House's last vicodin pill @actomyosin - Tumblr Blog

actomyosin

Jul 15

stories-from-mars

Talking Body

(house x fem!reader)

summary: You wake up in a stranger’s bed.

warnings: angst, fluff-ish, smut, medical bullshit, lots of swearing, dubcon is you squint?

words: 14.6K

notes: the amount of time i spent writing and editing this and there might still be some errors so forgive a girl. gosh. these might be the most unhinged smuts ive ever written by the way, and coming from me, thats saying a lot. i hope you enjoy! x

CHAPTER I: (WHAT) THE FUCK

You open your eyes and frown immediately, zeroing in your surroundings. Wait, whose bedroom is this? Did you pick up a guy last night or something? Hell, did you go to a bar?! God, how many did you have if you don’t even remember going to the damn place? Definitely more than what is medically advised, because in what world would you have slept with a guy with a room this messy in a sound state of mind? The clothes scattered over the chair look like a goddamn Dadaist piece of art. Sally from Pediatrics is gonna love laughing at your misery when you tell her about this…

You sigh and run a hand over your face, feeling your skin so freaking dry it’s scratchy. Great. That’s what you get for skipping one week on the skincare routine. With a heavy grunt—which sounded like a truck driver after smoking three boxes of cigarettes, damn you, Jack Daniels!—you turn on the bed only to find it empty on your side. Yeah, that’s just typical. A man who is able to sleep every night among this wreckage must have some serious underlying emotional issues.

Then, you feel it.

The sting.

The pain.

“Jesus, motherfucker—”

The gravelly sound leaving your own throat makes you pause and frown even deeper in confusion as the blinding ache radiates through the whole extension of your quadriceps. How many bottles of scotch does it take to turn your voice this deep? And this fucking sensation in your leg, like someone chewing aggressively on your flesh? Gosh, it hurts like a bitch. You’re halfway into another mental curse when you look down and freeze, not finding your body there, but long, masculine limbs and an ugly scar on the right thigh. You shriek in absolute horror and the pain throbs again, prompting you to jump in reflex and fall off the bed with a weighty thump, similar to a bag of potatoes hitting the floor.

“What the fuck!?” You scream this time, your inexplicably rough and manly tone much more evident now.

This has to be a dream. No, no, no, more like a nightmare! Fuck! Your hands find the sides of your incapacitated leg while you groan desperately again. Taking sharp breaths through your nostrils, you glance at the mess around you with manic eyes, arms flailing up toward the bedside table to try and fetch an orange bottle of pills. You don’t even know what it is—you just need this damn hurting to stop. A set of keys and some condom packages hit the ground whilst you snatch the medicine clumsily, opening it and shoving a handful in your mouth without thinking twice.

Your relief, however, is short-lived until you read the label, spilling the chewed pills all over your legs violently. Vicodin?! You have been clean from opioids for three years, you can’t fucking take—Jesus, whose body is even this?! Scrambling across the floor and attempting to sit up amidst the striking twinge in your femur, you roughly scrub your tongue from the bitter and chalky taste, panting heavily. Your mind works overtime to make sense of what the hell is happening.

Think. Maybe it really is a dream, who knows? You do tend to have some dramatic hangovers from time to time… but even your dreams are usually in third person. And you’re just not some random guy in them. You shake your head once and haul your lengthy body up in a swift motion, hissing when your thigh stings in protest. You limp pathetically in the direction of what you infer is the bathroom, searching erratically for a mirror. Perhaps if your brain sees the actual face of whoever this is and realizes it’s not you, you’ll wake up…

You look at your male fingers and scoff in disbelief once more, touching the scruffy grey beard and wincing slightly at the dull soreness still bothering under your waist. You finally stare at your reflection in the mirror to reveal Dr. Gregory House glancing back at you. What the actual fuck?! The prick from diagnostics who makes the hospital a living hell to work in?! Wait a minute—this is too real to be a dream. And honestly, all of a sudden, it doesn’t seem like a nightmare at all, but rather your chance to get revenge in the name of every good citizen who works at Princeton-Plainsboro.

This is the golden opportunity. You could actually have some fun before finding out whatever the hell happened to your own body. A wicked smirk paints your lips slowly, although it disappears when the bathroom door rattles abruptly. Another loud and impatient knock echoes against the wood and you jolt at the sound.

The game is afoot.

“House! Open up. If you’re pretending to be dead to get out of clinic duty, Cuddy already said she’ll double your hours.”

The door opens anyway, because James Wilson has long since stopped respecting House’s boundaries. He stands in the doorway, car keys in one hand and a travel mug of coffee in the other, giving you a skeptical glare. The sight is ridiculous, you’ll give him that: you’re only wearing a pair of House’s visibly worn black boxers, suspiciously not leaning on your cane, studying your own figure in front of the mirror as if you’d just hit puberty and were curious about the changes, fingertips still touching the stubble on your cheeks faintly. He looks down at your leg and his eyes turn into thinner slits.

You display a rushed smile in the blink of an eye, shoving him out of your apartment with a newfound masculine force while thoroughly ignoring your sore thigh. “Jimmy! Make yourself at home. I’ll be there in a second.”

You limp back into the bedroom and slam it shut so hard it makes James flinch behind you. As you get dressed, a phone vibrates furiously on the floor. It’s your own phone number on the screen, albeit since you’re not messaging yourself, it’s painfully obvious who it is. You unlock the device to be bombarded with a barrage of messages. House—supposedly trapped in your body, as far as you know—is handling the situation with his signature lack of grace.

08:14 AM: What did you do? Did you lace my coffee? If this is a prank, I’m going to implant a catheter in your sleep

08:15 AM: Why am I short? Why is everything too high up?

08:17 AM: I just tried to clear my throat and sounded like a Disney princess. Fix this.

08:19 AM: Also, your metabolism is too efficient and my right leg doesn’t hurt. It’s deeply unsettling. Get over here before I start testing your blood for rare pathogens just to pass the time

Outside the door, you can hear Wilson pacing, his voice drifting in over the noise of shifting fabric. “Did you really just call me Jimmy? Unironically? And since when do you announce that you’ll ‘be there in a second’ instead of throwing a metaphorical flashbang and running the other way?” He knocks on it thunderously again. “And why aren’t you using your cane? Did you find another illegal treatment that surely is going to be lethal in a couple of weeks?”

Once fully dressed in House’s wrinkled, ugly clothes, you push the door back open deftly, gripping the cane tightly with hectic eyes despite the plastic smile glued on your lips. “I’m trying out new methods. Natural ones. They’re healthier.” You limp past James, not giving him time to process your clipped wording. “Also—you drive. I’m... renouncing my license. Temporarily. Let’s go.”

Wilson stops dead in his tracks in the middle of the hallway. He stares, brown orbs darting from your cryptic beam down to your hands, looking for a hidden camera or a punchline. “You’ve given up Vicodin”, he repeats leisurely, flatly, his tone bathed in incredulity. “The man who once performed surgery on his own leg to avoid a drug test is now a wellness influencer.”

You shrug, still limping in an agitated manner. “People change, Wilson. Now let’s go.”

James turns and walks briskly to keep up as you head toward the front door. He grabs your shoulder to spin you around, genuinely alarmed. “Okay, House, seriously. What did you take? Are you having a stroke? Did you find a lump?” He peers closely into your blue gaze, checking your pupils. “You love driving that motorcycle like a maniac. You only give up control when you’re either completely wasted or planning a felony. Which is it?”

Pause.

This is your chance.

“I’m… in love.” You let out a shaky, lying, theatrical wheeze, eyes gleaming with fake tears. You pull out House’s phone from your pocket and show Wilson your own picture—the one you just saved from your Facebook account. “Look at her. That’s the love of my life right there. I’m changed.”

Wilson blinks at the photo of your real body and gazes up at you, repeating the movement at least three times. His expression transitions from concern to profound and exhausted perplexity. He pinches the bridge of his nose, letting out a sigh that’s been building up for a decade.

“She’s... very pretty, House.” Wilson says carefully, the way one speaks to a patient who believes they are talking to Napoleon. “However, I’m afraid that’s not love. That’s a manic episode. Or a neurological event.” He pulls open the door, gesturing for you to walk out ahead of him. Before you can reply, he holds up a hand decisively, “I’m driving you to PPTH, but I’m taking you straight to Radiology for an fMRI. I’m eighty percent sure you have a tumor pressing on your frontal lobe.”

CHAPTER II: THE SPORTS CAR

You managed to escape Wilson in the parking lot when he looked away for a brief moment, limping so stealthily into the Diagnostics Department, a crippled ninja surely would’ve been jealous. You arrive at House’s office and peer at every single corner with big, bright blue eyes, akin to a little kid in a candy shop. Huh. So this is where all the money has been going into, whereas you’re forced to eat the radioactive menu from the cafeteria downstairs with your crew. No wonder House thinks he owns the place.

You exhale, playing around with a random marker between your forefinger and thumb, and take a seat in the leathered chair behind the desk. A shiver runs up your spine and your leg twitches in pain, still you soldier on, determined to ignore it and focus on making the best out of your House ride. Noise comes from the other room, catching your attention, and you smile kindly as the team approaches.

