A/N: Okay!!! The long, the awaited, the fantasised and the screamed over…chapter SEVEN !!!!
Dee-de-de-DEEEEEEEE! (imagine trumpets for that bit)
Well, sort of. I hope this is enough of a reply from old Housey-boy. A little shorter than previous chapters and Prinnie might cry again…but all in all I think it turned out pretty well.
And to Prinnie; Tawny is pulling on that commando gear of hers, the black face paint is on and she's strapped a bush to her head to blend in with the scenery. Operation Get-Sam is a go!
Mwaha! Bring on the Huddy.
I have worked out the Huddy luvvin! Yus, I finally know what I'm doing!
Not that I didn't before…um, okay, and just so y'all know there will definitely be action of the horizontal(ish) mambo variety in the next chapter of 'A Little Help From Our Friends' ANOTHER title that I'm going to change.
Oy vey.
Anyways, hit that purple button on the way out.
Chapter 7: A Hard Day's Night
House sat in the car and ran his fingers over the plush leather. It really was a nice ride. He turned to Carmen and shared his opinion with her. She didn't say anything in return but he could see the bright gleam of her smile in the dim interior. The green Jaguar purred as she steered it with competent hands through the light evening traffic. He couldn't help but feel slightly nervous about what he was doing, what he was about to do, but he knew it had to be done. There could be no running away from it.
The twins were partly his. Antonio and Nikolai, his sons, he wouldn't abandon them.
He just hoped he was up to it.
"Do you know what you want to say?"
House jumped as hi sister's lilting accent reached his ears. He had almost forgotten that she was there. He considered it for a moment. "I think so." He stared at his reflection in the dark window of the car overlaid on top of the Jersey scenery beyond the glass. "I hope so." He muttered.
Carmen reached across the space between them and took his cool hand in her warm one. She squeezed his fingers in a comforting gesture before releasing him. She smiled. "You'll be fine. As long as you repress your insane desire to be an absolute arse to everyone you talk to…it should go relatively smoothly."
He grinned, welcoming her barb. "Gee, thanks, my head will never get too big as long as you're around."
"What else are sister's for?"
"Bribing my friends for when I want something?" He asked her in answer and laughed when her mouth dropped open in a shocked silent laugh before she slapped his shoulder without looking at him.
"Cretin." She grumbled good naturedly and slowed the car to a halt. House looked out in vague surprise. The journey seemed to have passed remarkably quickly. He stared at the house for a long moment, his brain whirled for an excuse to stay in the car.
"Greg."
He turned back to Carmen ready to seize any excuse. "Yeah?"
"Get out the damn car."
He nodded once. "Right." He threw open the door and levered himself out of the car. Carmen followed suit and, though he would never admit it, he was glad that she was at his side as they walked up the path. "You don't need to come with me." He pretended to grumble.
"Yes, I do, I don't want you bottling it and hopping over the nearest azalea bush to hobble to freedom as fast as your three legs can carry you." She told him cheerfully and looped her arm through his as she rapped sharply on the door, obviously taking no chances.
The door was swung inward by a laughing Cuddy. She was looking over her shoulder with a throaty chuckle that died on her lips as she turned back to the door and noticed House. She barely even noticed Carmen as her smile slipped from her face and crumpled to the floor. "Oh, uh, hello." She managed after a strangled moment.
"Can I come in?" House asked and Carmen rolled her eyes.
"What are you, a vampire? Of course we can go in. I have god-children to spoil." Carmen announced with her usual blasé façade as she slipped past Cuddy and into the house.
Cuddy finally managed to stand back and let House limp up the step and into the warmly lit foyer. Cuddy stood uncertainly for a moment before remembering her upbringing. "Do you want me to take your jacket?"
House nodded and handed it over after a brief consideration. She took it and moved through the house on silent bare feet to hang it in the closet. House followed and stood uncertainly in the living room. He looked over to Carmen who had already situated herself between Tonio and Niki as they sat on the carpet armed with several sheets of paper and a platoon of crayons. Carmen looked on with approval as she was shown art piece after art piece in an unhesitant display of raw seven year-old talent.
House leant against the doorframe as he watched, with a small trace of envy, the ease with which his sister interacted with her nephews.
Niki was the first to notice him.
Tonio may have been the more scheming of the two but Niki was honest and open and always looking for new sources of mischief and mayhem. His dark tousled head lifted as something caught his attention and his bright blue eyes fell on House with a shout of delight.
"Greg!" Niki bolted up from the floor and launched himself up and over the couch to take a flying leap at House. House caught him with a muffled grunt and staggered back against the wall but Niki didn't appear to mind the stumble and scrambled up so he could look House in the eye.
