Author's Notes: This was originally written for paroulis as part of help_lisa. She won an auction for a one shot and asked for a sequel to Gift of Screws that explored Rachel and House's relationship and where House and Cuddy had sex, of course. If any of that offends you, turn away now please. For those of you who do continue to read, you'll notice two things: 1). this takes place only two months or so after the events of Gift of Screws, which I highly recommend reading if you haven't, because this doesn't follow canon after a certain point. There is a reason for this: a much longer sequel that I've always considered writing about eventually. This stands on its own, but there are also little hints throughout this that will bridge into a sequel should I write it.
2). This isn't a one shot. Some of you may still find this a bit long, but I decided to split it up because this would be quite a lot for a one shot that would really do best as a multi-chaptered fic in my opinion. So hopefully those of you have left me that criticism in the past will like the shorter chapter. If it's still too long for you, I recommend going to squeeka_quack on LJ, where you will find all of my works broken down into much shorter posts because of LJ's word limit. Thanks for reading and most especially thanks to paroulis for her donation and her patience.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show. Obviously.
Gift of Chicken
Chapter One: Blood and Disappointments
By Duckie Nicks
"Are you listening to me?"
House wanted to raise his head and shoot her the blank look that would answer her question and spare him the effort of talking. But if he were too tired to tell her no, he was surely too exhausted to move.
"No," he slurred. Although he couldn't see her face from this position, he knew she was annoyed. His head resting on her chest and one of his arms slung around her waist, he could feel her muscles tense. Yeah, he thought, she was peeved.
Truthfully though, this was her fault completely. If she'd wanted him to listen, she should have had this conversation with him hours ago – not waited until they were in bed together, his body curled against hers, ready to fall asleep. Better yet, she could have realized they didn't need to have the discussion at all and left him out of it altogether.
The hand she'd had running through his hair suddenly stopped, proof that she would never agree with his assessment of the situation.
"This is important," she said in a voice that bordered between serious and whiny.
"You mean this isn't just a really lame bedtime story?"
He regretted saying it as soon as he had. The last few months had been tense, and recent weeks had had House and Cuddy succumbing to that pressure.
There had been the need to find a new school for Rachel, which had meant interviews and tests. Naturally that meant Cuddy, who had excelled from a young age at making great impressions, had gone into overdrive primping her daughter and her boyfriend to look good at those meetings. Not surprisingly but much to Cuddy's dismay, he hadn't performed to her liking. He'd tried (if only to avoid pissing her off), but there had been only so much he could do to appeal to teachers and principals.
Thankfully that hadn't mattered in the end; Rachel had done fine all on her own. But then, that hardly eased any tension. The problem had been solved, yes, but it meant for Cuddy unalterable proof that there had been a problem to begin with. For all of her efforts to push Rachel ahead in school, to give her daughter the advantage she thought Rachel needed, Rachel would start at her new school where the county had originally wanted to place her. Technically she would be where she belonged, having not met the cut off date to start school to begin with. But because of Cuddy's meddling, it would now look like Rachel had needed to repeat a year. And the fact was… she did need that. House knew that Cuddy would never believe that this was a failure on Rachel's part, just as he knew that Cuddy would view this absolutely as one of her own shortcomings. He'd heard her say it – that she should have known, that she should have listened to him; she should have never pushed to begin with. The solution had only created doubt.
On top of that was the continued issue of finding a new nanny. Again, Cuddy idealistically wanted things to be one way. In spite of everything that had already happened, she was unable to be pragmatic. She hadn't articulated this, probably because she didn't understand it herself, but she would never embrace realism when it came to Rachel. Somehow that would feel like giving up on her.
In this particular case, Cuddy suffered from the delusion that they could continue to do everything on their own. They didn't need help; they needed time to get used to life after Marina's death.
It would have been nice to believe that that was completely true, that their tiny family could function all on its own. Why wouldn't House want to think they could alternate between picking Rachel up and taking her to school, helping her with her homework, feeding her, and putting her to bed every night? It wasn't exactly great to know that there needed to be another set of hands. For that reason alone, House had gone along with the insanity.
It hadn't hurt that, when it went well, it made Cuddy happy. She loved her job, yes, but she was perfectly content to be able to wait for Rachel outside of school and hear about her day – even if it then meant bringing Rachel back to work to sit in one of their offices. But last week had sobered House to this tenuous situation. Cuddy had been so busy that he'd volunteered to pick Rachel up from school, and he'd been in the middle of entertaining her when…
His patient had died.
To soothe his frustrations, Cuddy had conceded that they needed a nanny. (Secretly she had, no doubt, harbored feelings that this was unnecessary, only happening to make her stubborn lover happy.) But by then, as he had pointed out, it was too late. Quickly the conversation had devolved into a fight. He'd blamed her as harshly as possible, the nagging thought that this case could have been different torturing him.
Cuddy had not liked that. Predictably, she had responded just as hurtfully, but in the heat of the moment, she had gone a step further. She'd brought up their main source of stress between them, saying, "I understand you're frustrated. But if you have a hard time balancing work and Rachel now, how are you going to do it when you are her legal guardian?"
She wasn't genuinely asking.
She was throwing their agreement in his face, threatening to revoke it if he wasn't grateful at every moment for the gift she was giving him. She was reminding him that she would never sign the papers if he kept behaving this way.
Well, technically speaking, the papers had already been signed. He had wanted to wait, but he was willing to embrace pragmatism far more easily than she could. If something happened to Cuddy during this time period, he would not leave Rachel's future to chance, because they hadn't prepared for that possibility. He'd had Cuddy sign the papers. But again, per their agreement, the documents wouldn't be filed until his birthday, his imposed deadline for this change.
If he were being honest, she had handed over the rights he wanted already. The documents were in a lock box that Cuddy didn't know the code to. She couldn't take back what she'd already set in motion. That said, he didn't want to hoard away his proof of responsibility. He didn't want her to resist this change as much as she was. And above all else, he didn't want Rachel to be thrown in his face.
Needless to say, he was still getting over that one. They both were.
Today had been the first day things between them had been normal. They hadn't fought (well, except that conversation they'd had about his clinic hours, but that was nothing; it didn't count). They'd had sex, although they hadn't ever stopped. This was just… nicer. It didn't feel like they were in a competition to get off as quickly as possible by fucking as violently as they could.
And now, he feared the next few weeks would be a repeat of the last one. They'd fight. They'd have sex. New scratches would replace the ones she'd carved angrily into his back, shoulders, and ass. They would return to the same dark place they had been in, only this time escape would be that much more elusive. It would be his fault that this happened. He had put them on this path and for what?
A crappy joke meant to show that he wasn't listening to her.
Instantly he tried to rectify his mistake. His tone much softer, he said reassuringly, "I'm sorry. I just meant that this isn't my first time picking Rachel up. You don't need to go through her schedule."
The apology was silently accepted. She didn't remind him of the last time he'd picked Rachel up and the problems that resulted from it, thankfully. Instead she told him, "It helps me relax."
House finally raised his head and turned, so he could look her in the face. Eyebrow lifted, he searched for clarification. "What's that? Telling me what to do?"
She tugged on his hair to force him to lift his head more; his chin was digging into her chest. "No," she said vaguely annoyed. "Going over the schedule. It helps me feel… calmer."
"Most people would just ask their boyfriend to rub their backs."
