FF: What Things Are, Pt. 2
Title: What Things Are
Author: Ellie
Rating: R (for adult themes)
Spoilers: Post-“Who’s Your Daddy?”
Part One is here.
****
Part 2
****
It was three minutes before five when the phone on House’s desk trilled. He debated not answering it, as he had his bag in one hand and coat and cane in the other. But a glance at the caller ID revealed that it was Cuddy. She never called him this late in the day when he wasn’t working on a case, because she knew he left; she didn’t like it, but as with most of his other behavior, she tolerated it.
Setting his bag on the chair, he snatched the phone and barked, “This better be good.”
He regretted it as soon as he heard her voice, subdued and tremulous. “Greg, I need you to come take me home.”
“I’ll be right there.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.
No one spared a glance at him as he strode impatiently down the corridors; everyone was accustomed to him being in a hurry to leave. Occasionally there were upsides to his behavior.
When he reached Cuddy’s office, the doors were closed and the curtains were drawn. He tapped once on the wooden doorframe with the handle of his cane before opening them and slipping inside.
The room was dim, with just a table lamp glowing to illuminate Cuddy, lying on her couch, shoes and jacket off. When she turned to look at him, he could tell she’d been crying, with puffy eyes and a conspicuous lack of mascara.
“What’s wrong?” He eased himself down to sit on the low table beside the couch.
She looked at him with pleading eyes as her lips soundlessly formed the beginnings of several explanations. After a deep breath, she simply murmured, “I took codeine and need you to drive me home.”
It took him a second to process everything implied that statement. “You’re sure?”
Turning away to stare up at the ceiling, she closed her eyes and nodded twice, rapidly.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Then, “And you don’t find it at all crazy that a woman who’s taken one codeine is asking a Vicodin addict to drive her home?”
Gracing him with a faint, watery smile, she said, “You do a lot of stupid things, but you’ve managed not to total a car yet. I’ll take my chances today.”
“C’mon, then.” He pushed her shoes towards her as she sat up, putting a hand on the couch to steady herself. After a brief juggling act with their coats and bags and his cane, he managed to free a hand to graze her back as they crossed the office to the door.
She froze for just a second before opening it, enough to bring him into firmer contact with her, before dropping his hand away as they stepped out into the larger hospital.
It was two minutes into the drive before she caught on. “We’re not headed back to my house.”
“No, we’re not. We’re headed to mine.”
“I just want to go home,” she said, sotto voce.
He reached across to rest a hand on her thigh, fingers stroking the soft bouclé skirt. “I’m closer, and have a bigger, softer bed. And a really fabulous pizza delivery place two blocks away.”
“I don’t think I can eat anything right now.” She turned away, gazing out the window at the blurred buildings.
“No, but I think I need grease and beer right now.”
She didn’t answer, simply dropped her forehead to rest against the tinted glass. No words passed between them in the remaining six miles back to his apartment, and she didn’t seem inclined to speak to him as they went inside, either.
He didn’t see a reason to say anything to her. For a moment, he watched as she stood in the foyer, looking a bit lost. Then she crossed the living room to his couch, where she seemed to collapse, as if all the reinforcements that had been holding her up since he’d first stepped into her office had finally given way.
Shedding coats and bags, he proceeded to his bedroom, where a bit of rummaging turned up the old afghan his grandmother had knitted him for his first apartment, now a bit ratty around the edges, but soft. He carried it and a pillow back to the living room, where Cuddy was curled on the couch, tears slipping down her cheeks.
Precariously settling on the edge of the couch next to her, she let him slip the pillow under her head and tuck the afghan around her. He’d long ago abandoned what little tenderness he possessed, but from some primal deep of his soul, a bit of it sprung free. His hand slid through her curls and down to caress her neck.
Still, she didn’t speak, just looked up at him with teary eyes he had no idea how to treat.
“When did you realize?” He hadn’t expected the words to stick in his throat.
She drew a deep breath. “Around one. I thought it was just something I’d eaten, then I realized it wasn’t.”
“But you stayed the rest of the day.”
“There wasn’t anything else I could have done,” she said, sounding resigned and tired. “I was in review meetings all afternoon.”
“You should have called me sooner. I could have created some sort of disaster for you to handle by sitting in the Eames chair in my office for the rest of the day. Disasters are my specialty.”
With a sigh, she shook her head. “Hiding wouldn’t have helped. At least the meetings took my mind off of it a little.”
“Can I do anything to help with that now?”