"Are you going to take us out to dinner?" Niki demanded even as House set him back down on the floor.
"Uh…" House wasn't really sure how to respond. "You haven't eaten yet?"
Niki shook his head as he grabbed House's hand and yanked him towards the living room floor/art gallery. "Nope, mamma has no dinner."
"She must have some food, we had breakfast here this morning." House reasoned and stilled. Had that only been this morning? It seemed like a lifetime ago.
"Not good food." Niki elaborated and crawled up onto House's good leg to sit there and show him what he had spent all afternoon drawing.
House was absorbed in the portrait of the boys, Cuddy, Carmen, Benicio and himself standing in front of the River House when the front door opened to admit another visitor.
"Someone called for a limo?" Benicio strode into the living room and froze, he took in House with a sort of narrow eyed caution and then jumped when his eyes next landed on Carmen. "What are you doing here?" He demanded.
"Can you at least try to be polite?" Cuddy asked on a sigh as she walked back in from the kitchen. She turned to the twins. "Sorry boys, no burgers in the freezer."
The twins groaned then turned pleading looks to their aunt who, predictably, melted.
She sat forward with her hands on her knees. "But there are burgers at McDonalds." She said on a stage whisper.
The boys grinned for an ecstatic moment but then looked crestfallen. "Mamma doesn't like McDonalds." Niki noted a little sullenly, as if this was a crime punishable by tantrum.
"It's a good thing Mamma's not going, isn't it?" Carmen noted as she rolled to her feet and brushed off her suit.
"I'm not?" Cuddy asked from the doorway.
"No. You are staying to sort out boring hospital things with Greg." Carmen noted as she threw small trainer at the twins which they hurriedly pulled on their feet.
"We are?" Greg asked from the couch, still with the family portrait in his hands.
"Yes, this is strictly an aunt, uncle and nephews outing." Carmen told him.
Benicio jerked. "It is?"
Carmen put her hands on her hips and glared at him meaningfully. "Yes. You know, life is so much easier if you just say 'yes, mistress'." She snapped and ushered the twins off to find jackets.
"You're asking me to go to dinner with you?" Benicio asked in a tone that was uncannily like Niki's.
"The whole world is not a film about you. I am telling you that you are going to take your nephews out for their favourite meal. I will just happen to be there." Carmen grated, getting a little impatient. Her plans always worked, she didn't see why people needed to kick up such a fuss every time she tried to implement one.
The boys careened back into the room. Niki having pulled on his jacket upside down in his haste and had to have it rearranged by Carmen. "Behave you two, we'll be back sometime between now and midnight, ciao!" Carmen called over her shoulder as Tonio and Niki raced out towards Benicio's truck and Carmen shoved the taller man out the door in front of her.
Cuddy watched them go with a slightly stunned expression and then turned to look down at House who had swivelled to look at her. "Would you like a drink?" She asked the first thing that popped into her head.
He nodded. "Sure."
She nodded and spun on her heel to walk back through to the kitchen. It wasn't until she'd thrown open the fridge door that she realised she hadn't even asked him what he wanted. She whirled to call to him and yelped as she smacked straight into his chest. He caught her waist to prevent her from falling and gently let her regain her balance. Cuddy fidgeted with her hand at her pearls as she tried to swallow her nervousness. His hand rested at her hip almost absently as he looked down over her shoulder and into the fridge, he turned to her, his face inches from hers.
"I'll have whatever's not chocolate milk." He told her and released her to walk to the other side of the miniscule kitchen and watch her.
Cuddy whirled back to the fridge and tried to ignore the way the skin at her hip tingled where he had touched her through the silk of her shirt. Cuddy found that the only thing she had that wasn't chocolate milk was a bottle of white wine. She lifted it out and raised it to him in silent question. He shrugged an answer and she set about opening the bottle.
They were silent for a few moments and tension crackled between them as he watched hr back. His eyes dropped to the picture in his hand and he ran his fingers over the Technicolor strokes of the waxy crayon that formed the people and the somewhat idyllic scene behind them. "This is pretty good." His voice seemed overly harsh and rolled through the kitchen as rude as a thunderclap. He almost winced.
Cuddy managed not to jump as she turned to him, pouring wine into a glass and let her eyes drop to what he was holding. A large smile spread across her face and the tension seemed to crack a little and float away like little icebergs of nerves.
"That'd be Niki, he loves to draw and paint and sculpt if he can get his hands on anything that can be moulded. When they were four I had to avoid mash potatoes because he would just turn them into castles and faces and whatever else he could think of." She spoke on a rush and handed his wine to him.