“Hello, guys!”

Foreman, Chase and Cameron are distractingly dispersed in the glass-walled office, flipping through patient charts. At your very polite, very un-House greeting, Chase freezes mid-pen-click. Cameron lowers her clipboard, her eyes filled with immediate maternal concern. Foreman is the first to dare speak, his brow furrowed. He looks over your shoulder as though expecting Wilson to be standing there, holding a straightjacket.

“Did you finally get high enough to appreciate dry-erase boards?”

“Are you feeling okay, House?” Cameron chimes in, taking a step forward.

Chase snorts, reclining in his chair. “He’s screwing with us. He probably hid a dead fish in the air vents and is now waiting for us to smell it. What’s the case, House? Or are we just here to admire the architecture today?”

You open your arms dramatically, a sadistic smile spread across your lips as you stand up and limp to their table, “I’m just in love. Can’t I be happy?” You lean on your cane, staring at the whiteboard and rubbing your stubbly chin thoughtfully. “Mmm. Pink looks better. Chase, get a pink board to replace this one, would you?”

The room falls into a suffocating silence. Chase’s jaw literally drops. He blinks at the whiteboard, then at you, intensely bewildered. “House, they don’t even make—” He stops himself, shaking his head. “No. I’m not doing that. You’re trying to see how far you can push us before we quit.”

Foreman crosses his arms, his eyes narrowing. “You’re in love. With what? The pharmaceutical rep who brought the free samples?”

The glass door slides open with a melodramatic whoosh. Standing there is you—well, your real body. Except now, it’s wearing an oversized, crumpled hoodie, a pair of old sneakers three sizes too big, and a look of murderous fury. House-in-your-body stomps inside, trips lightly over the threshold, since he isn’t used to your lighter mass yet, steadies himself on a chair, and points a trembling, feminine finger at your face.

“You”, House rasps out of your mouth, vibrating with a hilarious mix of your natural tone and his bitter cadence. “In my office. Now.”

Cameron gasps, looking between you and the angry young woman who just stormed in. “House... Who is this? Is this the girl?”

You look down at your own figure and grin widely, delighted at the sight of him fuming, and glance back at your team. “She’s my girlfriend, guys. This is (y/n). Say hello, baby.” You pull him closer casually, kissing your own soft hair.

House-in-your-body goes rigid the second your arm wraps around his shoulder. His eyes widen in comic horror. If looks could kill, you would have spontaneously combusted into a pile of ash right there. “If you ever touch me again”, House growls, a threatening hiss that sounds incredibly bizarre coming from your own face, “I will find a way to induce a stroke in your Broca’s area so you can never speak another word.”

You scoff in response and he aggressively elbows you in your newly acquired, aching thigh—hitting the exact spot with pinpoint medical accuracy—and wrenches himself away from you, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. You groan silently at the hit and behind you both, the team is experiencing a collective neurological meltdown.

“Girlfriend?!” Chase blurts out, taking turns at blinking at your current middle-aged demeanour and your actual body. “House, she’s... you’re... Is this a mid-life crisis? Did you buy a sports car too?”

“House, this is highly inappropriate”, Cameron says, flushing a scandalized red. She gazes at House-in-your-body with immense pity. “Miss, are you okay? Are you being coerced? If he’s withholding medical treatment or manipulating you—”

“The only thing he’s manipulating is my sanity”, House snaps in your thin voice, turning his glare onto Cameron. “Shut up, Cameron. And Foreman, stop looking at my chest, it’s creepy.”

Foreman throws his hands up in defense while you sigh and run a palm over your beard, blue eyes moving between all of them rapidly. You mumble to House, squinting a bit, “you should be happy you can actually come more than once in a row, now. Idiot.” You roll your eyes and limp back into your office, barking at Chase one last time. “Pink board! Do it!”

Chase’s mouth opens, closes, and opens again, but no sound comes out. “What the—”, he mutters under his breath, stumbling backward out of the room. “I don’t... where do they even sell those?!”

Foreman follows suit. “I’m leaving. If Cuddy asks, I’m doing rounds in the clinic. Anywhere but here.”

Meanwhile, House-trapped-in-your body stands frozen for a minute, processing what you said. His jaw tightens and his naturally downy gaze flashes with shock and competitive irritation. He trudges after you, his gait still uncoordinated, shoving your private office door shut and cutting the team off from the madness.

CHAPTER III: THE FACE OFF

House hisses, pacing around the desk while failing to adjust to the swing of your hips, “first of all, orgasming repeatedly in a row is anatomically inefficient and, frankly, a waste of cardiovascular stamina. Second of all—how dare you?!” He leans impossibly closer, crossing your arms and glaring daggers at you. “We have a massive problem. I woke up, tried to scratch my beard, and hit smooth skin. I tried to stand up, and my center of gravity was completely thrown off by... these”, he gestures vaguely to your breasts with a scowl, causing them to wiggle along. “And then I look in the mirror, and instead of a brilliant, ruggedly handsome doctor, I see you. Do you have any idea what this means? I can’t write prescriptions. I don’t have a medical license in this body. And worst of all, Cuddy is gonna think I hired a hooker to do my clinic—”

“Hooker your ass, you bastard.” You snarl, pointing a long finger at your own chest, though you’re still mildly amused by his annoyance. “I’m a nurse in this hospital and if you weren’t such an arrogant prick, you would know that!”

“Well, boo-hoo!” He yells back, shrieking in a high-pitched voice whilst he gets in your grumpy face. “Newsflash: I don’t care who you are, I just want my body back! How do we reverse this?!”

“I don’t know.” You shrug, sitting in his ergonomic chair and putting your feet up on the desk, utterly unbothered, hands resting behind your head. “Your body is actually pretty nice, you know? Limping is fun. I might even wanna stick for a while here.” You smirk only to spite him further. “Enjoy the catcalling on the street while it lasts. I’m sure it will figure itself out.”

House-in-your-body is about to pop a blood vessel in your perfectly healthy forehead. He gets in your space, slamming your hands down onto the wood and leaning over you with a glower that looks remarkably fierce on your features. “Limping is fun?! Oh, sure, it’s a blast. Just wait until three hours from now when the weather changes and that ‘fun’ dull pain turns into a flaming iron spike driven into your femur. Let’s see how much you like staring at the drywall at 3:00 AM while your brain screams for synthetic opioids!”

He straightens up, letting out a frustrated breath through your nose. He catches a glance of his own reflection—your reflection—in the glass pane of the office door, and shivers. He turns back to you threateningly when the sound of a loud beep echoes amidst the silence of the office.

You smile wolfishly. “Oh, seems like Cuddy wants to see me. I can’t wait.”

House’s look darkens. “Cut the crap. We have a deadline. You have to go down there this instant. If she sees me looking like this, she’ll have security throw me out. And if you go in there acting like a cheerful tourist in my skin, she’s going to drug test you. Which brings me to my next question…” He taps his chin with your finger sarcastically. “Since you’re currently piloting my nervous system... How bad is withdrawal hitting you right now?”

You keep grinning, shaking your head. “Man, I’ve lived for years with a broken nervous system. Talking to a stranger and being chased by a lion has no difference to me. Trust me, my mind is stronger than yours. I’m used to pain myself.” A few drops of cold sweat slide down your temples, although you deliberately refuse to take notice of them. “Fine. I’ll go see Cuddy. When I’m back, we’ll find a way to fix this. Deal?”

You move for a handshake, gazing at him unblinking. The sheer audacity of your words and the gesture makes House’s ladylike jaw set for a second. He wants to argue, dissect your medical history, mock your bravado and lecture you on the neurochemistry of addiction—but then he sees it, regardless of your best efforts; the subtle sheen of perspiration breaking out across your forehead. The feeble, involuntary tremor in his own slender fingers. The withdrawal is, in fact, starting to knock on the door. His expression shifts from anger to something begrudgingly observant. He stares into his own blue irises, seeing your stubbornness looking back at him, and lets out a drained laugh out of your lips.

His tone drops into a quieter register. “Generalized anxiety doesn’t quite equal a chemical dependency, but you get points for theatricality.” He reaches out, your gentler palm grasping his calloused one, squeezing it hard enough to make a point. “Deal. But the second you start seeing hallucinations of giant, talking rabbits, you crawl back here.”

“I’ll be fine.” You grumble disdainfully, gripping your cane until your knuckles turn white to drag along his bulky frame impatiently.

He steps back, fixing the oversized hoodie. “Remember: Cuddy breathes through her nose when she’s lying, she’s wearing a push-up bra because she has a meeting with the board later, and if she asks about the clinic, tell her you were busy saving a kid’s life. It always buys you ten minutes.”

You roll your eyes and limp down the hallway, the cool sweat making your shirt stick to your back, yet you push through. “I’ll be fine.”

CHAPTER IV: THE DETOX

Cuddy doesn’t look up from her paperwork when you swing the door open. “House, you are two hours late for your clinic shift, Wilson says you’re acting like you’ve had a lobotomy, and someone just reported a woman matching the description of a ‘disheveled cheerleader’ stealing a construction worker’s lunch outside.” She finally glances up, her eyes narrowing as she takes in your figure, the thick sweat on your brow, and the restless energy in your blue irises. She leans back, crossing her arms. “Alright. What’s the scam? And why do you look like you’re about to vomit and run a marathon at the same time?”