The offer, and it was one, surprised her. "I didn't think you would," she confessed.
He shrugged. "Roll over."
The bed sheets rustled as they moved about so that she was on her stomach and he was sitting up by her side. When his fingers began rubbing her neck, she groaned.
"Oh, that's good." After a moment, she admitted tiredly, "You're so good to me… sweet. And I'm so mean." There wasn't a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
"You're not mean." If he didn't say that, there would be a fight. But he didn't believe she was, so it didn't matter anyway. "I'm asking a lot of you," he said sympathetically, leaning down and kissing her shoulder. He lingered against her skin. "I don't… I'm not trying to hurt you."
She was silent for a moment, then:
"I know…. I know, House."
Rachel trudged toward him unhappily, her book bag dragging on the ground. It had been agreed upon by Cuddy and the school that Rachel should finish the year where she was. That only constituted three more weeks, considering it was May, but every day, Rachel fought to get out of it.
"I wanna go home," she whined, dropping her things at his feet. "I don't wanna go t' the hospital."
"It's a good thing we're not going to the hospital then, isn't it?" He leaned down to pick up her bag. "Come on. Get in the car."
Rachel didn't move, distrustful.
"All right. Well, you can stay put if you want. I'll call Mommy and tell her she has to come pick you up, which you don't want cause I may or may not take you to work, but Mommy definitely will."
It wasn't just a threat House was making. It was an accurate prediction. If he had to call Cuddy, she would defensively keep Rachel with her. He couldn't get the kid in the car, so why would she trust him to handle the situation after that? She wouldn't.
She could afford to make that choice. She wasn't staying at work to do her job. She was holding interviews for a new nanny. House and Cuddy had decided that they would introduce Rachel only to the serious candidates, the very few who would fit the criteria of being kind, smart, and above all else, capable of giving Rachel her medicine. But it wouldn't be the worst thing ever for Rachel to meet some of the rejects. At least Cuddy would think that.
So Rachel would end up precisely where she didn't want to be if she kept this up. It was simply inevitable.
She must have realized this, because she stopped putting up a fight. "Fine." He leaned against the car, so she could get between him and the truck some jackass had parked terribly. Stomping miserably, she nearly hit the truck with her car door when she went to get inside. Luckily House had prepared himself for the possibility of a tantrum and had been there to catch the door before it did any damage.
Afterwards, as he watched Rachel climb inside, he was tempted to say something to her. She wasn't supposed to behave like this, indignation bubbling up inside him of its own free will. She should know better, he told himself, thought back to how he would have been punished if he'd done what she had. And instantly, he could say nothing at all.
He didn't like considering his own childhood when faced with Rachel's. That was something he was quickly discovering; his mind would not allow for comparison. He wouldn't. Whatever role Cuddy let him have in Rachel's life, it wouldn't ever be anything like he'd witnessed as a child.
Without needing to try, House remained calm. Even as he noticed her attempting to slide past her booster seat, his voice stayed conversational. "Where are you going?"
She paused, sighed. "Don't wanna sit there."
"But that's where your seat is."
Rachel shot him a dirty look. "Madison says that's where babies sit."
"Madison?" House said, pretending he didn't know which runt Rachel was talking about. "Oh, that kid. Well what does she know? I thought her parents drove around with her in the trunk."
As far as jokes went, it wasn't a good one. But she laughed anyway.
With her mood improved, he tried again with her. "Come on. In the booster seat."
She frowned but didn't fight. Letting him buckle her in, she asked, "Why do I have to use the seat?"
"It keeps you safe."
"'S stupid," she muttered.
"You'll get over it." He tested the buckle to make sure she was secure and then eyed her warningly in case she decided to try getting out of the seat while he was driving. God help him if that happened; he'd have to keep both sharp objects and his testicles out of Cuddy's reach.) She made no move to escape though and didn't show any sign of considering doing something like that. So satisfied, he dropped her bag onto the floor in front of her and closed the door.
As he started to drive off moments later, he braced himself for the litany of poorly phrased complaints. She used to be quiet on the ride home, but now that she sensed weakness, they'd already told her there would be a new school in the fall, she took that to mean, if she whined enough, she could avoid school for the rest of her life. Or maybe having realized someone was acknowledging her difficulty, she felt loved enough to start talking about some of the things she would have kept to herself at one point. Whatever the reason, this had become the norm. Every turn narrated with stories of what Madison or Nevaeh had said to her today. Every foot driven matched by sentences missing a third of their words as Rachel emotionally explained her day. That was how this usually went.
House did his best never to ignore her… completely anyway. Once he realized he wanted to be Rachel's father, he knew he had to prove he was worthy of that role. Some things like listening to Rachel's angst weren't exactly his idea of fun, but if he hoped to get what he wanted, there were things he needed to do. So he was prepared for her bitching when he asked, "What did you do today?"
"Nothing," she spit out.
If she didn't want to talk about it, part of him thought he should accept this lucky moment without question. But he couldn't. The change in behavior made him curious.
"Nothing?" he asked in a deliberately not confrontational manner. "You just sat at your desk all day?"
"Uh huh."
"Really? You didn't learn anything? You didn't eat? Didn't take a dump in –"
She screeched in irritation and kicked the seat in front of her. He didn't respond much less judge her for her frustration. He'd been baiting her – not to piss her off, but to prompt her into talking. But he'd only upset her. That wasn't her fault. And although he didn't want her to think whining would get her what she wanted, he also didn't want to antagonize her any further.
He kept his voice calm. "You're not very convincing, but if you –"
"Shane's mom brought cookies for his birthday, and everyone gotta eat some, but I don't cause they's has peanuts." Her foot connected with the back of the passenger side seat again, the dull sound of her shoe against the cushion reinforcing how upset she was.
"Yeah, that sucks." On their own the words would have sounded sarcastic, but he was attempting to hide his irritation at the school, at the teacher who idiotically would have allowed the cookies to be served when there was someone in the class with a peanut allergy. Combined, he was the appropriate level of angry. But outrage wasn't beneficial for anyone right now. He didn't feel good about saying this; yet he knew it was important. The older Rachel got, the more she understood her troubles were not universal. The medications, the illness, the constant testing and worrying – other children didn't have to deal with that. On some level, she'd probably known for a while, suspected it anyway. Now she was reaching an age where the proof was undeniable, as real as the upset that fact created.
Though it was offered frequently, comfort was of small consolation. What Rachel needed was to eventually accept that this was how her life would be. She would need to test her blood sugar, keep an inhaler with her at all times, take medicine when her mother told her to. She couldn't deny her circumstances even if they made her unhappy. Of course, that was easier wished for than accomplished, and no one knew better than House himself that surrendering yourself to a life everyone else around you would never have was hardly a simple matter. Your mind was never unaware of the luck others had, and more than the state of your body itself, it was that awareness that gave birth to unhappiness. Some would view this natural process as a choice for victimization, but they were wrong about that. At no point were you giving yourself consent to feel worse about your life. Assumptions otherwise just made the feeling that much more pronounced.
With Rachel, it was imperative to get her through that stage. He didn't want her to be miserable any longer than she needed to be. And so while he felt like an idiot pointing it out, it needed to be said:
"But… sometimes that's going to happen. Other people won't always remember that you –"
"I know," she said with disdain.
"Then you also know that there are plenty of cookies in –"
"But I don't have those cookies."