“Play me something,” she mumbled.
“What do you want to hear?” he asked, hobbling cane-free to the piano and settling himself at the keyboard, fingers skimming the keys.
“Anything. Just something.”
He thought a second, then slowly started into Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman.” He never sang for anyone, but he sang for her now, deep and smoky, accompanying himself at a slow, bluesy cadence. The first two lines seemed so horribly right. But as he sang, he began to realize this was perhaps the wrong choice. When he looked over at her, she’d curled deeper into herself and was obviously crying. Halfway through the third verse, nearly choking on the lyrics, he improvised his way into a refrain and came to an awkward close.
After a pause to gather himself back together, wanting to say something to her and not finding any words, he slipped into a Debussy étude and lost himself in its complicated delicacy. Without stopping, he continued into another, noting the evening rise and fall of Cuddy’s breathing and her stillness. She was falling asleep, and he was happy not to break the spell.
Only when he’d finished three more pieces did he rise from the piano and make his way back to her. She was dozing, fitfully, a furrow across her brow. But he let her rest, picking up his cane and heading for the kitchen.
He chased a pair of Vicodin with three fingers of Scotch, then called for pizza. Grabbing a beer from the fridge, he made his way back to the living room to settle in the easy chair with a backlog of journals. An unopened issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine lay across his lap, the cover slowly absorbing a ring of condensation from the beer bottle, as he studied Cuddy.
Until she’d started planning one, he’d never wanted a child. He didn’t like children, as a rule, and knew even before the infarction that he was not the fatherly type. Never had any of his relationships progressed to the point where children were a part of the discussion. There had been a couple of close calls, panicked discussions while pregnancy tests decided their fates. Never had it been something sought, wanted, desired.
Here they were, in something they’d taken great pains to keep from becoming a relationship, because she wanted a child. And he had to admit that the idea had grown on him. While not as delighted as she had been, in the two weeks since she’d come to his office with the results of the pregnancy test, he’d been almost happy about it. Had wanted some part in it.
Now, he felt less entitled to the grief she obviously felt. But he was not unaffected. He didn’t know how to handle this delicate truce between them now, after this blow. Would she try again? Cuddy had always been determined once she set her mind on a goal, and he would be more surprised if she didn’t try again. How long would it take her to get through this, though?
His thoughts were interrupted by an abrupt knock at the door. Cuddy lifted her head cautiously as he made his way across to the door. Carefully balancing the pizza on his arm, he crossed back to slide a bag perched on top of the box down onto the coffee table in front of her, then settled the pizza box down beside it.
She looked at the bag in front of her warily, almost as warily as she looked at him as he settled on to the couch next to her.
“I got you a salad.” He shrugged and opened the pizza box, breathing in the aroma of hot pepperoni. “You can have a slice of this, too, if you want.”
“No, thanks.”
He watched her in his peripheral vision as he devoured several slices. She picked at the salad, but ate some of it, picking around the bits of cucumber. They ate in awkward silence that he wasn’t sure how to breach.
“Are you going to eat those?” He pointed at the cucumber, off to one side. “Steve would love them.”
“Steve?”
“McQueen. Didn’t I mention my rat?” Rising from the couch, he went to the kitchen and retrieved Steve’s cage.
“Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me.” She tossed a slice of cucumber into the cage, and he watched her watch the rat eat, the vaguest hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lips. Without a word, she rose from the couch and was halfway across the room before turning back to him. “Can you get my overnight bag from the trunk of my car?”
“Anything you want.”
She nodded. “I’m going to take a shower.”
When he returned with the overnight bag, it wasn’t the shower he heard, but the sound of water sloshing in the bath. He sat the overnight bag by the bathroom door and went back to put the remains of the pizza in the fridge, before settling back down with his journals.
He was acutely aware of her moving around his apartment, but tried not to notice. As she settled down on the couch next to him, she became impossible to ignore.
“Your rubber ducky has devil horns.”
“It was the horns you noticed?”
“Actually, I was more surprised by the big claw-foot tub and the Mr. Bubble hiding under the sink.”
The chitchat pained him, when they were normally so comfortable together. He decided to step away from the banter. “The tub’s why I got this place. I can actually use it.” After a silent beat, he asked, “How’re you doing?”
She flipped through a few pages of a discarded journal. “I’ll be fine. You know as well as I do that most women who miscarry this early haven’t even realized they’re pregnant. It’s just a really heavy flow day with terrible cramps. I just have the misfortune of knowing. And I had an appointment with Rouse tomorrow at eight, anyway.” She wouldn’t look at him as she spoke, just stared at Steve McQueen, still nibbling the last bits of cucumber.
