A/N: Here's the second chapter of Slip. This story is a bit on the angsty side, as some of you may have noticed in the first chapter, but I don't plan on straying too far from my usual easy-going fluff. Reviews are appreciated!
The house felt surprisingly empty when Rachel woke up around nine A.M. It was quiet, the living room and kitchen were empty. There wasn't even the scent of freshly made coffee that was almost always present in their household. It felt cold, and while the fresh layer of snow outside certainly contributed, it was the absence of her mother's voice or House's music that accentuated it. Rachel migrated towards the entryway. She was just noticing all three sets of car keys hanging on the hook near the front door when she heard quiet murmurs in her mom and House's bedroom.
House. He was so out of it last night. There were just a few potential reasons for his behavior that she could think of.
First might've been his leg. That was least likely, in Rachel's opinion. She'd seen him in severe pain multiple times before, and it usually made him more alert and coherent, not less, like his nervous system was turned on to high alert. Of course, at its most severe the pain could render him incoherent. In those cases, though, just standing upright even with assistance was next to impossible. While his leg probably complicated things last night, that wasn't the main problem.
The second option was exhaustion. She knew House sometimes stayed at the hospital for multiple days at a time. It happened about once per month throughout Rachel's childhood, and she was used to him staggering through the front door in the middle of a Sunday or being passed out in bed on a weekday afternoon after the end of a long case. As of yesterday evening, House had been at the hospital for nearly thirty hours straight...and she knew exhaustion sometimes made her a little loopy...so maybe that had been it?
Overall, though, Rachel was pretty sure he'd been drunk. In her experience, House was likely to drink for the taste: a glass of wine with dinner, a beer or two during a football game, a few fingers of whiskey after dinner. She was sure he also probably drank to get a good buzz, from time to time: a Friday night, after a long case, when he was playing poker with Wilson, Chase, and Foreman. Still, she'd never seen him get so drunk that he couldn't stay upright. But between the physical instability and the grogginess, both of which closely resembled her own experience with inebriation, alcohol seemed the most logical conclusion.
Now standing at the master bedroom door, Rachel thought about knocking. She was just raising her fist when she heard her mom's voice from the other side.
"Where did you get them?"
"Clinic patient."
"You stole them?"
"He stole them from...parents'...cabinet….gonna get rid of them...team's patient crashed. Had them in my coat pocket…" If House had finished his sentence, Rachel couldn't hear it.
"It's okay. It's okay," her mother said so softly that the words were barely audible at all.
Rachel was frozen at the door as she considered her parents' word choice. What 'them' were they referring to? Still at the door, it hit suddenly hit her.
House may have been exhausted last night, but he hadn't been drunk and his leg certainly hadn't been hurting.
House had been high.
She believed House when he said that he had intended to dispose of the Oxycodone. Fifteen or twenty years ago, she wouldn't have. She would have been hesitant ten years ago. But the shame, fear, and confusion she saw in his eyes...no, he wasn't lying, and this hadn't been premeditated.
It was just a slip.
They had struggled to get him from the couch to the bed while the excessive dose of the narcotic continued to filter through his system. He was lightheaded and woozy, unstable on all fronts. Cuddy had been partially anticipating Rachel to peek out from her bedroom when they took one particularly hard stumble into the hallway wall. She hadn't, though, and they'd managed to get back to the master bedroom without injury or intervention.
Cuddy now sat on the edge of the mattress, one leg tucked under her with her body facing the headboard. House was supine to her right with his head resting on his pillow.
"How are you feeling?" She asked. Her index finger traced invisible designs on the top of his weathered hand. His skin was rough and dry from the harsh winter cold.
"Like I fucked up," he replied. The honesty in his voice made her chest ache. "I fucked up."
"But you haven't relapsed," she assured them both. He may have fucked up, but not catastrophically enough to constitute a relapse. "You slipped."
From firsthand experience and their knowledge as medical professionals, Cuddy knew they could both differentiate between a slip and a relapse.
Before now, he'd slipped twice and had relapsed just once. Rachel had been eight when he'd relapsed. The ultimate trigger had been stress, which had resulted from a mix of his mother's sudden death, being Rachel's primary caretaker while Cuddy was at a conference, and work. Over the course of a few days, he'd steadily reverted back into his old habits, going so far as conning a Vicodin scrip out of a clinic in Trenton. Despite valiant and temporarily successful attempts to hide his actions, Cuddy had caught him, and even though things got significantly worse before they got better, he was clean after a 30-day stint in rehab.
The difference between the couple, small slips and his single relapse was multifaceted. However, Cuddy thought it could be boiled down to the concept of early intervention. If House hadn't allowed himself to be caught after those slips, those isolated incidents could've easily transformed into full blown relapses. If House hadn't passed out on the living room couch with a bottle of Oxy last night, Cuddy thought, then this might not just be a slip. But he had passed out on the couch, whether he'd meant to or not. Now that she knew, they could deal with it together. They could stop it from becoming more than just a slip, from becoming a relapse.
It wasn't a relapse, Cuddy insisted. It was a slip. Just a slip. She was right, and House knew that. But he couldn't bring himself to verbally agree. After all, the only reason they could say that it was just a slip was because he'd sabotaged his own chance to turn it into anything more.
He hadn't thought about using in a long time. He'd been sober for ten years, save for the one slip that one time that everyone agreed didn't count against him. He'd been on a rotating cocktail of antidepressants, anxiolytics, muscle relaxants, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories for ten years. He'd been making regular visits to the three medical professionals who prescribed those medications, too. He had a damned narcotics anonymous sponsor, for Christ's sake. He and Cuddy bickered at work and had sex at home; he helped raise Rachel, went to soccer and lacrosse games, taught her to cook; he hung out with Wilson nearly every Thursday; he trained his fellows, ran his department, and gave periodic lectures at the medical school. His leg still hurt and his screwed up psyche hadn't magically disappeared, but he was dealing.
At least, he had been dealing until that stupid clinic patient showed up with that stupid bottle of stupid Oxy and he was stupid enough to convince himself that he could put it in his pocket until he had a chance to get rid of it. He had 'forgotten' about the Oxy until the case was solved, when the exhaustion of the past twenty-odd hours hit him like a tidal wave. Not even the buzz of a freshly-solved case had been enough to soothe the pounding in his head, the grit in his eyes, or the aching and burning and tightening in his leg. That's when he felt the cylindrical vial pressed against his ribcage. He was instantly catapulted back to nearly twenty years ago, popping the top off the bottle and knocking two capsules back like past two decades had meant nothing. Goddamn, had he been stupid. So, so stupid.
Worse still, was that once he started, he hadn't wanted to stop. He wasn't thinking about Cuddy, or Rachel, or the life he had built with and around them. He wasn't thinking about his sobriety. All he thought about was the drugs, and how good it felt to feel nothing at all.
He couldn't say any of that to her, though. Not right now. He simply allowed his gaze to find Cuddy's. He cradled her hand in his own. She thought it was just a slip, and maybe that would be enough.