"Right," he said rolling his eyes. "If only there were a way of asking for –"
"I want cookies!"
He didn't respond, internally debating how he should proceed. For him, it wasn't so much a matter of whether or not he should give her what she wanted; he had no problem doing that. But there was always the chance that Cuddy would find fault in his choice, and so he needed to make a decision that would result in the best defense for her possible displeasure. When thinking like this, House always realized how terrible it all sounded; he was making her seem crazy, which was hardly fair to her. Really, it was only right that she look out for her daughter. That was what a mother was supposed to do. He couldn't be offended because of that. Although he would have liked her trust to be given freely, he was content to be given the chance to earn it. He was amazed he'd gotten that far anyway. Because of that, he didn't want to make the wrong choice.
In this context however, it was hard to see what was right. She was just as likely to say he was spoiling Rachel as she was to judge him for not giving Rachel cookies. It could go either way. So House went with what he wanted to do; it would be easier to defend in the long run.
"Relax, kid," he told her, turning the car in the opposite direction of where they lived.
Rachel didn't understand. "You're going the wrong way!"
"We're not going home. We're going to the grocery store."
"Don't wanna!" He saw her pouting in the rearview mirror and ignored her. If she wanted to act like an idiot instead of asking him why they were going to the supermarket, she could do that. He would block her out, and when she figured out the truth, her punishment would be the embarrassment she felt for behaving like a fool.
Even so, his plan had its insurmountable flaws. For example, Rachel had to be aware enough to recognize her mistake. She was not. The more he ignored her, the more worked up she became, and the less capable of seeing the truth she was. By the time they go to the store, House's mistake was undeniable. Once again, he had managed to take a wrong turn with Rachel.
He sighed and got out of the car and wondered if he would ever be any good at this. Cuddy seemed to be under the paradoxical impression that this was all so easy for him (so much so that he in fact jeopardized the relationship she had with her daughter) and at the same time, that the business of parenthood was something he couldn't possibly understand, want, or succeed at. Nevertheless, he felt that she had more faith in him than he had in himself; he had never seen the ease in his abilities, the ones she feared to the detriment of their relationship. He didn't see it now.
That would bother him. Under normal circumstances, it really would, but Rachel's screaming was a terribly effective distraction. Jerking her door open, he told her in a stern voice, "You can shut up at any time now." It was no surprise though that that didn't work. So he went for transparency. "I thought you wanted cookies."
Through her tantrum, she heard the stress he placed on that word. In between dramatic, tearless sobs, she wailed, "I do. But we have any."
"We don't have any, yeah," he corrected shortly. "If only there were some magical location where bratty little girls could get –"
"I not bratty!"
"You're doing a fantastic impression then." He was careful to keep his tone light through this part of the conversation. She was being annoying, but he didn't want to make the situation worse than it was by giving her reason to believe he fully meant the name he had called her.
"No, I'm not!" she yelled, not at all deterred. She said this, because she didn't have any other comeback.
"Okay, well, you can keep acting like an idiot, or you can calm down and come into the store with me where I might – might," he repeated for emphasis. "Be willing to buy cookies. If you're good."
That shut her up immediately. The screaming stopped. The horrible attempt at crying was abandoned. She no longer wriggled, desperate to get out. As though she'd been replaced by her good twin, the change was definite and sudden. Still he was reluctant to trust it.
As he helped her out of the car, he explained to her the rules in the same manner he had seen Cuddy do many times before. "I have to get some things for dinner, so you're going to have to be patient if you want those cookies."
"Okay," she said with a succinct nod of her head.
"And don't put things in the cart unless I tell you to. I don't wanna be sifting through five kinds of vinegar when we're in line."
"Okay." Assuming they were done, she started to take off into the parking lot.
House was quick to grab her before she ran out into traffic. "And don't do that."
From that point on, she stayed right by his side, her feet practically tripping over him. He offered to put her in the cart, but she didn't want that, and so he had to contend with a five year old who wanted so badly to be seen as good that she was willing to do anything to make that impression. There was probably a moment where he should have told her to stop; she was so close, she was in danger of hurting one of them. But knowing her, he thought she would assume stop meant she wasn't going to get any cookies. And that would create a big fight he didn't want to deal with. He let her keep up the act.
Yet he was aware this was more than an easy path being chosen. Hard as it was sometimes to believe, there was a part of him that longed to be Rachel's father… and a good one at that. This hardly made him Dad of the Year, but the way she clung to him? He could at least pretend she was doing it for other reasons. When an elderly woman smiled at him as he picked out squash with Rachel leaning into him, it didn't feel fake. It didn't seem like any of this was about getting cookies.
But of course, it was, andeventually that couldn't be ignored. After he'd picked up everything he needed, he led Rachel to the aisle with the cookies. "Pick something."
"I want the strawberry cookies with the oatmeal and…."
He stopped listening to her description at that point, though she had no problem going on and on about what she wanted. He knew what she was talking about and understood they wouldn't be found on any shelf. The cookies she wanted were the ones he'd made months ago from scratch for one of Julia's kid's birthday. There were so many children that he had to think of which one it was. Not Seth the douche bag, he thought; this was one of the little kids. Luke and Hunter were too old, and it wasn't Elizabeth, Cuddy's sole niece, as House was sure it was one of the boys. So that meant… (Who was left?) the party had been for Declan, who was obsessed with Cookie Monster. For his birthday, everyone had been asked to bring cookies. House had baked (Cuddy had been forbidden to, as poisoning everyone would make for a bad time), and the party, consisting of fifteen kids high on sugar, had sucked. But Rachel had had fun, if a Cuddy-controlled amount of cookies, and apparently she'd liked what he'd made enough to remember it all this time later.
Truth be told, he didn't feel like baking. He could cook, but he had never enjoyed it. It was just less painful than eating some of the things Cuddy made. As a result, House wasn't hoping to bake. Still it was a good bargaining chip.
"Are you going to do your homework today without complaining?" he asked.
She nodded her head. "Uh huh."
It was probably a lie, but he accepted her word anyway. "Fine. We need to get strawberries then."
"And then are we done?"
"I hope so." He said that but even then realized this wasn't that bad. It was actually pretty nice as far as errands went. Last week he'd been so frustrated to lose his patient, but right now, it didn't seem so bad. Balance felt both tangible and desirable. Letting Rachel pick out the packs of strawberries to buy, he could see then that he'd overreacted. He'd been fighting with Cuddy for absolutely nothing.
Without hesitation he pulled out his cell phone. Rachel was evaluating the fruit as though her life depended on it, so he had plenty of time to send Cuddy a text message. His fingers carefully hitting the keys on his screen, he wrote: Sorry for the past week. I'm an idiot. You were right.
The second he sent it to her, Rachel was interrupting. "What about these?" she asked, holding three containers of strawberries. "Are they good?"
"Well, let's see." He looked at the plastic boxes of berries one by one. "That's good…. This one looks all right." The first two were fine, and he placed her selections in the part. The third, however, looked like there might be a moldy piece of fruit inside. Telltale reddish juice pooled at the bottom of the container. "Can we find one better than this?"
Rachel was upset, heartbroken even. As she had done nothing wrong, he couldn't understand why she would feel that way. But the emotion in her gaze suggested that she took this rejection very seriously. He couldn't play it off with a joke then, couldn't ignore it either.
