Must be a cloud in my head
by kimbari
Greg House had sometimes thought that the answer to the mysteries in the universe could be found in Stacy's eyes. It was crazy, a notion of the highest order of absurdity, yet that didn't stop him from thinking it. Deep brown eyes she had, dark enough that he could sometimes see his reflection in them: himself as she saw him. And Greg knew he was seeing a man much better than he actually was.
He'd never told her, of course, about this flight of fancy. When he thought about it (and Greg was nothing if not a deep thinker), he was sure that if he did, Stacy would think he was blowing smoke up her ass. Besides, one didn't give ammunition to the enemy (an attitude that Stacy would instantly have attributed to him). Everyone who wasn't inside his head was the enemy, and that equaled everyone... including the source of answer to the mysteries of the universe.
Greg sat in a wooden chair by the kitchen window, waiting. The day was cold, rainy, blustery. It had been from its invisible sunrise. It would be long past its equally invisible sunset. The window was open. A radiator struggled vainly against the incursion of cold. Greg sat close enough to the window to catch the occasional gust of rain that blew in. He didn't care; it didn't matter.
Stacy had the answers to all his questions in her eyes and she was leaving, taking the answers with her.
He didn't care. Hell, he'd done everything he could to make her leave. He was in pain, angry, empty, had been since Stacy had gone against his wishes and signed off on the surgery that had crippled him. And even though he knew, deep down and unacknowledged, that what she'd done had saved his life, it was a miserable life, not worth living, not for him. So he took it out on her, every day, each time wondering what would be the last straw, and what exactly he had to do to drop it on her back.
It turned out that Stacy could take a lot more than he thought. She'd hung in there, long after any one else would have given up. She'd endured the messes he made and left for her to clean up, the accusations, the razor-sharp critiques of everything she said, everything she did. I love you, Greg, she would tell him, even as she treated the maliciously inflicted "love bite" (the sex was especially intense; he didn't know whether to attribute the pleasure to the pain, or the pain to the pleasure). But to the bitter end, love was all she'd had for him, and all she gave back for his bullshit... and he hated her for that.
So Greg kept pushing until it finally gave. Nobody does it better. Stacy told him yesterday that she was leaving. Right after a particularly passionate session of fucking she'd dropped the bomb on him. Getting some of her own back? Maybe. It would've been a shitty and particularly devastating thing to do if he'd cared. Except he didn't.
She'd started moving her stuff out this morning. She was on her way back to get the last of it, and he sat there waiting, wet on one side, miserable on the other, dreading the end as much as he'd looked forward to it, wanted it.
Needed it.
The sound of her key in the lock made him jump. (She'd patiently put up with his locking the door every time she left the apartment.) He turned his head in her direction. He watched her enter the apartment, unbutton, remove, shake and hang her raincoat on the hook. He saw her see him, sitting motionless by the window. He saw her start, badly.
Recovering, she put her hand to her chest. She approached him. "Jesus, you scared me," she said. Her steps slowed at his non-response. "Greg?"
He looked up at her, then, into those eyes that held the mysteries of the universe... or at least he thought they did. She held his gaze for a split second, then skirted around him, toward the open window. She reached out to pull it down. "Leave it," he said.
She froze. "It's raining in...."
"I said leave it," he rumbled like an approaching storm, promising violence.
"You're getting wet," Stacy protested, straightening and folding her arms. Classic defense posture, he thought, his eyes trained on her. They both stayed, unmoving for a long time. Finally, Stacy left the room. Greg could hear her in the bedroom, packing the last of her stuff. Another gust blew icy rain into the window, onto him. He gritted his teeth, refused to shiver. He didn't care.
Stacy put her coat on and left the apartment with a box, returning again after a few minutes (and after he got up, thumped to the door and locked it behind her). She kept her coat on and went into the bedroom again, for the last time. She came out with the last box of her possessions perched on her hip. She stopped at the door, her hand on the knob. She stood there, thinking it over, then she went over to him. More rain blew in. She put the box down and went to the window, ignoring his command to "Leave it," and pulled it shut. She then noticed the state of his clothes.
"You're soaked," she said.
"What do you care?" he said.
Stacy stared at him for a long moment. "You think I don't care, Greg?" she said.
"You've got a damned strange way of showing it," he growled.
"I'm giving you what you want..."
"You think I want you to leave?" he flashed.
"If you don't want me to, you have a strange way of showing it," Stacy said. He heard tears in her voice and then she suddenly, simply broke down.
Five years together, practically in each other's laps, through sickness and in health... she might've shed a tear or two, happy or sad, but he had never, ever seen her flat-out bawl the way she was doing now. It was one of the things he'd loved about her, how unlike most women she was in that respect.
Well, she was making up for lost tears now. "You need someone to be here with you," she sniveled. "You haven't completely healed, you haven't been going to rehab...."
"And again I ask, what the fuck is that to you?" he yelled. He struggled to his feet with the help of the much-loathed cane. "You're walking out--"
"I am not going to let you kill me, Greg!" Stacy cried, wiping her face with both hands like a child, defiant. "If I stay with you you'll either kill me or I'll kill myself and I am not going to let that happen."
She stood up to him, feet planted, head tipped back now, to look him in the eye. Oh, she was strong, so strong. He stared down at her, pride and rage the only things holding him together, now. He'd thought he was strong. He wasn't strong enough. Not strong enough to win through to some other kind of grace after fate had left him crippled and in pain, not strong enough not to need her, not to want her. Not strong enough to tell her that he did. His rage screamed inside him, harmonizing with the agony in his mutilated thigh, counterpoint to his fear of what he might become without her.
Don't leave me...
The words whispered in his capacious mind, the cry of a child. Please... But he couldn't bring himself to say them, the only words that might change this ending. Stacy knew the words were in him, but she waited in vain to hear them, counting to ten twice and then a third time, eyes dry now, before she finally gave up and let him go.
She bent over to pick up her box. Greg watched her and felt as if he were on another planet, dispassionately observing this damp, silly, beautiful world full of flawed creatures who lacked the ability to speak from their hearts. "Good-bye, Greg," Stacy said, her voice catching on the last consonant. She walked to the door, through the door, and out of his life leaving him standing there, alone.
He lowered himself into the chair again. No use standing without an audience, he thought. His leg told him, vociferously, that his Vicodin fix was way overdue. He fished the vial out of his pocket, popped the cap and then the pills with a gesture that wasn't quite as smooth as it was going to be with time and practice. He dry-swallowed the pills, replaced the cap, put the vial back in his pocket. He drew a breath as the acrid flavor of relief spread across his tongue. Soon, the screaming would stop (in his leg, anyway) and he would be able to function. The how or why without Stacy he would just have to deal with later. Right now was about getting through the next few minutes of pain until the medicine hit his bloodstream.
The wind spat rain onto the window Stacy had closed; the room was warming up. So, too, was the symphony of relief the drug provided. Greg's eyes slid shut as he listened to the sweet music of the high drown out the song of pain.
His face was wet, but he figured that was because of the rain.
-end