He looked at the drawing and then back to her. "What about Tonio?"
"Music. He loves it. Anything and everything, he's a little rhythm fiend. You should hear him on the piano, his hands aren't quite big enough yet but he tries so hard." She stopped abruptly and looked at him before sipping her wine from a glass that trembled slightly.
House turned slightly and set the paper down on the countertop as if it was made of glass and he was afraid of shattering it. He turned back to her and tilted his head. "I've missed a lot."
She pressed her lips together and nodded, dropping her head down slightly. Finding that she couldn't really look at him. "I am sorry. Don't think that I'm not, I…"
He crossed the space between them and lifted her head with one finger under her jaw. His eyes met her wet ones and he cupped her face and swiped away a silent tear with the pad of his thumb. "I'm not trying to attack you. I know you're sorry but…I can see it from your standpoint. I'd like to believe that I would have got my head out of my ass and been able to deal with being a dad along with all the other crap that was going on with me. I'd like to believe that maybe knowing about the boys would have stopped me from…going so far away from other people."
Another tear joined the first and he swept that away as well, he wasn't trying to hurt her, he was trying to tell her.
"I'd like to believe it but I don't think I would have. I think you were right to keep them from me, maybe not for as long as you did, I'd like to think that you wouldn't have hidden them from me forever but I really can understand why you felt you might have had to."
She swallowed hard and looked up at him with a slightly wavering smile. "You always say that everybody lies, I bet you never thought that after a while it would just become easier to lie."
"Would you have ever told me? If they hadn't turned up at the hospital yesterday, would you have eventually told me?" He wanted to know.
Lisa heaved in a shuddering breath. "I don't know. I think so."
He nodded. At least she was being honest with him.
"Have you decided?" She fidgeted with the buttons on the front of his shirt and he could feel the heat of her palm through the layers of material.
"I want to get to know them, I want to find out what their likes and dislikes are, I want to know what they want to be when they grow up…I want to be there for them."
"As what?" She swallowed hard and then forced the question out. "As their father?"
"I don't know if I'm good enough for that." He told her. His voice was harsh as he forced himself to admit it.
Her hands came up and cupped his face. She looked into his eyes and another tear slipped from her eyes to track silver down over her cheek. "You can do it. They're already in love with you, they haven't stopped talking about you all afternoon and if it's the actual parent side of things…I can teach you that."
His hands stroked over the curve of her waist as he listened to her. He looked down as he thought about it. "There's so much I won't be able to do with them. I won't be able to teach them football or lacrosse, I won't be able to run with them, I'm not nice enough, I…"
He stopped when her finger pressed against his lips to silence him. "Greg, they hate football, lacrosse could be one of Jupiter's moons for all they know and they have each other to run with. Think of what you can do with them; you can teach Tonio the piano, you can buy play dough and make a mess with Tonio, you can tell them about motorbikes and take them to Monster-truck rallies, don't think about your limitations because they won't be."
"You really want me to be a part of their lives?" He asked her.
"Of course I do."
"When will I see them? They live out of town with your mother, which is how far away? I don't want to be a weekend Dad, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it all the way."
She blinked, obviously surprised at his vehemence on the subject. "We can sort something out."
"Like what?"
"I don't know, I've been thinking about moving them from my mother's house anyway. She'd getting two old to be tearing after two eight year olds. She should be enjoying her retirement…I don't want them to live here it's too…" She trailed off and waved her hand at the pristine living room.
"Maybe I could get a house that's nearer and you'd be able to get to them easier…"
"Or I could help you look and move in." He looked at her expectantly as she stiffened.
"Uh, what?"
"One big family." He told her on a slight smile, warming up to the idea now that it was planted in the back of his head. That certainly would solve a lot of problems.
Lisa seemed beyond speech and stared up at him, her mouth worked once and then she clicked it shut at the risk of looking like a goldfish. She cleared her throat and then took a huge swallow of wine before continuing. "One big family?" She nearly squeaked.
"Sure. Mamma," he pointed at her, "Dad," he pointed at his own chest, "and I'm sure your brother will eventually work up the courage to ask Carmen out on a date and then they'll get married and have lots of cousins for Tonio and Niki."
"Getting a little ahead of ourselves aren't we?" Lisa was still in a state of shock, he hadn't seriously suggested…she looked up at his face, yup, she guessed he had.
"No, getting ahead of myself would be picking the colours for our bedroom." He noted casually.
This time Lisa did squeak. "Our bedroom?!"
"Yeah, I told you;" He tightened his hold on her waist and pulled her against his chest. "If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it all the way."
Lisa looked up at him with wide blue eyes and wondered what the hell she had just talked herself into.