestyle to which House has become accustomed?
"You should move in, you know," Wilson tells him one night, waiting until House is nearly dead from carb coma after the enormous ziti Wilson had made for dinner at Cuddy's house. "She's got plenty of space and--"
"What part of 'donor' didn't you understand?" House snaps at him with as much venom as he can manage when he's stuffed to his eyeballs with tomato sauce and pasta and fresh, chiffonnad basil.
Wilson smiles at him. "Come on, House. You like her."
"I like you, too," House snaps. "Why don't I just move in with you?"
Wilson gives him a patronizing pat on the knee and says, "We'll talk about it after you knock me up."
"Well, it'll never happen if you don't let me try," House says, sullen and annoyed.
"Right, right," Wilson says, distracted as Cuddy comes back into the room with a round of coffee for all, smiling as she tells Wilson about how she's scheduled for her first sonogram soon and Wilson starts to speculate on where she'll put the nursery. House hates them both so much at this moment he thinks he might burst into flames.
Something is happening tonight and he's not exactly sure what, but he has this vague, sympathetic feeling for Wilson's other wives right now, and that can never be a good sign. He wonders if this is how Wilson had left them, too, with well-wishes and assurances that this was for the best, that he was only thinking of their happiness, and if Wilson had given them that same beatific smile that told them, "You won't miss me. I promise."
Afterward, Wilson is a ghost, and House ends up spending more and more of his time resigned to being with Cuddy, and eventually just being with Cuddy because he doesn't call Wilson a manipulative little shit for nothing.
"Want to get dinner?" House asks her, not making eye contact.
"Are you asking me on a date?" she balks, hands on a pile of files on her desk.
House rubs his hands over his face. "If I say yes, will you end this fresh hell and just agree already?"
"I don't know, this is kind of fun," she tells him, but packs up her briefcase and follows him out to the car. They have dinner at Wilson's favorite restaurant and House tries not to feel like scum every time the waitress looks at Cuddy and gives him a confused, betrayed look on her favorite customer's behalf. But Cuddy is smart and even sort of funny, in her own evil way, and somehow they start talking about a new genetic treatment a lab in San Deigo is developing for Alzheimers and the next thing House knows he's walking her to her doorstep and then helping her out of her clothes.
She is, after all, unbearably attractive and does have that zesty bod, even if she probably calls upon the spirits of darkness to heed her bidding. House never knew he could be sullen while having really fantastic sex with a hot, smart chick, but apparently it's possible.
They're both nervous afterward, lying panting in Cuddy's large, white-sheeted bed, but House doesn't say, "Why did that feel wrong?" and Cuddy doesn't kick him out, so when House shows up at the hospital the next morning in Cuddy's car wearing the same clothes, of course the first person to see him is Wilson, who only gives him that smile again, and goes about his day.
Three weeks later, House finds Cuddy crying in her office over the first sonogram, and as he stares at it, the uncertain gray edges that show the new geography of their world, he can't help but feel the entire weight of this on his shoulders--a crushing, inward rush of terror and elation that makes him pull Cuddy into his arms and put his face in her hair as she says, over and over again, "Oh God, oh my God."
And for a little while, they both forget that something's wrong.
When Cuddy starts showing, all hell breaks loose.
Wilson finds him hiding in the new pediatric oncology playroom on Thursday--scowling at all the bald little cancer kids--and finally says, "Oh my God. This is pathetic. Come on. I live across the street from lesbians who never close their curtains."
Wilson's new apartment is pretty much like all the others: bland, inoffensive, and centered around four bookshelves stuffed full of French literature and medical journals. He gives House a beer and hands him the remote control before wandering into the kitchen to make something else that House will say smells like vomit and will probably steal for lunch tomorrow.
"How are you and Cuddy doing?" Wilson asks as House scrolls through his TiVoed programs.
"I think we're in a relationship," House mutters, taking a pull off of his beer. He's tried lying to Wilson before and it never works out for him. "I don't want to talk about it."