“Vicodin detox. I’m giving it up.” You say gruffly, doing your best House impersonation. You wave a dismissive hand at her, limping inside and slamming the door shut behind you. “Am I here because Wilson can’t handle me having a girlfriend? Tell him to grow up. I have a case right now. Spare me the dramatics.”

Cuddy freezes. The pen in her hand stops moving abruptly. She stands up from her desk and flattens her palms on the woody surface, peering at the salty water on your wrinkled forehead. “You’re detoxing. Again. And you’re telling me willingly instead of hiding in a hotel room or screaming at me for cutting off your supply.” A look of exhausted skepticism washes over her before she hardens. “And, right. The cheerleader wearing your clothes from 1998. Wilson said you were acting like a manic teenager who just discovered organic kale.”

Your breath hitches microscopically as your vision starts to blur. You gulp and keep scowling, your tone deadpan, “he’s just jealous. Like I said, gotta go.”

“Wait.” Cuddy walks around her desk, stalking after you like a tiger targeting prey. She smells like expensive perfume and her eyes remain sharp, analyzing your posture minutely; the way you’re leaning on the cane ready to drop, the obvious shaking in your knuckles. “If you’re actually detoxing, you belong in the ICU or at home, not pacing my office pretending you care about a case.” She softens but a fraction into professional worry, though her suspicion is still dialed to an eleven. “And if this is a lie to get out of clinic duty so you can go play house with a girl half your age…” Lisa steps right into your personal space, gazing up into your orbs. “I will personally run the tox screen. Open your mouth. Let me see your tongue.”

A shiver of panic comes up your spine and you pull away from her harshly, limping a few meters back. “You’re not my doctor.” Your frown deepens and you blink through sweaty eyelids. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll just take the day off to shake this off and you can punish me with extra clinic hours later.”

“House! I am the Dean of Medicine, which means I am exactly your doctor when you’re sweating through your jacket in my hallway—”

You pull the door open forcefully and limp away without waiting for a response, taking difficult, strained breaths out of your nostrils. Cuddy tries to sprint behind you, her voice rising in volume, but you’re already reaching the elevator.

CHAPTER V: THE EGO TRIP

When you reach your office again, the withdrawal symptoms punch up a notch. Your thigh feels like it’s being squeezed by a heated vice, and a rush of nausea hits your stomach, making the fluorescent lights overhead look too bright. You push the glass door open to find House-in-your-body sitting at the conference table. He’s found a stash of candy in one of the drawers and is eating a lollipop with a look of profound boredom, swinging your legs back and forth. His eyes sharpen at you stumbling in, pale and sweating,

“Well, look at that. You survived the gauntlet”, House grunts, tossing the lollipop stick into the trash. “Though from the looks of it, your ‘mind over matter’ theory is currently getting its ass kicked by my liver.”

You huff sharply and fall with a thud on the ground the next second, your once blurry vision now turning pitch black, an excruciating pain hitting your quadriceps muscle. You don’t say a word, balling your hands in tight fists and breathing heavily, wheezing loudly. Sweat drips like an open faucet from your face. House scrambles out of the chair and crouches next to you.

“Hey—hey!” His tenderer palms press on the side of your neck, checking your racing pulse. His orbs turn clinical as he reads your almost unconscious figure. “I told you, your brain might be tough, but my autonomic nervous system is a junkie. Your blood pressure is spiking.” He grabs your shoulder, trying to roll you onto your side so you don’t choke if the nausea wins. “Breathing, focus on the breathing… Four seconds in, four seconds out. Don’t fight the leg, you can’t win a wrestling match with a damaged femoral nerve.” He glances up at the glass doors, realizing the team or Cuddy could walk by at any second and see Dr. House collapsed on the floor while a nurse barks medical orders at him. He reaches into your jacket pocket, his fingers anxiously digging around until he pulls out the amber prescription bottle of Vicodin. He pops the cap off and stares at the white pills, then looks back down at your sweaty features. “Alright, ego trip is over.” House mutters, pressing a pill into your trembling lips. “Take it. If you stroke out in my body, I’m stuck in this one forever, and I refuse to live the rest of my life dealing with a slow metabolism.”

You glower at him, azure irises now red and watery, your jaw clenched so hard his teeth might crack under the pressure. You swallow the pill in silence, closing your eyes and breathing in deeply as he commanded. House watches you with a tense, analytical gaze, not moving away. He keeps your small hands firmly anchored on his trembling shoulder until he hears the ragged sigh that means the medication is starting to coat your frayed nerve endings.

The excruciating spike in your leg gradually dulls from a screaming siren to a throbbing ache. The cold sweat continues to bead on your forehead, however, your fists start to uncurl, your digits twitching once the synthetic opioid binds to his starved receptors. House lets out a relieved breath he didn’t realize he was holding, leaning back on the leg of the conference table. He looks down at his own rugged, sweat-soaked figure with a mixture of pity and anger.

“Welcome to my world.” House murmurs sternly, lacking his usual sarcastic bite for just a moment. “It’s a terrible place to visit. I don’t recommend buying real estate there.” He wipes his brow with the sleeve of his oversized hoodie, then gazes up at the glass walls of the office, checking for the team. “The Vicodin will buy us about four hours before the ghost in the machine starts screaming again.” He hums, shifting back to business. “Which means we have exactly four hours to figure out how the hell a random nurse and a random cripple managed to swap souls like a couple of teenagers in a bad Disney movie.” He leans in closer, his womanly eyes locking onto your borrowed blue ones. “Think. Before you woke up in my bed with a ruined leg and a bad attitude... what’s the last thing you remember doing last night?”

You sit up against the wall, your bad leg stretched out. There’s nothing of the lightness from before. Your expression is unreadable and pensive. “I was at home. Had dinner. Did the dishes. Slept early.” You mutter, glancing ahead as you think. “I had this headache two days before, like a pressure around my forehead. Sometimes sipping water worked, sometimes an anti-inflammatory pill, but it stayed there. Except that last night before I woke up like… this.”

House watches you unblinking as you describe the timeline, his medical brain clearly translating your words into symptoms, firing off hypotheses at lightning speed. He doesn’t interrupt, his own lips pulling into a tight line as he processes the details. “A pressure headache”, he wonders out loud, tapping your fingers on your knee. “Bilateral? Frontal? Non-pulsatile?” He shakes his head before you can even answer, answering his own question. “Doesn’t matter. A headache doesn’t swap cortical signatures between two people thousands of miles apart. Unless…” He stands up, using your body’s legs with a bit more stability now, and starts pacing the small room, his mind clearly racing.

You follow his movements with your eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“I had a headache too.” He rushes, seeming caught up in an epiphany. “Two days ago. A throbbing tension right behind my eyes. I assumed it was a standard-issue hangover or Wilson’s nagging causing an aneurysm, so I ignored it.” He walks over to the whiteboard, picks up a black marker, and writes ‘HEADACHE’ in big letters. He pauses, stares at it, then sneers dryly. “A synchronized neurological anomaly. Two days of prodromal symptoms, culminating in a simultaneous REM sleep event where our neural pathways somehow... cross-pollinated. It’s impossible. It defies every law of physics, biology, and common sense.”

You blink once in confusion. “What—”

He tosses the marker onto the table and struts back over to you, crouching down so he’s at eye level. “We need data. If this is a biological phenomenon—some kind of electromagnetic or parasitic event that affected us both—there will be a trace. I need to run a full toxicological panel, an fMRI, and an EEG on both of our bodies.” He points at your chest. “You need to use my hands to draw my blood, and I need to figure out how to get you admitted for an unauthorized brain scan without Cuddy calling the cops. Are you steady enough to hold a needle, or am I going to have to talk you through how to find a vein in my scarred-up arms?”

“I can handle it.” You stand up with some effort and grab your cane, limping toward the hallway again and instructing briskly, “steal some hospital clothes to blend in and meet me there. Make sure no one sees you.”

You step inside the elevator and press the floor button. House only gives you a crisp, ironic two-finger salute as the doors slide shut.

CHAPTER VI: THE WHAT?

House turns stealing clothes into an art form. Within five minutes, he locates a cart near the maternity ward, swipes a pair of light blue hospital scrubs, and ducks into a staff bathroom. Your body fits into the unisex outfit significantly better than it did into his oversized clothes. He rolls up the sleeves, wraps the drawstring tight around your hips, and ties your long hair back with a stray rubber band he found in his pocket. He checks his reflection in the mirror, adjusting your lips into a cold, professional frown.

Down in the basement, the thick fluorescent lights hum. You navigate the corridors, your memory of the hospital layout guiding you to the quietest imaging suite. The giant doughnut-shaped machine sits in the center of the room, casting a dim glow. The door clicks open and House slips inside, closing it noiselessly behind him. He looks around, his eyes skimming the control console before landing on you.

