"Where's the pizza?"
There was a barely teenaged boy at his door, staring at House while wide eyes and mouth slightly open. And, worst of all, he wasn't carrying pizza.
"You'd think make sure pizza delivery guys know how to – I don't know – deliver pizza," House snapped. "This is the problem with employing fetuses. They might not demand minimum wage, but unlike thirty-year old guys with three kids, a pregnant wife and alcohol issues, they're not desperate enough for money to actually work. WHERE'S THE PIZZA?"
The fetus blinked. "I'm not a pizza delivery guy." He took a deep breath and added, "Are you Gregory House?"
"Yeah," House growled. "If I saved your life, go buy me chocolates, not flowers though. They smell. If you were a clinic patient – "
"I'm your son."
"- with a snotty noise I told to – huh - ?" It wasn't often that House was shocked into silence. House stared at the boy, looking at dim-witted as the boy had earlier. While there was no flashing nylon sign screaming 'I'm your son!' plastered across the boy's forehead, he wasn't, like, Chinese. He was spotty, with brown hair, and legs that seemed too long for his body. Brown eyes, but then blue eyes were recessive; it wasn't shocking his son didn't have them. Finally House said, "Was your mom a whore?"
The boy (his son?) raised one eyebrow coolly. "Do you expect the mother of your son to be a whore?"
House almost chuckled. "Well, statistically," he said, taking a Vicodin. "I've slept with more whores than had deep long-term relationships. It's kind of hard to fit many fifty-year marriages into one life." He grinned. "Unless they overlap, of course."
"Yeah," the boy said sarcastically. "Even harder to fit them in if women only look at you when you're paying them."
"So you're saying your mom was a hooker! Let's just hope you end up with her looks and my brain, and not the other way around." As he said it, House realised he had implicitly agreed that the boy was his son.
God, he was stupid. He shouldn't let this gangly teenager become his responsibility without being sure it had 50% of his DNA in it, and even then didn't it have a mother too? Unlike him, she'd actually chosen to have him. After all, whores weren't normally too picky about clothes-hangers.
"Date of birth?" House shouted. He shouted because the urgency and authority in his voice would make the boy answer without thinking, so he'd tell the truth – even if he hadn't been planning to.
"15th of October 19-," the boy blurted.
"That makes you thirteen." House had been with Stacy when he was conceived. Unfortunately, that didn't prove that the boy was lying… "There's only one person who could be your mother," House said.
"Miriam Shaw."
House sighed. "Yes. Well, that was her first name, anyhow. The surname's changed."
"No, that was her maiden name!"
"I didn't know her – in the Biblical sense – when she was a maiden." House smirked at the boy's wide eyes. All thirteen year old boys thought they were edgy and daring and had figured everything out but were naïve as hell.
And now he had one to look after.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Miriam had been an intern. Cuddy had assigned House to teach her or let her shadow him or something. She was skinny, and from a distance looked tanned, but close up, you could see she was covered hundreds of freckles. She had dark, slightly curly hair and big eyes. She was wearing a baggy but low-cut top. As she leant forward over a microscope, it fell forward, giving House a clear look down her top. Her tits jutted out with small hard nipples, and there were freckles down her whole body. House kept making her check things under the microscope, and Miriam was flattered. She'd heard House thought everybody but him would screw things up.
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
There was nothing in it. "You better come in," he said. The boy followed him inside and plopped himself down onto the couch, staring in front of him at the blank TV. House next to him, reaching for the remote and switched it on. For a few minutes, they watched the monster trucks in silence. Then House said, "you have a name, right?"
"Alex."
House groaned. "As the father, I get some influence over your name, and I'm vetoing Alex."
"What's wrong with Alex?"
"Boring," House said. "And there are already girls called Alex, and once a boy's name starts being used by girls, they always take it over. When you're seventy, people will snigger when you say your name."
"Really?"
"It was the fate of all the male Leslies, Carols, and Merediths."
"Right," Alex said, crossing his arms. "What are you going to call me then?"
House grinned. "Hunter," he said. "That's never becoming a girl's name." Alex turned his gaze away from the TV and met his eyes and they began to laugh. It felt good, laughing with his kid, even if he wasn't his kid.
That didn't mean House planned to keep him. His life wasn't set up to have a child in it. There was a reason none of his team had children; if you regularly had to work until 3 in the morning with no warning, kids weren't a possibility. House couldn't be carting Alex off to football matches or even arriving home to cook dinner.
Alex took a deep breath. "Do you want to know how I found you?"
"No," House said.
Just then, the doorbell rang, and House stood up.
"Let's hope this time it actually is the pizza, and not another long lost child," he said. "Or this place is going to turn into a schoolyard."