Wilson smirks. "Wow, it's just like a movie."
"I'd kill you if I could be fucked to do it," House promises.
Halfway through America's Next Top Model, House feels Wilson's head tip onto his shoulder, and it takes until House realizes he's threaded his arm behind Wilson's neck to curl his hand in Wilson's hair that he finds he has missed this, that it feels like water finally washing cool and wonderful over his skin.
He spends the next two hours trying not to think about it, even when Wilson makes a soft, sad noise into his shoulder and turns his face into House's neck, which is when House says, "Oh fuck it," under his breath and moves a couple of pillows around with his free hand until he's leaning back as comfortably as possible on the couch, Wilson splayed out warm and heavy and familiar across his chest, eyes still closed in sleep. His leg is going to hurt like a motherfucker in the morning, but Wilson will be there, and House isn't worried.
The next day, Foreman says, "Oh thank God," and Chase says, "I was wondering how long he could stay angry with you," and Cameron says, "You should know that taking out your personal problems on your employees isn't the best way to keep us at our most effective." House intends to snap some sort of sarcastic comment back at them but realizes he has no idea what they're talking about until Cuddy finds him at lunchtime and says, "I called you six times last night--why the hell weren't you answering your phone?"
House stares at her for a moment because he's always made fun of men who gush over how beautiful their wives are when they're pregnant but in a fierce moment of self-loathing, he realizes it's true, and Cuddy looks amazing, all of her coquettish curves smoothing and rounding out into a new and softer shape. He wants--and he hates himself for it--to run a hand down her side and leave his palm on her rounding stomach and lie about being able to feel the baby kicking.
She glares at him. "Hello? Earth to House."
"I was at Wilson's," he says, and because he's got a rep to protect, he adds, "We were christaning his new apartment." She cocks her brow at him. "By watching lesbians through his living room window."
"Of course you were," she says, sounding pleased and relieved all at once as she sets her brown bag lunch down on the cafeteria table. She's peeling an orange as she tells him about her top ten most irritating moments of the morning and how she was calling to let him know the next ultrasound got rescheduled so he could be there if he wanted.
When he tells Wilson about this later that day, Wilson gets such a desperate, pathetic look of fascinated longing that House rolls his eyes and says, "What? Do you want to come? Look at our demon spawn?" and Wilson says, "Can I? I mean--do you think Cuddy would mind?"
Which is how all three of them end up in maternity, with nurse Jillian, reason for divorce number two, smirking as House and Wilson debate whether or not the baby is male based on a certain extra gray protrusion until she says, "I'm really kind of amazed you two are doctors," which Cuddy echoes with a long-suffering if amused, "Tell me about it."
That night, when all three of them go to Wilson's favorite restaurant, the waitress seems torn between her betrayed expression and one of bafflement until she sees Wilson clapsing Cuddy's hand and making a lemon water toast. Then the waitress makes an "o" with her mouth of sudden realization, and when she wanders over a bit later to refill House's glass, she tells him, "You should have just said you were with them both--I wouldn't have overcharged you so much last time."
House has a minor stroke, but manages to keep is all hidden deep inside until he is inside his own apartment.
The next day, he calls in with the bubonic plague and stays in his pajamas, sitting on his couch and watching the more than forty episodes of The Nanny he has TiVoed as he eats string cheese and tries not to decide whether it would be considered bigamy or bigandry with occasional bouts of suicidal humiliation.
"I'm having kind of a crisis," House admits, and when he looks up to see Wilson's horrified expression before he snaps, "Just--pretend you have a vagina right now, okay?"
Wilson looks pained but he says, "I'll just take my cue from you, then."
"Anyway, your favorite waitress thinks that I'm sleeping with both of you--" this alone makes Wilson's face take on a sort of supernaturally mortified shock that would normally entertain House for hours, but currently worries him because if this conversation alone kills Wilson, they'll never have their trial threesome "--and I like Cuddy."
"We have a psych department," Wilson says, pained.