“Did you want anything else? I’ve got plenty of Vicodin if you need it.”
A pained, barking laugh escaped her lips. “Now I know the true depth of your feelings, if you’re offering to share your pills with me.”
He put an arm around her, whispering, “You have no idea.”
“I think I do,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.
Closing his eyes, he enjoyed holding her for just a moment, the only sound their breathing and the squeak of Steve’s wheel. This was some sick parody of what he thought they could have, given half a chance and completely inverted circumstances. She felt heavy and limp against him, soft skin and sweats. “Go to bed, Lisa.”
“Mmm,” she returned, nodding her head against his shoulder, her cheek warm through his t-shirt.
Gently, he nudged her off of him. “If you’re looking for someone to carry you, you’ve come home with the wrong man.”
“I didn’t come home with you. You brought me against my wishes.” She shook her head and rose tentatively from the couch. As she passed him, she reached out and tousled his hair, but said nothing else as she disappeared into his bedroom.
He heaved a sigh and collapsed back against the sofa, propping his leg on the coffee table, toe nudging Steve’s cage. Popping another Vicodin, he debated the relative merits of spending the night on the couch. Things with Cuddy would certainly be less awkward. His leg, on the other hand, wanted no parts of a night spent away from his featherbed and soft sheets.
A few hours later, he picked his way through the dim apartment to his bedroom. There, he was distracted by the small form curled in his bed, nearly lost amongst the pillows and rumpled blankets. She hadn’t moved when he emerged from the bathroom in his pajamas, but when he lowered himself onto the bed, she turned to stare at him with bleary eyes.
“House?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going to sleep.” He settled into the pillows and closed his eyes.
“But….” She was still befuddled by sleep, not finding the words to refute him.
“It’s a big bed, and it’s not like I’m going to try and take advantage of you right now.” He opened his eyes and saw her peering over at him in the darkness. “Go back to sleep.”
The bed shifted as she lay back down. Nothing else was said, but that night he was kept awake a long time, just listening to her sniffling breaths and wishing he could cure what ailed her.
****
End Part 2
****
Author: Ellie
Rating: R (for adult themes)
Spoilers: Post-“Who’s Your Daddy?”
Part One is here.
****
Part 2
****
It was three minutes before five when the phone on House’s desk trilled. He debated not answering it, as he had his bag in one hand and coat and cane in the other. But a glance at the caller ID revealed that it was Cuddy. She never called him this late in the day when he wasn’t working on a case, because she knew he left; she didn’t like it, but as with most of his other behavior, she tolerated it.
Setting his bag on the chair, he snatched the phone and barked, “This better be good.”
He regretted it as soon as he heard her voice, subdued and tremulous. “Greg, I need you to come take me home.”
“I’ll be right there.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.
No one spared a glance at him as he strode impatiently down the corridors; everyone was accustomed to him being in a hurry to leave. Occasionally there were upsides to his behavior.
When he reached Cuddy’s office, the doors were closed and the curtains were drawn. He tapped once on the wooden doorframe with the handle of his cane before opening them and slipping inside.
The room was dim, with just a table lamp glowing to illuminate Cuddy, lying on her couch, shoes and jacket off. When she turned to look at him, he could tell she’d been crying, with puffy eyes and a conspicuous lack of mascara.
“What’s wrong?” He eased himself down to sit on the low table beside the couch.
She looked at him with pleading eyes as her lips soundlessly formed the beginnings of several explanations. After a deep breath, she simply murmured, “I took codeine and need you to drive me home.”
It took him a second to process everything implied that statement. “You’re sure?”
Turning away to stare up at the ceiling, she closed her eyes and nodded twice, rapidly.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Then, “And you don’t find it at all crazy that a woman who’s taken one codeine is asking a Vicodin addict to drive her home?”
Gracing him with a faint, watery smile, she said, “You do a lot of stupid things, but you’ve managed not to total a car yet. I’ll take my chances today.”
“C’mon, then.” He pushed her shoes towards her as she sat up, putting a hand on the couch to steady herself. After a brief juggling act with their coats and bags and his cane, he managed to free a hand to graze her back as they crossed the office to the door.
She froze for just a second before opening it, enough to bring him into firmer contact with her, before dropping his hand away as they stepped out into the larger hospital.
