No Expectation.

Blythe reacts straight away to the sound of the doorbell. She isn't expecting any visitors and quirks an eyebrow in silent contemplation.

'Greg! Honey! What are you doing here?!'

'Hi Mom, can I come in?'

'Sure! Come in, come in! Are you okay?' she tenderly takes hold of his elbow and guides him in through the hallway to the living room. 'How is the leg?'

'Fine Mom, I'm okay, really, I uh just need to sit…' House's cane quivers as he rests his full weight on it and sits down gingerly.

Blythe cannot get used to seeing her son this way. She can see how the pain has aged her boy beyond his years. She watches him try to get comfortable on the couch and likens him to one of her friends, riddled with arthritis, lonely, miserable, old.

'Greg what are you doing here?' she repeats in the hope of solving the mystery he has presented. She scans her memory looking for the last time her errant son made the three-hundred mile trip to just drop by unexpected.

'I uh… I guess uh…'

She can't bear the hesitancy and tries to put him out of his misery.

'Well, it doesn't matter,' she smiles and pats his good leg, 'I'm just so happy to see you!' rising to stand she continues in her effort to break the awkward silence. 'Wait till your father gets home, he'll be so happy…'

While she rambles off into the kitchen, House's thoughts flicker like a lightening flash back to the days when those words would have had quite a different meaning.

He gazes around his parents' living room and balks at the certificates and photos of his younger self dotted about the walls. His movements are jerky as though his gross motor skills are being controlled by the pain burning up his thigh.

He is nervous and doesn't know why he has come.

He forces himself to take a deep breath in an effort to calm himself. He has never lived here and notes at once the strangeness of recognising all his parents' stuff in this unfamiliar shell. It's almost like being in some kind of museum replica of his childhood.

He thinks back to the times they had moved whilst he was growing up. One shell to the next, never really stopping long enough to put down any firm roots.

He hears his mom pottering about in the kitchen and is thrown back to being ten years old and coming home with his first black eye. She had lifted him onto the kitchen bench and she'd tended his eye, icing it and dabbing arnica to prevent the bruise from showing too badly. She hadn't asked him how he had come by it. Instead she had waited for him to tell his story.

That was her way. She always waited for him to explain, she never asked why. All through his teenage years and the trouble he'd had with the police, the drugs, the underage drinking. She'd just tended him and waited for him to tell her what happened. He swears that's why he can't lie to her. There's no expectation of deceit. Whatever he tells her, he knows she will wait for him to get it straight in his head first, to work out the kinks in his reasoning, to allow for faulty teenage logic swayed too easily by testosterone.

Maybe that's why he is here now.

His mother walks back in to the living room and he catches a glimpse of the old lady she is becoming. She staggers just slightly as though the tray is too heavy and too precariously laden. He wishes he could jump up and take it from her but knows he still hasn't worked out a way to carry stuff like that without having to stand still, stranded like some kind of beached whale. The old leading the lame or some such platitude.

'You want a sandwich honey? I've got ham, cheese, uh, there's more in the kitchen if you want?' She trails off as she watches her son snaffling down a sandwich like he hasn't eaten in a month. 'If you're hungry I can make something else? We don't normally eat until later but…'

'No, this is great Mom, really. I guess I'm hungry after the flight.' He manages to force out round the sides of his mouth.

She strokes the back of his head and falls in to the blue depths of his eyes like only a mother can. She sees nothing but him. She breathes in deeply to try to get a grip on his unique scent and listens for the tiny satisfied noises she knows he will make as he eats. All this is subconscious and has been repeated ad infinitum through the years, through the decades.

His mind too is blank. The near constant whirring of his daily life switches to an older model, one he had forgotten. It's safe here, no expectations.

A knocking at the door wakens mother and son from their own private reveries. Blythe stands to answer and smiles at the man her baby became as she goes.

House finishes off the last sandwich on the plate and swallows down the glass of milk on the tray. He reaches for the cookies and doesn't think too long about the fact that a full grown man can feel this content, this happy just for being here with his mother, the sandwiches, the milk and the cookies.

Out in the hallway he can hear his mother mumbling a question and being answered by an unfamiliar voice. The voice is somewhat shrill and has that sing-song quality that some women of a certain age seem to have. He imagines how its owner must look; he's sure there will be some outrageous jewellery around her neck and that she'll weigh just a bit too much too be healthy.

The voices draw closer and he prepares to be presented to the stranger who seems to know his mother so well. He swallows down the last of the cookie he had been eating and turns expectantly to the door. He's nervous again but knows it's because of that awkward moment when the stranger meets the limp and the cane. He's not quite got used to that; can't yet brush it off as someone else's problem.

'So Mary, this is my son, Greg. Greg, this is my friend Mary, from my painting class.'

'Oh, so this is him? Oh, your mother has told me all about you! Let me look at you, so handsome…'

House is caught somewhere between sitting and standing and knows he is leaning too far over to escape looking pathetic. Mary runs her hands down his arms and guides him back to sitting without him having to reveal his inadequacy. His mom must already have told her then.

Grateful to this slightly crazy looking lady, House doesn't try to hide his intense examination of her. She's about his mother's age, seventy-five or thereabouts, hair is grey with a streak of purple in a kooky attempt at 'arty', a plump, pink, happy face and the kind of smoky brown eyes that seem to look into your soul when you meet their gaze.

Which they do.

House immediately casts his own eyes down in an effort to avoid the awkwardness he feels under Mary's equally intense scrutiny of him.

He's nearing forty and he has come home. He doesn't know why. He feels deflated, crushed like a cardboard box full of plastic bottles waiting to be recycled. He is hurting inside his chest and inside his damn leg. His shoulder too is aching and his back has yet to get used to his new version of mobility.

All this he knows Mary can see without a single spoken word.

In a second she swishes a flowery sleeve as though to signal an end to the mutual examination and announces her afternoon plan.

'So, I've come to take your lovely mother to the city art gallery. There's this new exhibition and we've been planning to go for a long while haven't we Blythe? You wanna join us sweetie?'

He can't remember the last time anyone had called him sweetie but he takes the bait and is grateful for the chance to snap out of this strange funk he seems to be in.

'Uh, no, thank you. I uh, don't-'

'Oh Mary, Greg's had a long trip haven't you honey?' Blythe comes to her son's rescue; almost too quickly.

'Thanks anyway, I think I'll uh just wait here, Mom, if that's okay?' He wants her reassurance, he wants her to say that it's okay to just sit and think; there are no expectations.

'Oh sure, I understand, don't worry,' God he can't bare the pity he can almost hear creeping into her voice. 'Your father will be home around five. You just… well, make yourself at home honey, take it easy.' She kisses him on the cheek and steals one last stroke of his hair.

'How long are you in town for Greg? I hope I get to meet again before you leave?' Mary asks whilst she gathers her things.

'I uh, a few days I guess.'

'Well okay then, good to meet you.' Mary takes his hand and clasps it tightly between both of her own. She stares into his soul for one last time then she and his mother leave the house.

Grateful for the peace and silence, House relaxes back into the sofa and closes his eyes. Swallowing down a bolt of pain, his mind tries to drift away. Somewhere in his head is a germ of a thought tapping at his subconscious; why would his mother leave so soon after he had arrived?

Okay, another story with a mind of its own that demands the present tense (I swear, it's a conspiracy). Not too sure where it's going other than House has come for a bit of mother-healing and can't admit it to himself. Maybe a bit of Stacy angst and set around the time 'Heap of House' leaves off. Story also seems to have added a mystery as to where Blythe is really going – is there enough of a hint of that? Whadda ya think?