“Nice work avoiding the hounds.” House quips and walks to the machine without ceremony. He takes charge pronto, his medical instincts overriding the total absurdity of the situation. “Alright, you first. Sit on the table.” He moves over to the computer screen, his fingertips flying across the keyboard with a familiarity that belongs solely to him, setting up the parameters for a high-resolution brain scan. “I’m going to look at my frontal lobe and thalamus to see if there’s any electromagnetic resonance or abnormal neurotransmitter dumping.”

You lie down, staring blankly at the ceiling. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the MRI machine echoes inside the room for twenty long minutes, a mechanical heartbeat filling the silence. Inside the tube, the claustrophobic purr is intense, but you hold still, allowing the magnets to map out the complex and scarred labyrinth of Gregory House’s brain. When it eventually whirs to a stop and glides you out, you sit back up slowly. Your leg has stiffened up from the lack of movement, an already known dull ache going down your thigh. You ignore it deliberately, keeping your blue eyes fixed on House.

House-in-your-body, on the other hand, looks focused in those blue hospital scrubs, leaning over the console. The green and blue light of the monitor reflects in your own eyes. His fingers, unaccustomed to the touch of your hands, tap a rapid, anxious rhythm against the edge of the desk. He doesn’t say a word for a moment, merely scrolling through the gray-scale cross-sections of his own brain. Eventually, he lets out a short exhale from his nose. He glances up from the screen, equally frustrated and fascinated.

“Well, the good news is my brain doesn’t have a tumor”, House spins the monitor so you can see it, pointing at a specific structure. “The bad news is... look at the hypothalamus and the prefrontal cortex. There’s an anomalous hyper-metabolism right there. The glucose uptake is off the charts, but there’s absolutely no structural damage.” He stands up and crosses his arms in deep thought, his gaze narrowing as he looks at you sitting on the table. “It’s like someone took a jumper cable, hooked it up to our neural pathways while we were sleeping, and forced a perfect, inverted synchronization. It’s a quantum entanglement of the central nervous system. Which means…”

“We’re fucked?” You scoff, rubbing your thigh mindlessly with a weak wince, the mental stress from the day catching up to you.

“Maybe not.” House walks over to the table and leans back on it, studying his own tired features. “If we want to flip the switch back, we have to recreate the exact physiological state we were both in last night. The headache was the buildup. The sleep was the catalyst. We need to induce that exact same neural pressure, and then we need to go to sleep. At the exact same time.” He tilts his head, a dark smirk playing on your shapely lips. “Which means, nurse... you and I are going to have to share a bed tonight. And considering how much my leg hurts when the Vicodin wears off, you’re gonna be a terrible spooning partner.”

When you open your mouth to fire back a witty reply, you see House curl up and grimace as if he’s been kicked out of nowhere, touching his right side just over your ovary. House freezes mid-breath, his face turning an interesting shade of pale as he continues to press his palm securely over his lower right abdomen.

You sigh, helping him sit back down. “Yeah, it’s always the worst before the period comes. You get used to it. Mostly. Don’t lie down or stand. It gets worse.”

His brow furrows in a look of deeply offended betrayal as he listens to your casual explanation. “The what?” He gasps out, his voice straining amidst another violent cramp. He gazes at his midsection like his own organs have just plotted a mutiny against him. “A cyclical shedding of the uterine lining? Are you kidding me? I am dealing with a systemic neural entanglement, a crippled leg, a crippling drug addiction—”

“Yeah, yeah, life sucks.” You roll your eyes and watch him with a bored, if attentive, expression. “Stay still.”

He lets out a ragged huff but follows your advice, staying strictly in a seated position near the edge of the examination table. He grips the thin mattress, his knuckles white as he breathes loudly. “This is ridiculous”, he rumbles, even if he notices staying seated actually does keep the strain from spiking. He shoots you a glare, his tone laced in irony, “I have spent the last fifteen years managing an infarction of the quadriceps and this feels like someone is trying to twist my internal organs into a balloon animal. Your pain tolerance is either terrifying or you’re a masochist.”

“It’s called being a woman. Don’t be such a pussy.” You grin in satisfaction, despite tracking every one of his winces silently. “Stop moving so much. Stay still.” Your voice becomes commanding this time, akin to the way you instruct rebellious patients.

He leans his head back on the wall, taking slow, measured breaths, his mind visibly attempting to analyze the neurochemistry of prostaglandins while suffering from it. “Fine.” He groans at last, wiping a stray tear of physiological frustration from his eye. “We find a couch. We find some ibuprofen—real ibuprofen, not my poisoned candy stash—and then we map out the synchronization schedule, but if I start craving pickles or crying at insurance commercials before midnight, I am sedating both of us until tomorrow.”

“Ibuprofen doesn’t work. A heat pad or nimesulide does the trick, but it usually only stops after the period blood comes. Since I had processed food last night, it’s gonna be a bad ride for the pain. Cysts and all that.” You shrug. “Sorry.”

In spite of your scorn, you warm up your rough hands and set them flat on the spot on your own underbelly. House goes still—finally. His orbs snap wide open, glowering down at your large fingers resting on the blue hospital scrubs. At first, he wants to slap your hand away. However, almost immediately, the steady warmth from his old palms starts to seep through the fabric, relaxing the tense, spasming muscles beneath. House blurts out an involuntary pant, his shoulders dropping an inch as the sharpest turn of the cramp begins to settle.

His glance shifts up from his belly to lock onto your middle-aged figure. That bitter sarcasm in his eyes morphs into a clinical curiosity. “High sodium and sugar triggering a big prostaglandin release and systemic inflammation… And cysts? Great. So I’m currently piloting a hormonal minefield with functional ovarian cysts. No wonder your frontal lobe had a pressure headache two days ago, your endocrine system was throwing a temper tantrum and my hypothalamus picked up the signal.”

“You’re such a crybaby.” You snort, massaging your own flesh delicately. “All men are, I guess.”

“Shut up.” He whispers, riding out the pain numbing effect of your makeshift heat pad. He closes his eyes for a brief second, letting the heat from your hands do its work, a rare silence settling over him. When he opens them again, he looks rather tired himself, but the relentless brilliance of Gregory House is still burning behind your irises. “Just… keep your hands there.”

You smile ever so slightly and sit down beside him, stretching your bad leg whilst still holding one hot palm over his abdomen. “You know, I used to think you were a massive dick just for the sake of it, but now I can see why you’re snappy all the time. The pain is annoying. I feel the urge to snap.” You muse, studying him closely. He opens his mouth to protest the insult, but you’re faster, “how about you? What feels… different?”

House rests his head back on the wall, gazing up at the white ceiling tiles. The warmness remains seeping into his body, keeping the violentest cramps at bay, yet he seems contemplative as he processes your question for a lengthy minute. He takes a deep breath, expanding your lungs, feeling the way the air fills your chest without the familiar tightness he often carries from decades of chronic stress.

“It's quiet”, House admits, lacking his signature rapid-fire edge. “My brain usually feels like a dial-up modem trying to download a supercomputer’s worth of data while someone is screaming in my ear. Right now? It’s... spacious. I can actually think about one thing at a time without five other thoughts trying to murder it for dominance.” He turns his face sideways, looking at his own body with quiet amazement. “And the lack of peripheral noise is staggering. My right leg doesn’t feel like a bomb is about to go off in it. I don’t feel the phantom itch of a nervous system that’s been marinating in opiates for fifteen years.”

You hum along, taking it all in. “That’s funny, considering I used to be an opioid junkie myself because of the cramps.” House stays unusually silent, so you conclude, with a gravelly sigh, “now you know the ‘mind over matter’ thing wasn’t just me wanting to feel superior—though part of it was, sure. I was actually terrified of feeling the high again. I am terrified right now, this minute.” You confess, rubbing tender circles to heat up his stomach.

House stares ahead solemnly. “My body is too far down the hole. A withdrawal at this point could kill me.” You only grunt and he adds, searching your eyes again and returning to his cynicism, “by the way, your emotional baseline is completely off. Your body clearly wants to feel things. I looked at a poster of a missing dog in the lobby and my chest tightened. My frist instinct was to figure out a way to mock the owner, but my brain’s chemistry tried to force me to empathize. It's exhausting.” You smirk and he shifts faintly, his brow furrowing involuntarily as another wave of pain hits his lower belly. “It’s like driving a sports car with overly sensitive steering. One wrong turn and I’m going to start bonding with Cameron over her feelings.” He shudders dramatically.

You shake your head in amused disbelief. “And here I was spending all my life trying to feel something and failing every time. Only bad feelings came and I eventually gave up.”

You haul him up, holding his arm as you limp carefully to the exit, and House stops mid-grunt, eyeing you with sudden intensity. The incoming dry retort about your ovaries dies on your lips. The diagnostician in him takes over, reading the flat cadence of your voice, the hefty sigh, the deep-seated exhaustion behind your sentence. He doesn’t say anything while you steady him, although his posture changes once more. He leans into your support to take the pressure off your aching abdomen.

“Anhedonia”, House offers, abandoning the mockingness altogether. “Your brain got so tired of processing the bad ones that it flipped the main breaker to protect itself. Classic defense mechanism.”