"It's fine," he told her reassuringly. "We can get a different one." Having placed the container back on the pile of produce, he looked her over properly once more. His words had had little effect. He reached over and stroked her plump cheek. "Sweetie, it's okay." Coming from him, affection still didn't sound completely natural. But he was getting better at it; at least, it no longer felt as awkward as it would have months ago. "We'll find what we're looking for, and then we'll go make cookies."
She appeared less comforted than he liked, proving that this was more than a fear of being denied dessert for picking out bad fruit. This was shame for having disappointed him in some way. He suspected that telling her she hadn't would have little effect on her. Like her mother, Rachel was not inclined to listen to him.
Quickly he looked for a new box of strawberries that he could use to change tactics. When he found one, he held it out for her inspection. "What about these? Do they look okay to you?"
She cautiously gave the berries a once over, as though she were wary of the test before her. "Uh huh," she eventually said.
"Then I think we should get them and get out of here," he said, dropping the fruit into the cart.
She didn't respond, but whatever failure she'd felt about the strawberries slowly was forgotten. By the time they were in the parking lot once more, she seemed in good spirits. In a better mood than when he'd first picked her up, House decided, as he started putting groceries into the trunk. He was too focused on what he was doing to notice if she were smiling or not. But he could hear her humming to herself a song he didn't recognize and the scuffs of her sneakers on the asphalt as she danced in place. It was annoying, sure, but it also meant that she was happier, something he wanted her to be if he were going to help her with her homework. At least if she started out pleasant, it wouldn't be as miserable.
For both of them.
He noticed though, as he wedged the few plastic bags of groceries he had between the odds and ends of his trunk like some lame version of a Tetris game, that Rachel had gone silent once more. He didn't think anything of it, mostly because he was relieved to not have to listen to her off-key singing anymore. After a moment, however, he wondered what she was doing. Curiosity not concern made him look to the left where she had been standing expectantly only seconds ago. There was no reason to think that she wouldn't be there when he turned his head. As he glanced over, he could practically hear the whining for cookies in his head.
But there was nothing but quiet to greet him.
Because she wasn't there.
Although horror should have been his first emotion, it was not. His initial reaction was that Cuddy was going to kill him. To be fair, that was the mental response he had to many, many, many of his choices. With his job and the way he tried to do things, the implications that had on his personal life were undeniable. And only pain could come from ignoring how all of this would affect his girlfriend. But that thought alone no longer scared him. They'd agreed a long time ago: he would try not to go too far and without consideration for her, and she wouldn't try to hold him back unnecessarily or punish him (much) for his risk taking. It was perfect in theory, less so in reality. Yet they'd made enough progress that Cuddy being mad didn't instantly scare him.
Then suddenly House was terrified. His eyes had instinctually located Rachel. She was one row over in the parking lot – alone, thankfully. But there was no relief, because she was walking away from him still.
With purpose, with her head bowed, she was moving further and further and quickly, not paying any attention to the cars in the parking lot.
House felt sick to his stomach, but there was no time to vomit up the knot forming deep in his gut like he wanted to. He didn't even think about grabbing his cane, which was currently hooked on the lip of the trunk.
He just ran.
If his thigh hurt (and it must have on some level), he didn't notice. Getting to her before something happened was all he cared about. He opened his mouth to scream her name, but he was too focused on stopping her to hear if he actually said anything.
Because of his shouting or by sheer luck, Rachel stopped right at that moment. It must have been luck, because she didn't look back at him – or even pay the slightest bit of attention to him sprinting towards her. Only when he was behind her, her body crouched on the ground, did she look up and notice him.
They were two rows of cars away from where he had parked.
It enraged him.
"What the hell are you doing, Rachel?" he shouted. If part of him were worried about scaring her, there was no need. She seemed more surprised at his reaction; she hadn't caught on that he was mad, and ignorant, she started to look away from him. Her attention elsewhere, it only made him angrier.
"Hey!"
That got her attention, but she offered no apology as she craned her head upward to look at him. "House, you hafta help." She sounded upset.
He didn't listen. "Get up now. We're going home."
"But there's a doggy. He's –"
He cut her off by picking her up. It was as if she knew there was no point trying to talk while being admonished. But it was precisely that depressed surrender that gave him pause. She was wrong – very wrong – but she looked defeated and yearning, quietly begging him to listen to her.
And though he knew the point was not to give her what she wanted, she hadn't earned it, he couldn't bring himself to ignore her when she looked like that.
No doubt Rachel sensed this. "Please," she cried. "Please do something." She was on the verge of tears, squirming in his arms. She was desperate, but he needed to make sure this wasn't a lie concocted to get out of trouble.
All right, that sounded a little absurd, but his mind was scattered, trying to understand what had just happened and why and how he was going to explain this to Cuddy and hardest to accept of all, it seemed, that Rachel was okay. She hadn't been hurt.
Nonetheless, his voice remained purposely gruff. "Dog? Where's the dog? If that's –"
"Under car! Something's wrong him." And then she dissolved into a series of wails that were too sad to not humor.
"You want me to look under the car?" he asked to get her attention. He didn't want to be the guy holding a crying child in his arms in the parking lot.
"Yes!"
He grimaced, gave in. "All right." She looked up in surprise, bright blue eyes wide. As she realized he was going to listen to her, her face gradually donned a look of relief. Thankfully she shut up.
At that point, House resigned himself to putting her down. He wasn't in pain, but his thigh quivered, and it would only be a matter of time before he would pay for the unusual exertion.
It wasn't that he feared dropping her. The issue was far more self-centered than that. Bending down with the added weight might hurt him by placing extra work on his already overly taxed leg. And he would do anything to avoid that.
But there were risks to consider when setting her down. If there wasn't a dog under the car, if she'd really done a great job at lying, there was nothing to stop her from taking off again. He would like to say she had more common sense than that, but she'd already proven otherwise. Bolting was now something he had to believe she would do again.
And if there were a dog? Then what? House wasn't convinced he knew what to do. Obviously there was no owner around, he thought while beginning the arduous task of getting on his knees. Anyone with the dog would have chased after it when it escaped. Also, Rachel would have hesitated to follow when an adult was handling the situation.
(Nevertheless, he told her then, "You stay right here.")
That didn't really matter though in the context of things. If there were a dog with no owner around, all that was important was knowing what to do with the creature. Half-heartedly he hoped Rachel was lying. That would at least be simpler to deal with.
But as he leaned forward, hands on the hot asphalt, he could tell he wasn't going to get what he wanted. His head cocked to the side, he could hear the animal even before he saw it. The small space between the car and the pavement seemed to amplify the sound of the dog's panting, which came in quick and harsh intervals.
Before he even saw the creature, House could tell in that noise that something was wrong. But it wasn't until he caught sight of the dog that he understood how bad the situation really was. It no longer became a question of what to do. There was only one choice to be made.
The dog needed help.
Its fur where it hadn't been stripped away or obscured by jaggedly torn flesh was slick with blood and dirt. There was no way of telling what actual color the dog might be, what personality it might have without such grievous wounds. But with them, the dog was an excited and terrified mess. It was large; that much House could tell. Even so, it had managed to crawl underneath the car, its big body curled up in a shaking ball. Its large head drooped low in submission… or maybe the loss of blood was making the animal light-headed. Both possibilities seemed equally likely.