"But the thing I was overlooking here," House continues, glaring at Wilson for his total lack of support here, "is that I'm in love with you."
"So what?" Wilson asks, and House barely resists the urge to beat him to death with his cane, because although in that circumstance a thresome could still be accomplished, he bets Cuddy wouldn't go in for the necrophilia.
"So I'm in love with you and I like Cuddy..." he says patiently.
Wilson's jaw drops. "There is no way you are this greedy," he says.
"Oh, way, totally way," House says, affecting every dumb fourteen year old girl who has ever come through the clinic.
Wilson clutches a stack of file folders to his chest, looking defensive and vulnerable and at the same time too hopeful as he says, "Very funny, House," and "Anyway, Cuddy would never go for it," and "I can't *believe* you."
When House tells Cuddy about his epiphany, partly as a joke and partly because he thinks that if they keep faking this she might kill him in his sleep and raise his kid to be normal and kind, she snorts and says, "I can't believe you just figured this out."
"I was a little busy saving lives and becoming a cripple to have a big gay epiphany," House snaps at her.
"Wilson managed to work it in," Cuddy points out.
"Oh, don't go there," House mutters.
Cuddy laughs and she reaches over to stroke a hand over House's cheek, saying, "Don't worry your pretty, maladjusted head over it. Invite him over tonight. We'll get him drunk if we have to."
House kind of stares off after her for a moment, torn between being incredibly turned on and scared and calls after Cuddy, "I *knew* you had designs on Wilson's virtue!"
It takes exactly two beers for Wilson to decide that having sex with both of them is the best idea ever, and the only reason House is prevented from making numerous defamatory statements about Wilson being a two beer queer is that he's got a mouthful of Wilson's tongue as Cuddy grins and pulls off Wilson's shirt, running her hands up and down his pale, freckled back.
"Wow," House gasps, breaking for air. "You really are this easy."
"Well, it made me pretty popular in high school," Wilson says, flushed all over.
"Slut," House mutters, but let's the word roll of his lolling tongue as Cuddy turns to pull Wilson against her, mouth closing over his as she unbuckles his belt, slides her hands down inside the fabric and Wilson moans into her mouth, raising his hands up to stroke his thumbs across her nipples.
House and Cuddy both make a totally embarrassing noise at that and Wilson grins, three quarters evil and one fourth triumph before he kisses Cuddy again, biting along her lower lip and walking them toward the bed, easing them down into the sheets and sliding one thigh between her knees, stroking a free hand over her side.
House sits on the end of the mattress, congratulating himself for being a total *genius* until Cuddy gets Wilson's pants off, and then he's just distracted by all that smooth smooth skin, and then he's palming Wilson's ass and skinny thighs and narrow shoulders, biting down along his spine.
"And you call me the slut," Wilson manages to say, but it's lacking a certain gravity given that he's got his face buried between Cuddy's very nice breasts, the fingers of his left hand slick and curious between her legs, knees open and sprawled across the bed. Her chest is heaving and Wilson's wearing a full-body blush and House frantically tries to figure out if there's enough rope in the garage to tie *both* of them to this bed forever.
"I meant it in a good way," House argues, but Wilson probably doesn't hear it, what with House bending down so he can nip lightly at Wilson skin, smoothing the red marks of his teeth with indulgent swipes of his tongue and spending extra time in that fold of soft, soft skin where Wilson's white thigh meets his ass.
"Will you two bitches *shut up* and get on with it?" Cuddy moans from the head of the bed, pushing herself up on her elbows and glaring (hotly) at them from over her breasts and across her five-month reproductive growth. House tries not to find that hot but fails, because Wilson laughs and crawls up her body, kissing her silent and trailing his--oh *God*, House groans in his head--slick wet hand up her body to stroke at her breasts, leaving a glistening trail up her skin that House has to lean over and follow with his tongue.
His weight on Wilson's back and side leaves Cuddy moaning, "God, yes, *finally*," and rolling her hips up against Wilson, and House can hear the most amazingly filthy wet sounds coming from what he's betting is the happiest place on Earth right now: right between them, at the apex of their bodies.