“Sure thing, doc.” You push the doors open, dragging your own body with an imperceptible grimace at each uneven step you take.

House matches his milder stride to the click of his own cane in your hand, uncaring for your obvious defensive dismissal. “You think you’re failing to feel, but your body is actually a hyper-reactive tuning fork. That’s why it feels so loud to me—the machinery is all there, fully functional, just idling in the dark because you turned the volume knob down to zero.” He cuts a glance at you, a cynical yet surprisingly soft grin appearing on his face. “Though, if you wanted to feel something, choosing my nervous system is a spectacular structural error. This body doesn’t do good feelings. It does agony, varying degrees of spite, and the temporary chemical numbness of a synthetic poppy.”

The elevator doors chime open, empty and waiting. House walks inside with you, pressing the button for the garage. You rest both hands on the cane, shoulders slumped at the striking heaviness of carrying his body around for so many hours. “You’re too pessimistic, doc.”

House rests his shoulder on the metal wall of the elevator when the doors slide shut and snickers, “I’m realistic, Freaky Friday. But fear not… Tonight, you get to experience twenty years of unmedicated, agonizing panic-responses all at once. If that doesn’t jump-start your emotional baseline, nothing will.”

CHAPTER VII: THE SYNC

The apartment is illuminated merely by the orange glow of the streetlights filtering through the blinds and the scent of coffee, old books, and dust settles around you. By now, House’s taken the pills as you both lay down to wait for the phenomenon that promises to reverse your bodies back to their rightful owners. The heating pad is plugged in, humming against his neatly medicated abdomen. Navigating the awkward angles of his stiff thigh, you make sure his cramping torso is settled in the dark.

After a moment of complete quietness, you take a deep breath before pulling House-in-your-body over you—careful not to hurt your bad leg—and cupping his face, “is the pain gone?”

He lets out a surprised pant and his body relaxes into yours, the tension in his shoulders lastly draining away once the medication and the heat begin to blanket the inflammation. “Yeah”, comes the murmur. He looks up at you in the shadows, blinking patiently as the exhaustion of the day reaches him. “The vice is loosening. Your smuggled Latin American NSAID actually works.”

He rests his head back down on your chest, his ear pressed over his own heart. For a long moment, all that can be heard is the synchronized pace of your breathing—one heavy and ragged from the slow-creeping withdrawal, the other light and steady. “My leg is starting to hurt again.” You admit, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

House’s fingers lightly grip the fabric of his own old shirt. “Seems like your mind over matter theory is about to face its final exam.” You can’t help but snort humourlessly and he moves a tad, ensuring his weight isn’t directly on your damaged femoral nerve, automatically adapting to the pain he knows all too well. “Close your eyes”, he orders, even if the bite is gone, now replaced by a hypnotic drowsiness. “The window is opening. Think about the pressure. Think about the headache. Let’s see if we can trick the universe into putting us back where we belong.”

You hold him tightly, hands sweaty, locking him in place. House’s eyes widen in the shadowy bedroom as you pull him down by the jaw, finding your own lips for a bruising kiss. It’s not soft or romantic. It’s a chaotic clash of teeth and friction. A deliberate attempt to feel something—anything—to anchor your mind amidst the oncoming storm of his body’s withdrawal. The taste of cold sweat, iron, and medicine hangs heavily between you.

House resists in the beginning, his muscles tensing up in shock, but once the kiss deepens, an uncontrollable gasp escapes your throat. His feminine hands grab the front of his own worn jacket, holding you closer, matching the rough rhythm of the kiss with an urgency of his own. It’s toxic, driven by adrenaline, fueled by two broken minds trying to survive the night. Reality starts to spin when the physical sensation triggers an aggressive spike in your shared neural pathways. The throbbing in your leg flashes into a blazing heat, while the strain behind your blue orbs builds up to a deafening crescendo, mimicking the exact crushing headache from nights ago.

House tears his lips away, forehead glued to yours as your vision begins to blur into dark edges. He rasps, his voice fading out, a violent ripple of vertigo putting you both under, “That’s... one way... to create a spike…”

The streetlight outside fades to black and your consciousness slips into absolute darkness. You wake up one minute later. Through the shadows of the bedroom, you see the ceiling from a different height. You look down. There are the lined features of Gregory House, graying hair messy over the pillow, his jaw slack. You’re still on top of him—in your own body now. You feel it right away; the absence of pained nerves down your quadriceps. That phantom ache of a missing piece of muscle has vanished, only the soreness of your lower stomach and the lingering warmth of the heating pad beneath you remain.

You exhale shakily once and lean down to kiss him deeply again—hungry, craving—before he can fully blink his blue eyes open. This time, it’s different. There is no battle against a failing nervous system or perspiration from a crippling opioid addiction, just the grounding reality of your own skin, your own lips molding into his, tasting the weak bitterness of the Vicodin still on his tongue.

House tenses up once more, his consciousness snapping awake at the feel of you in his mouth. He instinctively reaches up, gripping your waist to push you off, until the fog of sleep clears and the screaming agony in his right thigh floods back into his brain, a low groan escaping the back of his throat. He stops fighting it and, instead, his fingertips dig into the fabric of your scrubs, pinning you there for one breathless second longer before he harshly turns his head to the side, breaking the kiss.

House gasps for air, his chest heaving as he glares up at you, blue eyes sharp, watery, and rimmed with agonizing pain. “Get... off…” He struggles, clutching at his right thigh with white knuckles as he curls slightly on the mattress. “My leg... feels like it was... run over by a semi-truck. Which means... it worked. You’re you. I’m me. The universe is a miserable, predictable piece of garbage—”, he lets his head fall back, sweating buckets when his pain takes its throne back. Notwithstanding his pitiful state, a smirk tugs at the corner of his lips. “Next time you want to jump-start a neural network... just use a toaster in the bathtub. It’s less crowded.”

You chuckle and kiss him one more time, slower, swiftly slipping a Vicodin into his dry mouth. You hug his body fiercely, showering him with wet, wild kisses. This is something you never felt in your life. An emergency to feel him close. House, for his part, is caught totally off guard under your affectionate assault. When the smooth, unmistakable texture of the white pill slips between his teeth, his jaw relaxes. He swallows it with a practiced gulp, never breaking the contact. A vibrating hum rumbles in his chest.

You pull back just enough to keep smooching his face, raining softer kisses across his jawline, his cheek, and the bridge of his nose, his rigidity finally begins to give way. His large palms find their way to your hips, not to push you away, but simply to anchor himself on the mattress as the physical warmth of your body—and the promise of the incoming chemical relief—begins to numb away the worst parts of the ache.

House huffs in your hair, sounding thick with somnolence. He lets his arms wrap loosely around your waist, burying his face into the crook of your neck. He only holds you into his arms for a while, his breathing gradually syncing up with yours in the dark apartment. The terrifying vulnerability of the last twenty-four hours fades into the background, leaving merely the silent noise of the heating pad.

“Don't get used to this”, he whispers into the darkness, tracing the fabric of your scrubs.

You laugh, the muffled sound hitting his chest and causing him to shiver. You caress his lower back soothingly, grimacing a bit as your right side pokes with a stubborn cramp. You search his lips, swallowing his defeated grunt. The calloused hand on your hip slides upward lightly, his digits pressing into the small of your back in kind, pulling you down to deepen the contact. Without breaking the kiss, his other hand migrates from your waist, setting his palm flat on the heating pad over your belly. He applies a clinical compression there, using his own weight to help soothe the spasming muscles, mirroring what you did to him earlier.

When you pull back for air, he doesn’t immediately let go. His blue orbs open slowly, hooded with a mix of sluggishness and the first velvety waves of the Vicodin kicking in. The defensive walls he normally keeps bolted shut are all down, making his rough figure look unusually soft in the amber glow of the streetlights.

“Equal opportunity suffering”, House concludes, lips still brushing yours with a smug grin. “My leg is numb, your uterus is angry. We’re a walking advertisement for physical therapy and hormonal regulation.” He shifts his thigh a bit, finding a comfortable angle, and rests his chin on top of your head, his chest rising and falling unhurriedly. He adds quietly, his hand keeping you warm, “go to sleep, Freaky Friday.”

Your eyelids fall shut the next minute.

CHAPTER VIII: THE MORNING WOOD

That temporary peace from the medicines evaporates when your eyes snap open from a quick nap with what seems to be an echo of his leg pain. It’s as though you can feel what he’s feeling at that exact moment. You sit up with a strangled gasp, your hand flying to your right thigh. There is no physical injury there, your skin is smooth, your muscles intact, but your nervous system is shrieking. The ghostly ache attacks you lividly, flawlessly mimicking the sensation of an infarction, and your breath catches in your throat.

Beside you, House flinches violently himself, a guttural curse ripping his vocal chords. He grips his lower abdomen, older fingers clawing at his shirt as his jaw locks in a brutal grimace. His blue eyes also crack open in horrified confusion. “What the fuck—” He breathes, another pang of pelvic pressure assaulting his own nerves. He shoots you a look in the shadows, pale and covered in sweat, before rolling onto his back, fists clenching as he processes the terrifying neurological attack.

“What is happening?!” You squeal, the air not being pumped properly to your lungs due to the force of the throb in your femur.