House didn't take that as an invitation to reach underneath and grab the dog. Regardless of the injuries to the rest of its body, yellow-brown eyes were narrowed on him, silently assessing if he were to be yet another to inflict pain on its already battered and brutalized body. House wasn't willing to risk being hurt himself if the dog decided he couldn't be trusted.
Pulling away from the car, he knew his first priority was Rachel. She would never respect him or love him if he walked away from an animal in need. But at the same time, he had to keep her safe.
Before he could even open his mouth to talk to her, she begged, "Do something."
He rolled his eyes. "Calm down. I'm going to."
"That's not what it looks like."
The seriousness of the situation was forgotten as he felt himself transported by her tone. She was being a brat, sure, but all he could see staring back at him haughtily was Cuddy. As angry as he could have been, maybe even should have been, he was too amused for that.
Knowing that saying any of this out loud would be pointless, he stuck to the matter at hand. Rachel needed him to do that. She was already nearly in tears again. He needed to stay on point if he wanted her to trust him… have respect for him
"I'm gonna coax the dog out, all right? But before I do that, I need you to promise me you won't try to touch the dog."
Rachel didn't like that. "But I wanna pet –"
"I know. I know. But the dog's hurt, and you might want to make him feel better, but right now, he needs a doctor. And I don't want him to bite you."
"He's not gonna bite me," she insisted.
"Well, we're not gonna take a chance." He was firm, making it clear that she wasn't going to be touching that animal at all. "I mean it."
"Fine." She pouted bitterly.
He looked her over for a moment as though her face would reveal any plans to disobey. But upon considering the situation, he decided when the dog came out, she would not want to touch it. She'd seen it wandering through the parking lot, probably, and had decided to follow it without much thought. And though she was aware on some level that something wasn't right, she more than likely hadn't gotten a good look at the dog to understand just how poor the dog's condition was. When she saw him in the light, he doubted she would want to touch something covered in blood. He hoped she wouldn't.
But he supposed there was no real way of knowing without actually doing the thing and seeing what happened.
That thought hardly comforted him.
Fully dreading how this would go, he turned back around to face the car and leaned over to look at the dog once more. It hadn't moved, and it clearly wasn't going to come out without some encouragement. If they'd been near the car still, that would have been easy. He would have simply lured the dog with food. But they weren't anywhere near that, and House didn't think he'd be able to walk there and back and there again without becoming exhausted. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he could feel the pain making itself known.
Having made no move to save the dog, he paused then to reach into his pocket for the pills he desperately wished would turn into Vicodin. Even though it didn't, he still took it, bracing himself for Rachel's complaints that he wasn't doing anything. She remained quiet however. She might have wanted him to help, but thankfully she seemed to understand that he wasn't capable of doing that if he were in pain.
As soon as he thought that, his sense of relief vanished; he didn't like that she knew he needed pills – almost as much as he resented needing the drug to begin with. He could deal with his physical limitations fine. He'd never be able to do things like teach Rachel how to ride a bike for example, play ball with her in the backyard. But then Cuddy would want those moments for herself anyway, and his own father had done those things with him, and what had that amounted to, really? No, House didn't mind that part. But being weak when Rachel needed him to be anything but that made him feel like such a failure. It killed him, actually, to be a man who railed against all limitations only to find himself losing to something as familiar to him as his own body. The irony that he was a doctor who could not cure himself was not lost on him. It just didn't make any of this better.
No, self-pity wouldn't help either. He recognized fully that there was nothing to be done about the situation, hate it as he did. And while the feeling didn't go away on its own, he forced himself to ignore it and focus on the dog instead.
To do that though, he realized he needed to put the drugs away so he could have both his hands free to grab the mutt if need be. But it was just as he started to cram the pill bottle back into his pocket that he saw a way to coax the dog out. Just because he didn't have food with him didn't mean the dog knew that.
House rummaged through the plastic container for another tablet. Fingers pinched together around the drug, he reached under the car and held it out. Perhaps the dog knew he wouldn't actually get the "treat," because he showed no interest.
House wasn't ready to give up on this tactic. It would work; he hoped it would anyway. He just needed to find a way to make the pill seem more enticing. Since there was nothing he could do about the medicine's taste and appearance itself, the only thing he had left to work with was the way he presented it. He went for the obvious methods of attracting a dog's curiosity.
Clicking his tongue, he tried to beckon the dog toward the medication. "Come on, boy. Come on." It took a few variations of this – a whistle, some kissing noises, a couple softly uttered words to try to convince the dog that he had something good in his hand.
Finally, the animal took note. Its enormous pink tongue licked over its bloodied lips, and it slowly started to crawl toward House. It couldn't stand and walk underneath the car, which gave House time to inch his hand out from beneath the vehicle and start the tenuous process of standing up.
There was no need to hurry. The dog couldn't move any faster than he could. Being injured and in a tight space, the animal took more time to come to a stand next to the car. But that was okay. House used those few precious moments to adjust the height of his hand, so that, even if the dog attempted it, it wouldn't be able to reach the pill.
Once standing however, the dog showed little interest in the medicine. It didn't try to take the drug out of his hand at all. He wasn't complaining however. The dog might not have wanted to eat, but it wasn't trying to get back under the car either.
"We should try to get him to move toward the car," House suggested, turning his head to look at Rachel. He expected her to be afraid. With the dog at its full height, it was impossible to ignore its size. It was easily taller than Rachel, its head larger (or at least it seemed like it) than a basketball. Even the way it breathed was indicative of its heft; instead of a dog panting, it was beginning to sound like a warthog, low and heavy. It would have been understandable for her to be scared. So he was surprised that she didn't cower in fear when almost face-to-face with a bloody, monstrously sized animal.
Sure, she looked nervous, but he thought that had more to do with the dog needing help, but because she was frightened of it.
"Okay," she said enthusiastically. "And then we'll fix his –"
"Yeah, we'll get him help," he said dismissively. That wasn't the important part right now. "But we have to go slowly." That was what she needed to keep in mind. He tried to emphasize the words so that it would stick with her, so that she wouldn't run across the parking lot and get hit by a car or startle the dog into attacking her.
That reminded him of a more pressing concern. "I don't care how tempting it is, you don't touch the dog, all right?"
She rolled her eyes like he was really stupid. "I know."
Without comment, he turned back to the dog. It looked ready to fall over. House thought about clapping his hands to get the animal's attention, but he was concerned that that might startle the creature. So he settled for talking to the dog in a friendly, high-pitched voice.
He felt like Wilson.
"Come on. Let's go to the car. Come on, dog. Come with us," House said, far more uncomfortable with his words than Wilson would have been in this situation. From Wilson, this would have all sounded very natural, as gentleness was something he had in spades. Encouragement wasn't hard for him in the same way it was for House, though he was determined to be as good, as sensitive as he could be.
For a moment, House was sure the dog would turn and run. He would if he were the animal and a stranger who clearly strained to be friendly was trying to get him into a car. Yet it worked.
The dog started lumbering toward House and then followed him as they inched their way across the parking lot in the late spring heat. He knew that if he were really Wilson, he would believe that the dog had somehow understood that he wanted to help. But House would never be his friend, if only because his beliefs convinced him that the dog was dumb and delirious and following out of illness or following because it was simply aware that it had no other options, that it was either go with the stranger or die beneath someone's car. What choice was there, really?