It was two minutes into the drive before she caught on. “We’re not headed back to my house.”
“No, we’re not. We’re headed to mine.”
“I just want to go home,” she said, sotto voce.
He reached across to rest a hand on her thigh, fingers stroking the soft bouclé skirt. “I’m closer, and have a bigger, softer bed. And a really fabulous pizza delivery place two blocks away.”
“I don’t think I can eat anything right now.” She turned away, gazing out the window at the blurred buildings.
“No, but I think I need grease and beer right now.”
She didn’t answer, simply dropped her forehead to rest against the tinted glass. No words passed between them in the remaining six miles back to his apartment, and she didn’t seem inclined to speak to him as they went inside, either.
He didn’t see a reason to say anything to her. For a moment, he watched as she stood in the foyer, looking a bit lost. Then she crossed the living room to his couch, where she seemed to collapse, as if all the reinforcements that had been holding her up since he’d first stepped into her office had finally given way.
Shedding coats and bags, he proceeded to his bedroom, where a bit of rummaging turned up the old afghan his grandmother had knitted him for his first apartment, now a bit ratty around the edges, but soft. He carried it and a pillow back to the living room, where Cuddy was curled on the couch, tears slipping down her cheeks.
Precariously settling on the edge of the couch next to her, she let him slip the pillow under her head and tuck the afghan around her. He’d long ago abandoned what little tenderness he possessed, but from some primal deep of his soul, a bit of it sprung free. His hand slid through her curls and down to caress her neck.
Still, she didn’t speak, just looked up at him with teary eyes he had no idea how to treat.
“When did you realize?” He hadn’t expected the words to stick in his throat.
She drew a deep breath. “Around one. I thought it was just something I’d eaten, then I realized it wasn’t.”
“But you stayed the rest of the day.”
“There wasn’t anything else I could have done,” she said, sounding resigned and tired. “I was in review meetings all afternoon.”
“You should have called me sooner. I could have created some sort of disaster for you to handle by sitting in the Eames chair in my office for the rest of the day. Disasters are my specialty.”
With a sigh, she shook her head. “Hiding wouldn’t have helped. At least the meetings took my mind off of it a little.”
“Can I do anything to help with that now?”
“Play me something,” she mumbled.
“What do you want to hear?” he asked, hobbling cane-free to the piano and settling himself at the keyboard, fingers skimming the keys.
“Anything. Just something.”
He thought a second, then slowly started into Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman.” He never sang for anyone, but he sang for her now, deep and smoky, accompanying himself at a slow, bluesy cadence. The first two lines seemed so horribly right. But as he sang, he began to realize this was perhaps the wrong choice. When he looked over at her, she’d curled deeper into herself and was obviously crying. Halfway through the third verse, nearly choking on the lyrics, he improvised his way into a refrain and came to an awkward close.
After a pause to gather himself back together, wanting to say something to her and not finding any words, he slipped into a Debussy étude and lost himself in its complicated delicacy. Without stopping, he continued into another, noting the evening rise and fall of Cuddy’s breathing and her stillness. She was falling asleep, and he was happy not to break the spell.
Only when he’d finished three more pieces did he rise from the piano and make his way back to her. She was dozing, fitfully, a furrow across her brow. But he let her rest, picking up his cane and heading for the kitchen.
He chased a pair of Vicodin with three fingers of Scotch, then called for pizza. Grabbing a beer from the fridge, he made his way back to the living room to settle in the easy chair with a backlog of journals. An unopened issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine lay across his lap, the cover slowly absorbing a ring of condensation from the beer bottle, as he studied Cuddy.
Until she’d started planning one, he’d never wanted a child. He didn’t like children, as a rule, and knew even before the infarction that he was not the fatherly type. Never had any of his relationships progressed to the point where children were a part of the discussion. There had been a couple of close calls, panicked discussions while pregnancy tests decided their fates. Never had it been something sought, wanted, desired.
Here they were, in something they’d taken great pains to keep from becoming a relationship, because she wanted a child. And he had to admit that the idea had grown on him. While not as delighted as she had been, in the two weeks since she’d come to his office with the results of the pregnancy test, he’d been almost happy about it. Had wanted some part in it.
Now, he felt less entitled to the grief she obviously felt. But he was not unaffected. He didn’t know how to handle this delicate truce between them now, after this blow. Would she try again? Cuddy had always been determined once she set her mind on a goal, and he would be more surprised if she didn’t try again. How long would it take her to get through this, though?