“The physical swap reversed, but the cortical bridge didn’t collapse”, he mutters rapidly, scrambling to categorize the anomaly while simultaneously dealing with a fucking menstrual cramp in a body with XY genotype. “It’s a residual synaptic echo... Our thalamic pathways are still… entangled… A quantum hangover! Every time my nociceptors fire… a pain signal, your brain intercepts a mirror frequency, and… vice-versa.” He laughs painedly, eyeing the ceiling, thoroughly offended by the laws of physics. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I get my leg back, but I also inherit a monthly biological calendar, and you get a lifetime membership to a phantom dead muscle. We didn’t fix the machine. We just turned it into a party line.” He forces himself to sit up, leaning back on the headboard, eyes locking onto yours with a grim focus. “We need a nerve block or a massive dose of central nervous system depressants to make the frequency drop. If we don’t sever this feedback loop right now, your brain is going to register my baseline pain permanently, and I’m gonna end up crying over a commercial for laundry detergent—”

You cut his spiralling with a dire chuckle and an aching moan. Then, you feel it; the madly testosterone effect of a palpitating erection, regardless of not possessing a penis. You grasp your pelvis needily, in a frenzy, kneading your own flesh with another moan, even if it is purely sexual now. “Oh, Jesus, what—”

When you look over at House, he’s feeling what you’re doing to your body as if you were touching his own. Each compression point you find in your pelvis prompts him to squirm in a different angle in bed. His chin drops with a soundless whimper and his head snaps around to glower at you, blue orbs blown wide. Every spot your hands find on your own flesh, his breath hitches in his throat. His fingertips twitch on the sheets, his chest heaving as the neural feedback hits his nervous system like a live wire. Every touch of your fingers on your skin is registering in his brain not as a visual, but as a direct tactile feeling on his own groin. His system is decoding your frantic movements and mirroring them impeccably onto his anatomy.

“Stop—” House chokes out, losing his gruff composure. He grips the edge of the mattress while an involuntary shiver ripples straight up his spine. “Pull your hands away right now! You’re looping the signal—” A dark flush creeps up his neck, his own palms balled into fists to keep from imitating yours. “It’s a sympathetic arousal response”, House insists, his eyes tightly shut, teeth grinding as he fights his body’s reaction to your massage. “Morning testosterone spike... combined with the residual cortical bridge... your brain is translating the male vascular congestion, and my thalamus is processing your tactile input. It’s a closed circuit... if you keep doing that, you’re going to short-circuit both of our brains!” He glares at you in a haze of desperation. “Hands off the merchandise! Yours and mine! Breathe out. Focus on the leg pain, on the cramps, on anything else before we accidentally induce a synchronized neurological seizure—”

You open your mouth to speak, however, with one blink, you’re back in his body. You roll your eyes incredulously and snap, “oh, motherfucking shit—” You feel the same throb in your—his—cock, a violent, shivering urge. You growl and clumsily shove your hand inside his pants, massaging his dick and rubbing it hard and fast. “God, fuck, yes—”

House, trapped in your body yet again, wheezes as the world flips for the third time. One second he’s fighting a ghost tidal wave of testosterone in his own skin, and the next, he’s sitting flat on the mattress in your tenderer body, looking through your lady eyes at his own familiar form twisting on the sheets right beside him. “Fucking stop—” He yells in your throat, drowning in frustration and physical overload.

You aren’t listening. Your palm works his rigid, aching length like a goddamn teenager discovering the joys of masturbation. Meanwhile, the sensory feedback doesn’t just stay on his side of the bed. Every single friction-filled stroke of your hand rubs straight into House’s brain where he sits inside your skin. He collapses sideways onto the pillows, clawing pathetically into the bedsheets as the pleasure overloads your own nervous system. Loud groans come out of your mouths and his eyes roll back. He tries to pull you away from his groin, still the unmitigated rush of dopamine and nerve firings completely paralyzes his motor control.

You pant, overwhelmed by the feeling. “God… House—” You can barely breathe. His cock pulsates furiously in your warm hand.

The bedroom walls around you seem to vibrate. The pain of his crippled leg, the sting of your ovarian cramps, and the driving conflict of the phantom arousal all smash together into a single entropic frequency. The boundary between where you end and House begins dissolves entirely. With one final, devastating, pounding stroke, a violent spasm rips into his body. You arch off the bed with a breathy shout, and at the same time, House screams out of your lungs once the explosive release echoes across the bridge, triggering a synchronized, full-body neurological crash. For a brief second, the world shatters into static and the two of you drop like a stone into a deep, heavy, absolute darkness.

You huff weightily as you stare down at your trousers, now immensely soaked in semen. You glance back up at House and touch your own chin, with an apologetic, perplexed, though still aroused, look. “Did… you feel that? It was so fucking strong.”

House is lying motionless, his hair plastered to his forehead, damp with sweat. He is gazing blankly at the ceiling, chest moving with shallow hitches. Then, unhurriedly, your lips twitch. An exhausted breath escapes him. He turns his head on the pillow, his expression numb. “You just used a high-voltage jumper cable on our shared thalamus. I didn’t just feel it. I think I can currently see the fourth dimension.”

“Talk about an out-of-body experience.” You scoff, running a hand over his stubbly face tiredly.

House attempts to sit up, yet his limbs are comically uncooperative, trembling from the shattering dopamine and adrenaline dump that just ricocheted through his brain chemistry. He collapses back down with a moan and mumbles, eyes closing as he tries to blink away the lingering neurological static, “that was actually a systemic, cross-cortical seizure of the reward pathway. My brain—or your brain—just dumped a lifetime supply of endorphins into a single three-second window because the feedback loop kept multiplying the signal.”

“You’re saying we’re lucky to have survived?”

He stares at his own wrinkled face with a look of defeat, his tone flat. “Something like that. The voltage of that release seems to have fried the bridge. My cramps are down to a zero, but I’m currently trapped in a body that has been compromised by a teenage-level testosterone spike, and I’m pretty sure you just ruined my favorite pair of trousers. Get up and clean yourself up before I figure out a way to sue you for neurological assault.”

You snicker with his raspy voice, but don’t get up from the bed. You place a warm palm on your pussy without thinking, leaning closer, savouring the arousal coming from him now. “You’re burning up.” You note huskily, stroking your own lower lips through the hospital scrubs.

In the lingering fog of the adrenaline dump, the neural link flares right back to life with undenying speed. House’s back arches off the mattress as the feedback hits him akin to a physical blow. He growls out of your throat and tries to pull back, though halfheartedly, “you’re playing with a nuclear reactor. The bridge didn’t fry, it just went dormant until you touched the dial again...” The precise friction of your hand mirrors perfectly onto his own system, sending a fresh surge of stimulation down his spine.

Your next words are firm, confident, unyielding in his hoarse tone, “take off your clothes, House.”

Despite the hectic pace of his breathing, House doesn’t move away. His shaky hands reach up, wrapping around the collar of his own worn jacket, dragging you down until your lips are practically brushing. “If I take these clothes off, we aren’t going back to sleep”, he spits, in a mix of indignation and undeniable desire. “And given the current state of our shared nervous system, if we keep this feedback loop going, one of us is going to end up in the ICU with a blown synapse. So either move your hand... or finish what you’re starting before I lose my mind in your body.”

You grin and slide two slender fingers into his now bare sloppy grip. You use your thumb to press your own clit with the specific technique that works on you, panting hotly into his lips. “Does that feel good, baby?” You purr amongst another distinct tug of pleasure in his penis.

House’s breath hitches when you rub the spot precisely. The tailored sensory input detonates in his brain. He experiences the same hyper-tuned pleasure mapping of your own anatomy, magnified by the testosterone spike of his own body. His teeth dig into his lower lip enough to draw blood as another agonizingly good pang of pleasure hits back from his cock on the other side of the link.

Driven by the multiplying rushes of dopamine, he holds your hand even tighter into him, his other palm coming up to cup his own bearded jawline, yanking you down for a kiss. The boundaries of who is giving and who is receiving melt away as the rhythm takes over once more. Each precise rub of your digits sends a signal of ecstasy straight to House, which bounces back to you as a thump of raw arousal in his pants. It’s a closed, escalating circuit of pure sensing.

He rocks his hips upward, helpless against the technique you know best. “Don’t you dare stop, Freaky Friday…”

You bump his clit with all the masculine strength you possess now, the wet slapping sounds echoing obscenely inside the walls of his bedroom. You nuzzle your own smooth cheek, leaving loving kisses on his every pore. “That’s it. Just let go.”

House blurts out a broken cry, swirling into overdrive. His legs thrash on the bedclothes, hips and thighs flexing wildly. He is panting, sweating; teeth griding to keep from losing consciousness at the sole volume of dopamine flooding the circuit. The psychological surrender snaps the final thread of his control at your whisper. A violent, catastrophic convulsion travels down your body. House screams into your mouth, his whole frame stiff and shuddering as an explosive, multi-layered orgasm obliterates his mind.