Thankfully the parking lot wasn't incredibly busy. There were better things to do on a Friday afternoon than buy groceries, House supposed. Of its own volition, the question came to him, asked if he could remember the last time he had gone out with Cuddy on a Friday evening to do something that didn't include colleagues or family. There was a vague memory of a night, but he couldn't recall when that had been. And that was when he realized – they'd never celebrated their anniversary when it had happened this year… although that date was debatable (and he would debate it, later).
He was too concerned with getting across the parking lot to give that much thought now. All he had to do was imagine how he currently looked to know that they needed to get to the car as quickly as possible.
But of course, moving with any speed was out of the question. He could keep his balance without the cane, but he had to be careful how he moved. He was already hurting, and if he took a wrong step, he could easily make the pain that much worse. As much as he didn't want to be seen with a bloodied dog, didn't want to deal with the potential implications, the harm in rushing seemed far more probable than what would happen if someone saw him and called the police.
Regardless, it wasn't as though the dog could hurry along. It could keep up with House and even seemed like it could go faster. But it didn't look like it would last long going at a quicker pace. Each step it took left a bloody paw print on the asphalt. There was too much at stake to push forward. They would have to go slowly.
When they finally returned to the car, House didn't bother to grab his cane. He could use the vehicle to help guide him around to the passenger side. With the dog following him, there was only one loose end to tie up.
"Get in the car," he told Rachel. "I don't want to hear a word about the damn booster seat either." Instantly the warning felt like an unnecessary one. She was desperate to help the dog, so much so that she wouldn't do anything to impede that process, not even to complain about the seat that she hated. He felt bad then, like he had done something wrong, but there was nothing he could do about it now. She wouldn't appreciate him taking the time to apologize anyway. So he focused instead on getting the dog into the car.
He opened the door in front of him, hoping that the animal would somehow understand what he wanted. That was a lot to expect of something this ill, but the last thing House wanted to do was to have to bend over and pick up the dog. God forbid he need a rabies vaccine; Cuddy wouldn't touch him for a very long time if it came to that.
Amazingly enough, he didn't need to grab the dog. The space between the glove box and the passenger seat was small and probably hot, thanks to the heat. But there must have been something enticing about the tiny area, because the dog was quick to climb up into it. Perhaps it thought the space would be a good place to hide. There was no chance of the dog being hidden, obviously. Its back foot left a crimson smear on the frame of the car as it had hopped inside.
House scowled at the sight. He could force a fellow to wash the car off when they screwed up; he didn't care about the blood. But it would bother Cuddy.
That stupid dog, he thought, shutting the door carefully so it wouldn't startle the bloody creature in front of him. Cuddy had taken the time last night to lecture him on the minute details of what she wanted him to do, and thanks to the animal, he was altering those plans. Depending on how long it took at the vet's, to make the cookies and dinner, it was a distinct possibility that House wouldn't get to homework time with Rachel, something Cuddy would not be happy about. And he wasn't even going to touch her reaction to Rachel being a witness to an injured dog. That, above all else, would upset her, and House wouldn't have any defense, any way to ease his girlfriend's distress.
He stumbled around the side of the car and bitterly shoved the empty cart away from him. It noisily rolled down the parking lot aisle, coming dangerously close to the bumpers of other vehicles, but House didn't care. Failure aggravated him with increasing ease. The longer the matter of this guardianship was drawn out, the less patience he had for anything going wrong. He had never been a perfectionist, but when that was what Cuddy wanted from him, he desperately needed to give it to her.
Today though, he would let her down. And she would let him know it, he told himself, as he unhooked his cane from the trunk before slamming the door shut.
When it came to Rachel, Cuddy would never let him forget his failures.
They sat in an exam room, waiting for the veterinarian to come explain to them what had happened to the dog and what she planned on doing about it. Almost as soon as House had parked the car, they'd whisked the animal away. A nurse had ushered him into this room to wait, perhaps under the impression that this was their pet or that he cared much about the thing at all. House had had half a mind to leave right then and there, but Rachel wouldn't be satisfied until she knew the dog was all right, so he could only wait.
In the meantime, he had to figure out what outcome he wanted. If the thing died, Rachel would cry, and Cuddy would be unhappy. If the dog lived, Rachel would want it, would throw a fit to get it. Since he was the one here, he would have to deny her, and then Rachel would be the Cuddy mad at him.
He didn't want that.
Cuddy seemed determined to make him a better partner, a disciplinarian, a foil to make her look good. Part of him would like to make her happy, to be exactly what she wanted.
This was too much though, and he though he would have preferred a dead dog to being the one who denied Rachel what she wanted.
It was easy to see at that moment how… soft he'd become.
If he thought about it, it seemed like an unexpected turn of events. There was a sense of surprise in the idea as it crossed his mind. But then it really wasn't shocking, was it? He loved Cuddy, and Rachel was a big part of her life. How could some of that love not transfer over to Cuddy's daughter? When they lived together? It was the most natural development possible. Yet there was still a piece of him that recognized how bizarre it all was.
He was trying to be someone's father? He who could barely tolerate anyone? It was a weird reality, like he'd been sucked into a funhouse mirror where everything was familiar but nothing seemed right.
But this was right, he corrected. He couldn't forget that just because this seemed in conflict with the person he thought he was or assumed he would be at this point in his life.
"What are you thinking about?" Rachel asked quietly, pulling him through the looking glass once more. She'd been sitting on his lap without making a sound or squirming on top of him impatiently. She'd been so good he'd forgotten she was even there.
Well, that wasn't exactly true. Her small hands were running along his stubble and had been for quite some time. But she was always doing that when his face was in reach. If he'd fallen asleep on the couch and she found him, if he was carrying her somewhere, somehow her fingertips found her way to his face so she could relish the novelty of the scratchy hair against her palms. He no longer paid attention to when she did it actually.
"You," he answered honestly after a moment.
She seemed interested in his response. "What about me?"
He lied, because the truth wouldn't make sense to her. "How lucky you were not to be hit by a car today."
Her hand dropped to her side as her face became awash with shame. "Sorry…." She said something after that, but the words were uttered too quietly, were too mumbled for him to understand.
"It's okay." There was an awkward pause before he kissed her on the top of her head. She leaned into him, her expression suggesting she was only slightly reassured. He had every intention of fumbling through words of comfort, even though she had been wrong to run across the parking lot like she had. He'd wanted to let her know she'd been an idiot; he hadn't aimed to make her as ashamed as she was.
The door to the exam room opened, however, stopping him from saying much of anything to Rachel. A woman slipped inside, her dark hair tucked into her white coat like she'd just thrown it on to look more professional, less harried.
"Stay where you are," she said automatically, not realizing that there was absolutely no chance of House standing up to greet her. Rachel was perched on his left thigh comfortably, but he was doing his best to keep her from coming anywhere near his right. Running had been the only course of action, but he was paying the price nonetheless.
The veterinarian moved to stand in front of them, her back leaning against a metal examination table. "I'm Dr. Carson. You brought in the bloody dog?"
He nodded his head. "Greg House."
"And who's this?" she asked in an intentionally but ineffectively sweet voice. She was trying to capture Rachel's attention, but that didn't work out the way she wanted. Rachel just nervously buried her face in his shoulder. The move took House a little by surprise, as she wasn't exactly what he would describe as shy. But it had been a long day, and she wasn't fond of doctors, being at that age where visiting the pediatrician still created fear – especially for Rachel.
