A/N: Another random bit of House, Wilson, and Wendy, post-Cotton Candy Baby (which is not yet finished!).
Listen to "Unplayed Piano" by Damien Rice or some soft, jazzy piano music.
No slash intended.
A Little More Than Okay
She doesn't like it when they shout. It doesn't happen much, but sometimes, maybe once every three months and four days, one of them takes an argument too far. And they shout. She's had the same hiding place for a long time now; a year is a long time for a four-year-old. She sits inside the coat closet that her father has insisted on keeping clear, knees pulled up and limp rabbit pinned to her heart. She listens to their feet and the cane storm across the living room, up and down her hall, in and out of the kitchen, and she tries to imagine horses. Once or twice, one of them threw something, made a loud rattle or a crash, and she hated herself for crying into the bunny.
She would try to remember its story then, as a distraction. Uncle Greg had taught her that – to think hard about something when she didn't like what was happening around her. The rabbit had been a present from Uncle Greg. She didn't remember getting it, but she did have his story in her head. She had been a baby, and he and Daddy had been through a long fight, a long trip. She still didn't understand what that part meant, but that's the way he had put it. One night, he had come into her room and looked at her sleeping and gave her the rabbit. It was like a promise, a promise to always have each other. No one can ever say we don't belong together, because I gave you Rabbit and you keep him.
"How long are you going to run away, House?" Daddy would shout. "How long do you think you can ignore everything ugly?"
"Oh, but you just love things when they're ugly, James! You wouldn't still be here if it wasn't ugly!"
She would try hard to bury her head down into Rabbit, in between her knees and her heart, and she would press her hands against her ears. She didn't like hearing this, didn't like it at all. She never understood. Maybe if she did, it wouldn't be so bad.
"What is it going to take? You going to stop when you can't use the bathroom anymore because everything from the ribs down is shot to hell? You going to wait until she comes home from school one day to find you on the floor or curled up in your bed because you can't move on your own? Why do you have to be so God damn selfish?"
And she would cry anyway. She hadn't learned how to stop herself. Selfish? That was bad. Why would Daddy call Uncle Greg bad? It wasn't true, she wanted to say. It wasn't true.
"No, Wilson. When I get there, I'll die all by myself. Don't worry; the paperwork should be simpler than your last divorce."
She heard the familiar cane-step-step, cane-step-step pass the door, and it was quiet for a minute. And then Daddy's voice crept up again, sounding more like him, quieter than the shouting.
"God, House," she would hear him say. "God," he would say, almost too soft for her to hear, like a wind that swished down and away. And she wouldn't hear Uncle Greg's cane. And she would cry for that most of all. She would be afraid – afraid that he was gone and never coming back.
But after a while of muffling her sniffles in Rabbit, someone would carefully open the door, and it would be him, towering above her. She always feared that he would be angry, but he never was. He would set the cane against the wall and bend down to pick her up, and she would uncurl to hook her arms around his neck. She wouldn't try to stop the tears then, because he never told her not to cry. She would just rest her head against his, while he made the slow walk to her room, careful not to misstep without his cane. She would never see Daddy then.
Uncle Greg wouldn't put her down if she was crying. He knew it would make her feel worse. Instead, he would plop back into the rocking chair, and she would slide down to rest in his lap, head on his chest.
"Are you leaving?" she would ask. "Does Daddy hate you?"
He would stroke her hair and hold her; he had told her once that he only did that with her. It was one of the ways he told her he loved her without actually saying it.
"No," he would murmur. And it would soothe her – his voice low and just for her. "I'm not leaving. Remember Rabbit?"
She would nod, rubbing her tears on his t-shirt and clutching Rabbit in one hand.
"I'm sorry we upset you. I do things your daddy doesn't like, and he does things that I don't like. I know we shouldn't yell, but sometimes we forget."
She would slow down, calmed by his voice rumbling in her ears and the chair's creak-creak. She must fall asleep sometime because usually when she next opens her eyes, she's in her bed. She'll rub her eyes, climb out of bed, and go looking for them. Daddy will be in the kitchen, drinking coffee or making breakfast, the TV quietly buzzing with the news. He'll smile at her, pick her up, share a hug and a kiss, and he'll let her go again, knowing she needs to find Uncle Greg.
And she will. He'll be in his bed, the cane hung up on the bedpost, clothes thrown over the back of a chair. She won't open the blinds because they both hate that in the mornings. She'll climb up onto the bed and slide in against him, and usually, he'll grin with his eyes still closed.
"What's he making?" he'll ask her.
And she'll say omelets or pancakes or waffles, and he'll purr because it makes her giggle. She'll forget about the shouting and the closet until the next time it happens, and he'll try hard to make sure that it doesn't for a long time.
"Play the piano," she'll say sometimes.
"Hmm, what should I play?" He'll give her his sleepy-bright blues, and she'll feel best afterward. "How about – 'Wendy is Better than Chocolate'?"
She'll laugh.
"Or 'Wendy, the Better Wilson'?"
"Those aren't songs, silly!"
He'll get out of bed eventually, carrying her again, and they'll sit at the piano together. Wilson will stop watching the news, face always going soft at House's music and the sight of her little back next to House's. And she knows that this is the way Daddy and Uncle Greg are okay again.
Which is exactly why she asks for it every time.