Cuddy reaches down and guides Wilson inside of her, one hand staying between them as Wilson buries his face in Cuddy's shoulder as she throws her head back, a long, sweet moan fighting its way out of her pale throat as he strokes inside of her in one seamless move, the muscles in his ass and thighs tightening.
House practically overturns her nightstand looking for lube and then he makes a mess slicking up his hand, stroking teasingly at Wilson until Cuddy gasps, "Will you just fuck him already?" between one stroke and another, to which Wilson says, "I second that," and House says, "You're not the boss of me," but lines himself up anyway, because he knows a losing battle when he sees one.
He tries slow and easy but Wilson's not in the mood for it, if the short, blunt nails in his good thigh and blue streak of cursing are any indication, so House says, "Fine, Jesus," and bottoms out in one vicious, inward thrust that slams Wilson into Cuddy, who makes the utmost of appreciative noises, layered over Wilson's "God, *yes*."
House needs to come approximately five minutes ago because Wilson is hot and tight and perfect and he can reach down and feel where he's sliding inside Cuddy and it's all he can do to moan kisses into the back of Wilson's neck, to tighten his fingers along Wilson's hips and balance his weight on his good side as he rides them out, rolls into Wilson's body as he feels Cuddy throw a leg over both of them, the inside of her knee smooth and slick from sweat.
And House thinks, this can't last, this can't last, we're all going to die, but Cuddy says, "*Fuck*," like she's seeing the face of God or something and digs her nails so hard into Wilson's shoulders House sees blood for just a second before he feels Wilson tightening all around him, moaning, "God, oh God," and House doesn't want to feel left out or anything so he bites down on Wilson's other shoulder and comes.
Untangling themselves is fun, in a vaguely shameful, very sticky way, and Wilson, citing the fact that he looks like he was attacked by *wolverines* steadfastedly refuses to get up to get a towel or do anything other than lie in bed, fucked out and blissful next to Cuddy, who literally *growls* when House looks at her. And House, whose leg will remember that endorphins are not Vicodin any second now, isn't going anywhere, so they lie there in Cuddy's destroyed bed and stare at the ceiling feeling pleasantly debauched until Wilson says:
"So how does this work? You guys call me when you get bored?"
House tries not to hear a slight tone of hurt in Wilson's voice and says, "Good thing I'm always bored."
Wilson looks at him, eyes huge with realization. "Oh," he says, quiet.
Cuddy makes a noise of disgust at both of them. "You two are such pussies."
House is actually kind of sorry to see Wilson's apartment go--not everybody gets a free lesbian peep show every night--but he figures he can soldier on through the pain if he wanders into Cuddy's house occasionally to find Wilson making out with her on the living room floor. (That time, he's almost finished microwaving popcorn to bring in for the viewing when he hears Wilson shout, "Don't even think about it!") It surprises him that almost nothing changes: he still likes Cuddy (more than he'll admit) and he still loves Wilson (more than he'll ever let on) and Wilson is still a slut, but apparently, it's hard to cheat if there're two people already using you for sex.
And after House makes a really embarrassing scene in the delivery room where he may or may not have shed a tear the first time somebody passed him the screaming bundle of ugly that turns out to be his daughter, it all changes again: diapers, bottles, feeding.
The best part, Cuddy decides, is that she has two separate people to kick out of her bed to get the baby when she wakes up the whole neighborhood crying.
The best part, House decides, is that of course the baby likes Wilson best, so it's almost criminally easy to make Wilson do the 2 a.m. feedings.
Wilson, always a tease, doesn't chooose to reveal what the best part is in his opinion until the baby starts teething and makes a beeline for House's cane every time, leaving it a slobering, gnawed mess as Wilson laughs himself sick in the background.
"You really--" House starts saying to Cuddy one night, watching Wilson hurry out of the house at a midnight page.
And she puts her hand over his, grinning as she tells him, "I do."