A hand on her back to rub it, he said to the doctor, "This is Rachel."
Carson smiled understandingly but didn't comment. "Well, Greg, Rachel, I'm happy to tell you that the dog is looking like he has a fighting chance. As I'm sure you noticed, he's lost a considerable amount of blood, so it's good you were able to bring him in when you could."
"Car accident?" House asked out of curiosity.
Instead of an answer though, he got an intrigued look on Carson's face, her eyebrows knitted in confusion. "What makes you say that?"
"We found the dog in a parking lot."
"So it's not your pet?"
"No."
She seemed relieved. "No, the dog was not hit by a car. Given the nature of the wounds, we're confident in saying that they could only come from another dog. Of course, we can't say whether the dogs were intentionally fought or not."
House considered what the more likely scenario was, then realized he didn't care much. There might have been a puzzle before him, but it wasn't interesting in the least. That didn't stop the vet from going into detail of the dog's injuries. It was a sanitized report for Rachel's sake, yes, but somehow there was enough information in Carson's words to give House an unattractively long account of the dog's state. Antibiotic injections into the wounds, fluids to help re-hydrate the dog, possible surgery on one of the dog's shoulders, and on and on….
He nodded his head every now and then, which he knew just encouraged her to continue. He wanted her to shut up, but with Rachel here, things were different. For all of the effort he'd made to ignore what others thought of him, to rail against their expectations, it meant nothing when it came to Rachel. Anyone else could think what they wanted about him. He didn't want her to think badly of him. If that meant he had to pretend to care about an animal, that was what he would do.
"Anyway," Dr. Carson said after a while. "I'm sorry to keep you. Thank you for bringing the dog to us. We'll take it from here."
House fought the urge to get up and leave. She was giving him permission to go, and it went without saying that he wanted to, but it wouldn't look good. Running out of the room, looking like he didn't care – it wasn't an option.
Pretending to be interested, he asked, "You'll keep me informed on how the dog is doing?"
She seemed surprised by the question. "If you would like, I suppose. Am I to take this to mean that you might be interested in owning the dog if…."
There were words in the qualifier, but House was no longer listening to her. He was too busy meeting Rachel's expectant gaze. As much as she hadn't understood, she had paid enough attention to know that there was a discussion going on about who would claim the dog as a pet. And naturally, her eyes wide and on him, silently pleading, she had decided the answer to Carson's question had to be, needed to be, must be yes.
He chose a more noncommittal approach. "That's… complicated," he said simply. Truthfully it wasn't. Cuddy would never allow a pet in her home, not with their schedule and Rachel's asthma. But House wasn't going to say that now, not when he was in pain and had no interest in dealing with the fit Rachel would throw.
Thankfully, Carson understood. "I know how that can be. My sons have been dying for a hamster, but I just don't like rodents, so –"
"Right," he said, cutting her off. "Same thing here, so if I could finance the dog's treatment in exchange for confirmation that the dog is doing well, so that she's okay…." He gestured with his head to signal that he meant Rachel. "I would appreciate it."
And there it was – the irritation he'd been trying to pretend didn't exist. What he'd said wasn't in itself that bad, but somehow he'd managed to make it sound much ruder. Well, that had always been one of his talents, he supposed.
Apologizing wasn't an option. He didn't care enough to seem sincere, so there wasn't any point. There also wasn't any point in trying to pretend he hadn't behaved the way he had. It was clear that the veterinarian had noticed his tone. So he went silent and waited for her to respond.
"I think we can agree to that," she replied coolly. "I'll show you to the front desk, so we can handle payment, and then we can send you on your way."
He nodded his head before telling Rachel, "Hop down. It's time to go." Without offering her reassurance that the dog was okay, he worried that she would refuse to do as instructed. That was what would normally happen if she didn't completely understand what was going on. She was like Cuddy in that way; if he were desperate to move forward, they would dig their heels in until he went through the painstaking process of explaining why he wanted to do what he wanted to do.
It was the pain guiding his thoughts, he realized. That wasn't how he felt, not really, he reminded himself, and pushed the darkness away before it had a chance to dig its claws into him.
And in the end, he was wrong. If he'd expected Rachel to make a fuss, she did the opposite. This time, for whatever reason, Rachel quietly listened without uttering a single word much less a complaint.
A quick glance at her though told him that she had either not napped at school or needed a snack to elevate her blood sugar. She looked tired, a little pale as well, although that might have been the fluorescent lighting, which was making him look just as sickly. Then again, he was feeling ill, thanks to his leg, which was becoming more of a problem with each passing moment.
When they got into the hallway, House scooped Rachel into his arms so he could talk to her quietly. That made the pain for him worse, and the second he had the extra weight to contend with, he regretted it. But what other choice did he have? Cuddy would never forgive him if something happened. He wouldn't want her to. "You feel okay?"
"I'm hungry," Rachel complained.
"Can you wait until we get to the car?" He wasn't sure how good the groceries were, now that they'd been in the heat for at least forty-five minutes. But there was probably some juice he could open up to give Rachel a small boost until he could get an early dinner into her. Rachel nodded her head. "Okay. We'll be quick."
He was true to his word. Carson had taken her sweet time explaining what was wrong with the dog, but the woman who handled the front desk was far less friendly and therefore much more efficient, which House liked. Afterwards, he'd carried Rachel to the parking lot before being forced to put her down. She whined a little at the move, but it was clear that she understood it wasn't by choice. She'd refrained from being a complete ass about it anyway. Trudging behind her, he was relieved when they got to the car. He could at least get them home now.
A few strawberries in Rachel's belly and a Vicodin tablet House had hidden in the glove box in his later, he drove them home. He'd forgotten about the Vicodin in the car before. It wasn't supposed to be there; he'd thought he'd thrown it out years ago when he'd given it up, when he'd agreed with Cuddy that he should only have the emergency stash at home and his apartment. But he'd been desperate enough to search his car for it while Rachel unintentionally smeared her face red with berry juice. He'd nearly cried at his luck of finding a stray pill still in the car.
Surely to Cuddy's inevitable dismay, he stopped at a pizza shop on the way back and grabbed dinner. She'd be pissed about that. Well, not pissed exactly, but she had this idea in her head that he would do anything to make Rachel like him even if it weren't for her own good. And though Cuddy wasn't so vain as to care about her daughter's weight, the fact was Rachel didn't need the meat lover's pizza House had purchased – no more than he did with the belly that had seemed to get a little larger this last year. Cuddy wouldn't, he corrected, be mad, but his actions would be worthy of a conversation… which would probably lead to a fight, as it often did. So he supposed the end result was the same.
But today, she would have to contend with the fact that he had no other choice. He'd planned on a nice dinner of tofu with broccoli and roasted squash. Yet there was no way he could cook now. The Vicodin was working, but if he didn't want to keep taking it, he needed to be off his feet.
He was disturbingly close to forgetting that fact by the time they got home. As he pulled into the garage, he could feel the drug in his fingertips, in his toes, that sweet delicious glaze of euphoria beginning to work his nerve endings.
It didn't used to be like this. Before he could take Vicodin and feel nothing. It would barely do anything to ease his pain toward the end. His tolerance had dropped since then, and now on the rare occasion he indulged, that initial feeling was dangerously nice. As if proving his own point, he didn't even realize how much he was savoring the sensation until Rachel asked, "Can we get out now?"