His thoughts were interrupted by an abrupt knock at the door. Cuddy lifted her head cautiously as he made his way across to the door. Carefully balancing the pizza on his arm, he crossed back to slide a bag perched on top of the box down onto the coffee table in front of her, then settled the pizza box down beside it.
She looked at the bag in front of her warily, almost as warily as she looked at him as he settled on to the couch next to her.
“I got you a salad.” He shrugged and opened the pizza box, breathing in the aroma of hot pepperoni. “You can have a slice of this, too, if you want.”
“No, thanks.”
He watched her in his peripheral vision as he devoured several slices. She picked at the salad, but ate some of it, picking around the bits of cucumber. They ate in awkward silence that he wasn’t sure how to breach.
“Are you going to eat those?” He pointed at the cucumber, off to one side. “Steve would love them.”
“Steve?”
“McQueen. Didn’t I mention my rat?” Rising from the couch, he went to the kitchen and retrieved Steve’s cage.
“Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me.” She tossed a slice of cucumber into the cage, and he watched her watch the rat eat, the vaguest hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lips. Without a word, she rose from the couch and was halfway across the room before turning back to him. “Can you get my overnight bag from the trunk of my car?”
“Anything you want.”
She nodded. “I’m going to take a shower.”
When he returned with the overnight bag, it wasn’t the shower he heard, but the sound of water sloshing in the bath. He sat the overnight bag by the bathroom door and went back to put the remains of the pizza in the fridge, before settling back down with his journals.
He was acutely aware of her moving around his apartment, but tried not to notice. As she settled down on the couch next to him, she became impossible to ignore.
“Your rubber ducky has devil horns.”
“It was the horns you noticed?”
“Actually, I was more surprised by the big claw-foot tub and the Mr. Bubble hiding under the sink.”
The chitchat pained him, when they were normally so comfortable together. He decided to step away from the banter. “The tub’s why I got this place. I can actually use it.” After a silent beat, he asked, “How’re you doing?”
She flipped through a few pages of a discarded journal. “I’ll be fine. You know as well as I do that most women who miscarry this early haven’t even realized they’re pregnant. It’s just a really heavy flow day with terrible cramps. I just have the misfortune of knowing. And I had an appointment with Rouse tomorrow at eight, anyway.” She wouldn’t look at him as she spoke, just stared at Steve McQueen, still nibbling the last bits of cucumber.
“Did you want anything else? I’ve got plenty of Vicodin if you need it.”
A pained, barking laugh escaped her lips. “Now I know the true depth of your feelings, if you’re offering to share your pills with me.”
He put an arm around her, whispering, “You have no idea.”
“I think I do,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.
Closing his eyes, he enjoyed holding her for just a moment, the only sound their breathing and the squeak of Steve’s wheel. This was some sick parody of what he thought they could have, given half a chance and completely inverted circumstances. She felt heavy and limp against him, soft skin and sweats. “Go to bed, Lisa.”
“Mmm,” she returned, nodding her head against his shoulder, her cheek warm through his t-shirt.
Gently, he nudged her off of him. “If you’re looking for someone to carry you, you’ve come home with the wrong man.”
“I didn’t come home with you. You brought me against my wishes.” She shook her head and rose tentatively from the couch. As she passed him, she reached out and tousled his hair, but said nothing else as she disappeared into his bedroom.
He heaved a sigh and collapsed back against the sofa, propping his leg on the coffee table, toe nudging Steve’s cage. Popping another Vicodin, he debated the relative merits of spending the night on the couch. Things with Cuddy would certainly be less awkward. His leg, on the other hand, wanted no parts of a night spent away from his featherbed and soft sheets.
A few hours later, he picked his way through the dim apartment to his bedroom. There, he was distracted by the small form curled in his bed, nearly lost amongst the pillows and rumpled blankets. She hadn’t moved when he emerged from the bathroom in his pajamas, but when he lowered himself onto the bed, she turned to stare at him with bleary eyes.
“House?”
“Go back to sleep.”
“What are you doing?”
“Going to sleep.” He settled into the pillows and closed his eyes.
“But….” She was still befuddled by sleep, not finding the words to refute him.
“It’s a big bed, and it’s not like I’m going to try and take advantage of you right now.” He opened his eyes and saw her peering over at him in the darkness. “Go back to sleep.”
The bed shifted as she lay back down. Nothing else was said, but that night he was kept awake a long time, just listening to her sniffling breaths and wishing he could cure what ailed her.
****
End Part 2
****