Concurrently, the massive feedback flood slams back across the bridge into his own anatomy. Your vision explodes into white-hot static as his cock quivers beneath you, a secondary, violent release tearing into his trousers. The synchronized overload is too much for the neural pathway to sustain. The world tilts suddenly, the sloppy sounds and hot breaths morphing into a dead silence as the circuit fractures, pulling both of you down into another profound and unconscious dark.

You wake up in your own body again, looking up through the dim light at the ceiling of the apartment. House’s draped over you precariously and you let out a long, slow sigh, fluttering over his graying hair as you touch his cheek delicately. His lanky frame is dead to the world, one of his hairy legs tangled between yours, scruffy features buried in the crook of your shoulder. The metallic scent of sweat and dried fluids hangs in the cool morning air.

At the sound of your voice, House groans. He doesn’t open his eyes right away. Instead, he flinches, brow furrowing as the pain on his right thigh floods back in. He shifts his weight clumsily, his joints popping, and blinks his blue eyes open eventually. He is staring at your collarbone, his face a few inches from yours. He doesn’t pull away yet, just listening to the unglitched beat of your heart under his ear. He lifts his head from your neck, blue eyes bloodshot as he gazes down at you. The manic neural feedback is gone; there is no phantom throb, no shared echo.

He caresses your lip tenderly. “The machinery is quiet”, he muses, dropping into a rare, grounded tone. “Your brain is idling. Mine is back to its usual, miserable dial-up noise.” He allows his head to fall back down onto your shoulder with a defeated sigh of his own. “We survived.”

Later that morning, in the kitchen, you’re eating House’s cereal mindlessly in your underwear. You feed him a spoonful, sitting on his good leg and watching him crunch on them readily. “Oh, I forgot to tell you—you got some extra clinic hours coming up next week.” You quip, slipping your thumb between his lips teasingly.

House halts his chewing mid-crunch, his eyes narrowing. The spoon is left hovering in mid-air and he peers at you as if you’ve just told him Cuddy has sanctioned a mandatory, department-wide seminar on emotional intelligence. Then, when your finger slides into his mouth, he gives you a deliberately deadpan look, teeth clamping down on the pad of your thumb to make his point. He doesn’t bite hard enough to break the skin, but it’s a firm, stubborn warning. He leisurely sucks the remaining sweetness of the sugary cereal off your skin, letting go with a soft, cynical pop.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve using my mouth as a pacifier while dropping an administrative pipe bomb on me”, House grumbles, reaching past your waist to grab his coffee mug and taking an aggressive gulp. He shifts under you, ensuring your hips are settled on his left thigh, his good leg taking the tension while his crippled one hangs loosely off the side of the kitchen chair. He leans forward, his coarse chin resting on your bare shoulder, blue orbs tracking the pace of your breathing. “Tell me you didn’t”, he begs dramatically against your skin, hand securely anchored on your hip. “Tell me you used that brilliant, hyper-reactive brain of yours to lie, cheat, or fake a highly infectious tropical disease to get me out of work. Please.”

You laugh and suck on his earlobe, “I’ll make it up to you with a blowjob every morning before you go to work. Deal?”

House’s air hitches in his lungs once your lips find his ear, a sharp intake of breath escaping his nostrils. The boldness of the offer causes a crack in his cynical armor, azure irises flickering with dark amusement and shameless interest. He takes another intentional sip of his black coffee, the mug clicking on the Formica countertop as he sets it down. His digits dig into you in a grounding manner.

“Every morning?” House weighs, a husky vibration rolling into your ears. He tilts his head, giving you a sideways look. “That is a legally binding verbal contract and I expect precise adherence to the syllabus.” A characteristically wicked grin cuts across his features. He reaches behind you, grabbing another spoonful of the cereal and shoving it into his mouth with an obnoxious crunch, never breaking eye contact. “Deal”, he hums around the food. “But if you miss a single Tuesday, I’m personally assigning you forty hours of data entry in the pediatric wing.”

CHAPTER IX: (IN) DA CLUB

On Monday morning, everything supposedly goes back to how it was before the whole body swap thing… except now you have slept with the prick from diagnostics four times. Sober. Willingingly. And you’re really not sorry—House, on the other hand, is still struggling to comprehend the seemingly impossible phenomenon without anyone thinking he’s crazier than what his reputation already says. His restlessness, in other times so draining to you, now serves as a nice balance to your casualness when it comes to the situation. Surprisingly, being with him seems almost like the whole point of this cosmic joke. And you’ve chosen to embrace it fully.

Golden opportunity and all.

The glass door clicks open, but it’s drowned out by the thumping, mid-2000s bassline of 50 Cent rattling the cheap speakers. You’re wearing sunglasses inside House’s office whilst In Da Club blasts from his old radio, chewing calmly on a Twizzler and mumbling to the song with your eyes closed. House limps into the room, cane clicking melodically on the linoleum in a vain attempt to match the tempo of the bass. He stops at the edge of his desk, leaning heavily on the rubber tip of his cane, and looks down at you.

You’re still sprawled in his comfortable leather chair, rocking your pink scrubs, none the wiser of his presence. He stands there for a full twenty seconds, simply watching you, his face a mask of exhaustion. Without saying a word, he reaches out with the handle of his cane, hooks the cord of the radio, and yanks it forward. The plug flies out of the wall socket and the heavy bass dies, leaving behind only the ambient hum of the hospital ventilation system.

You frown at him through your sunglasses, with vigorous chews. “Buzzkill.”

His voice cuts through grumpily, similar to a dull saw, “if you’re going to squat in my office and sabotage my reputation, at least choose a track from this decade. He leans down, using two fingers to gently slide your sunglasses down the bridge of your nose, forcing you to gaze up at him. He has a chart tucked under his arm and his blue orbs are flashing with that everpresent spark of annoyance. “Cuddy just cornered me in the lobby. Apparently, ‘Dr. House’ signed up for a double shift in the pediatric clinic starting in exactly thirty minutes. She was so touched by my sudden burst of humanitarian spirit that she almost cried.”

You raise your brows a bit, unimpressed, “and?”

House straightens up, gesturing toward the door with his chin, a dark smirk tugging at his lips. “Which means you have one second to get your hands under my waistband, because I’m not treating a single runny nose or listening to a screaming toddler until you fulfill your end of our little bureaucratic compromise. Chop, chop.”

You laugh out loud and snatch him closer by the belt, wiggling your brows more playfully. “Sit down, Limpy.”

House blurts out an “oof!” at the unexplainable masculine grip of pulling him forward. He stumbles just an inch, cane clacking loudly on the linoleum floor until he stabilizes himself, and there is a hint of that analyzing gleam in his azure irises. Sometimes the link seems active on both your ends, though nothing underwhelming like pain. Minor details. He glowers down at you, but the dangerous grin betrays his irritated expression. “You’re lucky I’m a cripple.”

House hooks his cane over the edge of the desk with a sharp clack and drops clumsily into the leather chair right next to you, his good leg taking the brunt of the impact. He leans back, spreading his legs slightly and resting his hands on the armrests, looking at you with dazed anticipation. The faint noise of the diagnostics department outside the glass balcony feels miles away.

You position yourself on your knees, meticulously undoing his pants, “mmm, eager boy.”

His thumb traces the edge of his belt buckle where your fingers are still wrapped as he scoffs and grumbles, “you’ve got exactly twenty minutes before Cuddy comes looking for her star pediatrician.”

You fit his cock in your mouth with practiced movements at once, servicing him with familiarity at this point. House’s breath catches in his throat and he pulls your hair to guide you, with halflidded vision. Between sucks and licks, you mumble, “I was thinking... Since we have this neurological connection now, can I somehow make your pain better? The leg, I mean…” You gulp around his base and hold there, eyes watering, yet you’re in complete control.

House’s knuckles turn white in your strands. The intense warmth of your throat forces a ragged whimper from his lungs, his whole body going. His head falls back on the headboard of the seat, blue orbs squeezed shut as he fights to keep his composure. When you glance up, you can see the veins in his neck straining. He stays still for a while, just riding the ripple of tension, his fingertip lightly caressing your temple as he squints down at you with an almost vulnerable expression, exposed by the physical intimacy and the wild scientific implications of your question.

Slowly, his eyes blink open fully, blown out and dark with that weird mix of pleasure and focus only he can muster. He murmurs, incredibly thick, gravelly, stripped bare of sarcasm, “you… you want to play doctor with a broken thalamus?” He lets out a breathless snicker that turns into a ridiculous groan as you shift your mouth but a tad. “Theoretically”, he starts, chest heaving as he compels his brain to function among the dopamine fog. “If the cortical bridge... if it left a residual pathway—which we know it did, by the way, you just yanked me like I was made of polystyrene—you wouldn’t be erasing the pain. You’d be absorbing a percentage of the nociceptor feedback. Like a... a neurological sponge.”

You keep gulping around his glans, attentively listening, words muffled, “but?”