He shook his head, eyes catching sight of the smeared dog blood on the glove box he'd searched mindlessly through only minutes ago. He was trying to clear his thoughts, but now all he could see was the visual of him, desperate and in pain, ignoring the blood of a strange animal in the hopes of getting some sort of relief and how it must have looked to Rachel. Suddenly he could only taste the chalky bitterness in his mouth, feel the awkward weight of the drug in his belly. The image of his actions made him sick, and an unbroken refrain popped into his head: You are screwing this up. You are no good for her. You don't deserve this chance.
"Yes," he said shakily, not so much for her benefit, but because he needed something to abate the loathing inside of him. Unbuckling his seat belt, he told her, "Get out and head inside. I'll get the food."
He didn't feel like making the necessary trips from the car to the kitchen and back to bring in the pizza and the groceries. Nor did he have much energy to unpack the warm food and put it away, but he did. As Rachel happily dunked her pizza in a puddle of mustard, he forced himself to at least do that much. If Wilson were here, he would no doubt suggest that House was doing this as a way to punish himself for his behavior. The extra effort required on his leg, the pain that was pushing its way through the Vicodin now – that was all designed to hurt him for the act of caving so spectacularly to the pull of the drug in front of the child he claimed to love. And maybe if Wilson were here, House would deny it. But since it was only a thought, one that he would never share with Cuddy if he could help it, there was no point in pretending like it was a lie.
He was punishing himself, sure.
This was what he deserved.
For her part, Rachel didn't seem upset, but that mattered little. She shouldn't have seen him behave that way... or the stupid dog, either. But there was no way House could have avoided the latter; it was an accident he couldn't have predicted. The drug use though. He should have never let that happen.
But he had.
And he didn't want to tell Cuddy about any of it, but rationally House knew that he had no choice. Given what Rachel had seen today, she would have nightmares about it. She was five years old. How could she not dream about the blood, the desperation to save that dog's life, the pain she'd been subjected to witness? Those moments would not be forgotten anytime soon. Eventually, even if he kept quiet, she would tell her mother. So he had to tell Cuddy first.
But if he did that, he was afraid of the consequences. If she knew just how unable he was of protecting Rachel, she would never let him file those papers. She would deny him the only thing he'd really wanted these last few months.
And he wouldn't even be able to fight her when she came to that conclusion, because it had been all his fault.
The evening languished onward with House twisting internally at the conversation he would have later that night. He tried to focus on Rachel's needs with a dedication that was nothing short of frantic in its intensity. He gave her her medication after dinner. They worked on her homework together, a task that he embraced with an almost comical amount of interest. Rachel looked at him like he was insane, but she settled down and did her work nevertheless. Actually, in spite of his anxiety, she didn't seem to notice it at all, that was until he was getting her ready for bed.
Things had been going well. She hadn't begged for a bubble bath with toys he would have to painstakingly pluck out once bath time was over. She didn't resist getting into her pajamas or show signs that she would fall asleep before Cuddy got home. Technically Rachel should have been in bed twenty minutes ago, but Cuddy had called to say that she was on her way, and House knew everyone (mostly him) would benefit if Cuddy got a few minutes with Rachel to make her happy. The gamble there was, of course, that Rachel would tell Cuddy everything that had happened, and Cuddy would be pissed at him. But he was willing to take the risk. If Rachel fell asleep before she could say anything incriminating, the moment had the potential to soften Cuddy up.
For a while, Rachel looked like she would be able to do exactly what she needed him to do. Then she asked, "Why are you sad?" They were lying in her bed together, her hands once more on his beard.
He looked over in her direction. "I'm not sad."
She moved around underneath her covers. "You look –"
"I'm tired. That's all."
"Is it cause of the puppy?"
"No," he said, the word mumbled because her fingers had strayed near his lips. "You're gonna give me a rash if you keep that up."
"I don't care," she nearly sang in response.
"Oh. Okay."
She didn't say anything back, and he was willing to let them fall into silence. After all, he needed Rachel to be awake for Cuddy; he didn't need her to be conscious enough for a long conversation. Really, maybe it was for the best if she started to get a little quiet.
So naturally, she had to ask, not for the first time that evening, "The doggie's gonna be okay, right?"
"Hopefully." He struggled to say yes, unsure of how he should play this. On the surface, telling Rachel everything would be okay seemed like the right thing to do. But if the dog died – and Carson hadn't ruled out that possibility – would Rachel accuse him of lying? Would she blame him for misleading her? The fact was she might. And if she did that, he wasn't sure he knew how to get past that. It wasn't as though he had any experience in this area that he could model his own behavior after. He only had instinct, which told him that playing it carefully was all he could really do. "The vet's taking good care of it. We'll just have to see if –"
"If the doggie's okay, can we keep him?" Again, this wasn't the first time she'd asked to keep the dog, but this was the first time he hadn't had a way of redirecting her attention. He would have to give her a direct answer. "No."
"But –"
"Rachel, you know we can't have a dog."
He could feel her mood shifting. Instantly, she grew cold and rolled away from him. There was no doubt in his mind that she was irate. But just as he was about to say something to try to smooth the moment over, he heard Cuddy coming into the house.
There was no point in announcing that she was home. By the time he would have gotten the words out, Cuddy was there, pushing the door to Rachel's room open. Her briefcase was nowhere to be seen, probably having been discarded the second Cuddy had gotten inside. Her shoes were also missing, kicked off no doubt in a place House wouldn't see until he'd tripped over them. And she looked frazzled, yes, but relieved once she saw that Rachel was still awake.
"Hi, sorry I'm late," Cuddy whispered. Rachel was clearly mad enough at him that she wouldn't even turn his way when she heard her mother's voice. But Cuddy seemed to assume that Rachel was just tired, because she didn't seem concerned.
"Hi," House said, so that at least someone would say something in response. He started to get up but was caught by surprise when Cuddy leaned down to kiss him briefly on the lips.
"Thanks for waiting with her." That was what she said, but what she meant was thank you for keeping her awake and more importantly, that it was time for him to leave.
He had no intention of disagreeing with her. "No problem," he replied, standing up.
As he slowly plodded his way out of the room, he could feel Cuddy's gaze on his back. Based on his gait, she could probably guess that he had taken a Vicodin (and that he planned on taking another one as soon as he left her). But if she were worried about it, she didn't say anything to him then. She just focused her attention on Rachel, the two Cuddys chatting with one another animatedly as he closed the door behind him.
She stayed with Rachel for longer than he anticipated, about a half hour. Since he had made many mistakes today, that was more time than he would like them to spend together. If the kid ratted him out, it would be that much harder for him to defend himself to Cuddy. The ironic part about that was he didn't have a defense for his behavior. Cuddy had every right to be mad, but he didn't want her to be.
In the end, she didn't look angry when she finally came into the bedroom. Exhausted yes, but as she sat down on his side of the bed and leaned over to kiss him once more, she didn't look like a woman who had been given an account of the day. But the second she pulled away, he could see it.
The irritation in her eyes.
"A dog, House?"
As she got up to get undressed, she didn't elaborate on the matter. But she didn't need to. He understood the implication of the question:
She thought he'd promised Rachel a dog.
Rachel had lied.
End (1/3)