Sons and Lovers

Chapter 4

"You look different." The non-sequitor failed to serve its intended purpose, which was to deflect from the question at hand.

"No way! When are they starting? Don't think you can distract me by changing the subject."

"But you do. Look different. Something….I don't know…softer… Anyway, probably nothing. Just my imagination. September first, by the way." She should be accustomed at this point to the whiplash-inducing zigzag of their conversations.

"Why not next week? I can use them in the clinic; you know that."

"Yeah, by personal experience. You never heard of summer vacations?"

"Maybe when I was 14…" She sighed. "I want them starting within the month. By August 1st at the latest. Until then, you get to do their clinic hours." Cuddy would not allow him to do this. Not now. She walked out of House's office, not waiting for his reply. He followed.

"You can't make me… I…" House called, trying to catch up to Cuddy.

"What?" She stopped suddenly and wheeled on him, her glare daring him to say another word about it. "We're done, House. With this," she added carefully and with less venom: "We need to talk."

"I thought we were finished talking." Cuddy glanced up and down the corridor to assure herself that they weren't attracting attention.

She gestured first toward House and then herself. "About this," she half-whispered.

"What about this? Which this? I'm confused." He wasn't, but he was sure Cuddy was heading in that direction herself. He smiled at the wordplay, but the words "we need to talk" were laden with all sorts of things—and very few of them good.

Cuddy surveyed the corridor a second time. They were still alone. "About us." There it was; the other half of: "we've got to talk." And now he was quite certain that there was nothing good about the nature of this "talk" they had to have.

"Fine."

"Fine. Can you come to my place?" The request sounded too formal. Of course he could come to her place. Like he often did. Usually it was "my place or yours?" Or "lets go to my place because I have the leftover pizza in my refrigerator from last night." Which made this all the more interesting since last night's leftovers were in his refrigerator. Cuddy wanted to talk--and she wanted home field advantage.

House sighed. "Fine." House returned to his office, curious, but with an unmistakable sense of impending disaster lingering, and doing back flips in his gut. He tried to immerse himself in the journal article he was preparing for the New England Journal of Medicine. Discovering the third Ostium in Marina had been the key to curing her: an extremely rare heart defect, and he had called it—eventually. House had been asked to write up the case for the prestigious journal. It would be the fifth paper he had published in the Journal, but the first in many, many years.

He always hated writing this sort of article. Once a case was solved; it was solved. No need to dwell on it; just file for future use. But even House understood the value to other doctors of this discovery, and normally he would have had one of the fellows submit it for peer review. But…oops…no fellows. He sighed, studying Marina's scans, as his eyes wandered over to the stack of pain management monographs and papers that sat unread on his credenza. They would have to wait.

House was startled as his office door opened. "I'm thinking of asking Cuddy out again. I got tickets to Coast of Utopia. I know you won't want to go. So…" Wilson mile-a-minute determination brought an amused, but wary, smile to House's face.

"Don't you believe in knocking? And that would be a 'no.' Bad idea." House made an effort to keep his voice even.

"Why? It's not like she's…"

"Are you having memory problems? You've been there, remember? Broadway; the not-Hockney exhibit? No. If you have an itch to scratch, do it with some poor unsuspecting nurse. She'll never know what hit her. You are NOT doing it with Cuddy. Anyway, if she was interested, you two would have already walked down the aisle, begun a little Wilson and YOU would have filed divorce papers. So, yeah. That would be a big fat 'no'." House's tone was adamant. Although, he thought he had done a creditable job of keeping the desperation out of it.

"My memory is fine, hence the 'again' in my initial statement. And since when are you such an expert?"

"I just know. I am a keen observer of the human condition. Especially yours. I thought you knew that."

"Yeah. That genius thingy. I forgot," Wilson replied dismissively. "But I didn't know your diagnostic skills extended to relationships. I mean…because you're so accomplished yourself and all…"

"Fine, then. Ask her. She'll say no, and then you'll get that wounded puppy look that we both know is as fake as Julie's boobs were …and Cuddy'll go out with you, even though it's the last thing she wants to do because she'll feel guilty…and then you'll both regret it, and…."

"Enough. You watch too many soaps."

"I'm trying to cut down. And anyway, they're educational. Where do you think I got my exquisitely keen knowledge of the human condition…?" Wilson waved his arm dismissively towards House, exiting the office as his pager went off. House stared ahead for several minutes after Wilson's departure, thinking that was the last thing he needed right now. Fucking great. Cuddy was going to end it tonight with him, and there was Wilson, waiting in the wings with theatre tickets, a BMW, probably a diamond ring…and a sound body, none of which House had to offer.

And of course there was that dream thing. For the first time in a year he wasn't battling some internal crisis or another; and then there was Cuddy, a sudden and welcome adjunct to the fragile calm of his life these days. And maybe he simply didn't deserve it: the taste of happiness; the whiff of normalcy.

His father had told him that more than enough times, for as many years as he could remember... "You're not normal." "Why can't you be like other kids?" "You only know how to mope around; you've got no fucking friends." "Think you're too good for them? Well you're wrong. You don't deserve THEM. They're too good for you. They always will be." "You're a fucking misfit." House closed his eyes against the barrage of words thundering off the recesses of his mind and hitting true and hard like well-placed blows.

House talked a good game, he knew. Fooled the world with his whizbang brilliance: fucking shell game. That's all it was. That's all it will be; Cuddy would be better off, because when it came down to it, House would fail her. Inevitably.

House probed behind the edges of the dreams, examining the reality behind them. His parents seemed normal, typical marine officer family folk. Had things really been as bad as his dreams suggested to his sleeping mind; and that he recalled so vividly when awakened from them? Was anything his father did to him really that undeserved? Discipline was part of the routine, wasn't it, back in those days?

Maybe things had not been so bad, after all. They traveled; House had seen more of the world by age 17 than most adults see in a lifetime. It couldn't have been that bad if… House was startled from quiet consideration of the facts by the echo of memory: sounds and images coming from somewhere in the back reaches of his mind. The sound of metal hitting flesh was what startled him and House's stomach clenched to it. He retched at the realism of it; he could almost feel it. His father's voice cut through the sound: "You think you're too big to be punished? Too old? Well think again you useless…" House blinked away the image, shuddering as he shook it off, finally coming back to himself.

House dropped his head into his hands until the sick feeling passed, feeling time slip by, until he felt able to stand. House sighed deeply, dreading the evening to come, but finding no way out of it. He gathered his things and headed off to Cuddy's.