He reaches down with his other palm and strokes the tense line of your jaw, his touch unexpectedly tender. “You’d feel a fraction of the infarction”, he whispers with a shiver, his blue gaze locking onto yours with an intensity that burns. “A dull, ghostly ache in your thigh every time my leg fires a flare. It’s a terrible medical trade, (y/n). You’re giving me a nerve block... and paying for it with your own comfort.” He leans in, his breath hot against your face. A softer smile finally touches his lips, though his look remains serious. “If you’re actually crazy enough to try to calibrate the dial... you have to focus on the rhythm. Right now. Ground the feedback loop while the dopamine is high.” He slides his hand down to the back of your neck.

You huff and concentrate on feeling the throb in your right thigh. The floodgates collapse. It feels just like an infarction—a ruthless, grinding pressure that mimics his dead muscle tissue, but it’s tangled hopelessly with his own unadulterated pleasure. It keeps hitting you akin to a shot in the leg and you roar around his cock, blowing him harder, desperately, demanding his release. The ache is a wired mess of sensations with the arousal from his dick coming unswervingly into your bloodstream.

House’s head snaps forward, his eyes cracking wide open. He produces broken wheeze at the dramatic drop in his own baseline chronic pain—a sudden, cool emptiness in his right leg where the agony often burns—coinciding wholly with the aggressive surge of your relentless suction. He chokes out at the same time you absorb the blow. The loop multiplies the stimulation and the ghostly pain into a deafening neurological storm.

Your rhythm pushes him right to the absolute precipice and he grabs your shoulders, gripping you strongly to keep you anchored as his entire lower body freezes. “Hold on... (y/n), hold on—”

You scream, your tears rolling freely down your cheeks at the raw power of it. “Oh, House, fuck—”

With one final, profound, and immaculate slide of your throat, House loses his mind. A ferocious full-body spasm assaults his lanky figure from head to toe and he arches out of the chair with a breathy shout, his semen pouring hot and heavy down your mouth. The blinding dopamine dump slams across the bridge like a tidal wave, short-circuiting the pain signals completely. For a breathless second, the sting in your thigh and the tension in his groin explode into brilliant, white static—then, the frequency closes shut with a physical pop in your ears, leaving the office dead silent except for your synchronized panting.

The leather chair rolls backward with a squeak as your shaky hands slip from the armrests. You can barely catch your balance as you attempt to get back up, your femur still aching. You drag yourself toward the sofa and collapse on it, whimpering miserably. You squeeze the stuffed arm with all your might, breath coming in quick, rushed pants. Your right leg feels packed with molten lead—a burning throb that buckles your knee the second you put weight on it. You bury your fingers into the stuffed fabric of the armrest with desperation, thinking about what you’ve just done. You’ve successfully taken a piece of his burden, but your nervous system is reeling from hostile invasion of chronic tissue damage.

Across the room, House is sitting immoble. For the first time in fifteen years, his thigh isn’t twitching. The constant tight scowl shadowing his features has vanished. He looks down at his own leg, then up at you, stunned by the cool silence in his own body. His reflexive shock changes into a commanding panic at the sight of you practically dying on the couch. He pushes off the chair, his gait uneven but smoother than it has ever been, and lunges onto the short distance between the desk and the sofa. He drops to his knees in front of you, calloused hands clamping over your shaking fingers, forcing you to let go of the armrest.

“Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me right now!” House barks, his eyes blazing as he grabs your chin, making you meet his gaze. “You didn’t just take a fraction, your brain calibrated the threshold too high.” He can feel the tremors wracking your frame. “The dopamine dropped and left the pain pathways raw. Your thalamus is processing an ischemic phantom attack. It’s not real tissue damage in your body, (y/n)—it’s just a ghost. You need to breathe. Match my intake. In. Now.” He takes an exaggerated breath, his chest rising against yours, forcing you to synchronize. “I’m not letting you play the martyr for my damaged quadriceps, goddamn it”, he snarls, now mad at himself for even allowing this to happen. He uses his sleeve to roughly yet tenderly wipe the tears away from your pained face.

You grunt and glower at him, trying to focus on anything but the seething pain. “House... Shut the fuck up and… give me a Vicodin.”

House blinks, but doesn’t hesitate, reaching into his jacket pocket swiftly. His digits wrap around the plastic prescription bottle, pulling it out with a noisy click of his fingernails on the cap. He pops the top open with a one-handed flick of his thumb, tips a single white pill into his palm, and presses it on your trembling lower lip. His free hand slides to the back of your neck to support you as your head shakes slightly. As the pill rolls down your throat, House doesn’t move, his large palms cupíng your bare, shaking knee, applying a steady compression to help ease your floating sensory nerves back into reality.

“The things you do for a lighter clinic schedule”, he mutters after a while, a weak beam returning to his face as he watches your breathing agonizingly begin to stabilize. “Keep looking at me. Don’t look down at the leg. Just close the circuit and let the chemistry work.”

Your shoulders drop an inch, your fingers loosening the white-knuckled grip on the cushion. You snort, wiping a few stubborn tears, “how do you feel?”

House’s own shoulders relax for the first time and a truly peculiar look touches his disheveled face. He peers down at his right leg again for a moment, his gruff voice trailing off as if he’s trying to translate a foreign language amidst a dry laugh. “I feel like someone turned off a lawnmower that’s been running inside my skull since 1999. It’s... disgusting. It’s… quiet.” He carefully pushes himself up from the floor, his movements lacking the stiff hitch defining every single micro-movement of his body.

You sigh, smiling satisfyingly, “good.”

House sits on the edge of the sofa next to you, leaning his elbows on his knees and gazing flat ahead at the glass wall of his office. He then declares, with reluctant warmth, “you’re a stubborn, reckless, borderline suicidal idiot.” He taps the side of your knee, softening his gaze ever so gently. “Thanks.”

CHAPTER X: THE ETHER

By the time House limps—no, walks—into the diagnostics lobby the next morning, the atmosphere in Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital drops. He isn’t using his cane. In fact, he’s ridiculously carrying it over his shoulder like a baseball bat, whistling a jaunty, horrifying on-key rendition of a classic rock song, his stride fluid and unhindered. That perpetual, bitter knot between his eyebrows is gone. Foreman stops dead in his tracks in the middle of the glass balcony, a stack of patient files somewhat slipping in his grip. Cameron’s mouth falls open so wide her coffee nearly spills. Chase only stares, confused eyes darting from House’s serene face down to his right leg, looking for the hidden wires or the camera crew.

This has to be a joke.

“What is he doing?” Chase whispers, his voice filled with genuine, if laughable, panic. “Why is he moving like that? Is he on meth? Did he find a new analog? Is it a cult? The girl—”

“He’s not limping”, Foreman says with clinical dread, calculating the variables in realtime. “If House isn’t in pain, his brain isn’t busy fighting his own body, which means a hundred percent of his cognitive processing power is unallocated—”

“Oh, God”, Cameron breathes out in sheer distress, backing away toward the whiteboard. “He’s going to destroy us—”

House struts inside the office, sliding into his leather chair without a single wince, grunt, or sigh. He glances at his team, striking blue eyes bright, clear, and utterly manic with an excess of unused energy. “Good morning, my little sacrificial lambs!” He chirps in an unsettlingly pleasant register. “Fabulous day to solve some medical mysteries, don’t you think? Chase, you look lovely. Foreman, your posture is immaculate. Cameron, I’ve decided to forgive you for your bleeding heart for the next twenty-four hours.”

The three of them exchange a look of horror. “House”, Foreman steps forward cautiously, as if approaching a bomb that’s ticking backwards, “where is the pain?”

“Gone! Vanished! Evaporated into the ether!” House waves a hand airily. “A medical miracle. Or a highly successful neurological calibration. Doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m bored. And when I’m bored and hurting, I’m a nuisance, but when I’m bored and not hurting…” He leans in closer, an evil grin spreading across his weathered features. “I’m a goddamn weapon of mass destruction. Give me a chart before I start auditing your personal bank accounts for entertainment.”

Within three hours, the whole of Princeton-Plainsboro is in a state of high alert. Around noon, Cuddy bursts into diagnostics without knocking, her face pale, high heels clicking nervously against the wooden floor. She stares at House, who is presently sitting on his desk, juggling three tennis balls with unbelievable coordination and fluidity, his right leg swinging freely.

“Gregory House”, Cuddy demands, shaking just a bit. “What did you do? Wilson told me you didn’t ask for a single refill this morning. You didn’t steal any morphine. You didn’t even insult the nurse at the front desk. The staff is terrified! People are taking sick leave! If you found another illegal drug—”

“I’m merely experiencing the joy of a quiet thalamus, Lisa”, House catches the tennis balls seamlessly and gives her a smooth, relaxed wink. “You should be happy. I’m currently ahead on my paperwork, I haven’t broken any laws today, and I’m about to cure a man of a rare parasitic infection just by looking at his fingernails.”

“It's a trap”, Cuddy whispers, glaring at him with structural suspicion and. She backs toward the door, her eyes locked on his now stable leg. “I don’t know what kind of game you and your girlfriend are playing, but if this is the calm before a psychological storm, I’m holding you both personally liable.”

She bolts out of the room and House only chuckles quietly, the sound low, rich, lighter like it hasn’t been in years. He tosses a tennis ball up, catching it again, and glances out the glass window, knowing exactly who is holding the other end of the wire downstairs. He pulls out his flip phone and types a quick text to you.

House:

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