Okies kids, I'm not sure about this chapter at all, but Scarlett seemed to like it, so here we are. It was all written in about two hours so please excuse any spelling and/or grammar mistakes and gimme some nice reviews to make up for it!!
Uh, I have a headache from writing this in the dark but at least now it's done and hopefully this should be the last of those sticky chapters that have been a bother to write.
Fingers crossed.
Oh, and pick which story you want updated next. I'm entirely open to suggestions.
Chapter 9: Monday Morning
House stared down at Katy, sprawled in her designated drawer. He had left the crib at Cuddy's. She slept peacefully, her little chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm. House sat on the edge of his bed, chin propped on his cane, his mind tumbling over and over as he watched her. It was so strange, such a little tiny…thing, that had plopped into his life and sent waves out like a rock in a pond. So small, so innocent looking, but the comparative tranquillity had been destroyed. Shockwaves bleeding out and slapping to the distant shores. The fish startled and the ecosystem rocked off balance. His little world, his habitat invaded and usurped by a creature that weighed eighteen pounds.
He scowled at her. Little brat. She slept on blissfully unaware.
He was not cut out for this. Domesticity was not his thing. He was a man of his own habits and wiles. A hermit in his cave thank-you-very-much. He liked his solitude and his vices. Liked his whisky and his piano, not baby rattles and early motor-skills development toys. This last weekend had been pretend, make-believe, a fantasy. He was not cut out for the real thing. He did not want the real thing.
Didn't care for it.
Didn't care for her.
He was free range, Goddamnit.
He was not father material.
House sighed and sat down on the end of his bed. That was what it really came down too, after all. He flipped his cane from hand to hand idly and watched the child sleep on blissfully unawares. He was not fit for the domestic life simply because he was too wild for it. He was too old and too set in his ways to go changing now and that was what really grated on him. Katy herself, did not expect it, at least not now, but she would. Others would too. He would have to change to be a 'suitable' father. He would have to be politer, learn social graces, teach her manners…observe the niceties in life.
There was all that and then there was the highly unnerving realisation that the Great Gregory House had come up against something that he wasn't entirely sure that he could do by himself.
And then there was the stupid great bombshell of realising he was in the L-word with his boss. His highly attractive and completely out of reach boss. She was pretty much perfect for him because she was so imperfect herself. Her guilt, his scars, his rough edges to her smooth ones. He knew they were good together, knew they would be fantastic together in bed, both of them far too highly sexed to be anything but…but she was another one that always wanted him to abide by the rules. To hunker down and work. The same basic lesson that he had been getting since he was old enough to misbehave and understand that while other kids might have been given the belt on occasion for misbehaving, none of them were made to sleep in the yard, or take ice baths or force feed him chocolate cake until he was so sick with it his mother had wanted to take him to the emergency room. House's grip tightened on his cane until his knuckles cracked and whitened. He swallowed hard and scrubbed a hand over his stubble roughened jaw.
He might not want to follow the rules, call it a personality defect, chronic immaturity or even a Peter Pan complex but he knew he never – ever – wanted to become his father and the simplest way to do that was to avoid parenthood altogether.
Then there was always the niggling feeling that he wanted to prove his father wrong. Again, probably hopelessly childish and not the noblest of intentions but it would keep Katy out of a home…which was not what he wanted for her despite his claims to the contrary.
Which led him back to the start of his problem, he didn't think he could do it.
House snarled low in his throat and thumped his head against the crook of his cane. He was getting nowhere with this. He toppled back on his bed and snagged the vicodin bottle from the nightstand, he shook two from the orange vial and froze in the action of swallowing them both. With a sigh, he plunked one of them back into the bottle and settled for just the one. Last thing he needed was to sleep through Katy falling to the floor on her head.
House managed to convince himself that was a practical thought and not a paternal one. He shimmied up the bed and punched the pillows into a satisfying carnage before mashing his face against them in a vague attempt at comfort. He couldn't even drink himself into a stupor because he had the small and annoying to look after as well as himself.
Another black mark against her.
House sighed and tried to sleep a little harder.
He would worry about it in the morning.
Sinister Scribe
Cuddy sat in her office, stared at her paper work and tried to concentrate.
As with the previous fifty seven attempts in as many seconds, it failed miserably. She tapped the end of her pen against the blotter on her desk and stared morosely at the spreadsheet in front of her. Her hangover pounded cheerfully behind her eyes, her hair seemed to be screaming, her skin must have shrunk in the shower this morning because it was decidedly too small but aside from that, she was just peachy keen. Cuddy rubbed at her temples and wondered if eating an entire bottle of aspirin would make her feel better or worse.
Not that she could feel much worse.
Not after Paloma and Carmen had dragged the entire sordid tale of her Thanks Giving weekend with House out of her. Complete with commentary on That Kiss in the garage, the perfect manners in front of her father, how adorable the picture of House with Katy on her cell phone was and, of course, the whole shower scene that still had her squirming in her chair and a flush scoring high over her cheeks. Cuddy searched in vain for another train of thought but that station was devoid of life. The only image she could conjure with any great clarity was of House holding Katy on his lap. That small smile on his face or the look of fierce scrutiny when the tiny child did something he didn't expect or hadn't given her credit for.
Cuddy's heart ached at the thought of the tiny infant being packed off to social services this morning but she had done all she could. She would have taken her herself but there was no way that the social services were going to give her a child, not a single woman nearing forty that worked nearly a hundred hours a week. Cuddy propped her chin on her hand and stared out at the bright sunshine outside. It was watery fall sunshine that turned copper through the red leaves of Princeton-Plainsboro's mascot trees. It was a nice morning. Good for running in, though she had refrained from that given how upset her stomach still was at her from the night before.
Cuddy couldn't help but feel it should be raining though.
Sinister Scribe
"Uuuuuhh…Mr House, you're next."
House looked up as the young harried looking woman called his name and then double checked the clipboard in front of her.
"Seriously? You're named after a form of architecture. Are your cousins Bungalow?" House levered himself to his feet and glared at her. "Cathedral?" She tried again with a slightly mischevious smile and then shrugged it off when his sense of humour didn't rise to the occasion. "Whatever, honey, I'm not any more pleased about being here on a Monday morning than you are. Follow me to the bat-cave. My name is Angelina St Croix, I'll be your social worker this morning. " She pronounced everything with a low southern drawl that reminded House immediately of how Stacy had always tried to hammer it out of her accent. She pronounced her name in the original bayou fashion of 'San Kwra' She swept an arm down the hallway and snagged the BBOBT and sashayed in front of him.
She was tiny, four feet eleven max, wild brown hair tied haphazardly in a knot on top of her head. She had wide deep brown eyes set in an elfin featured face. Her smile was so insidiously infectious that House didn't realise how virulent until he found himself giving a half-smirk back to her. Her grin widened at the triumph. She swept into one of the tiny cupboards masquerading as an office in the well-used red brick building that was the New Jersey Department of Child Services Headquarters and dropped the baby-bag with a flick of her wrist before swishing around her paperwork laden desk with a flick of her long dark skirt.
"Riiiiight, House, House, Hooouuuussee…there you are!" She whipped the pertinent file out of the heavily leaning tower on her desk and watched it wide eyed for a second when it toppled ominously, only to breathe a sigh of relief when the quo was once more status. Dropping into her chair on the other side of the desk, she gestured for him to do the same and pulled one of the biro pens from the knot of hair on top of her head and bit it between her teeth as she scanned the papers quickly.
House, for his part, sat down with Katy and quieted the infant as best he could. It was fairly obvious that she was not enamoured with being in the Child Services building but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about that.
"So, says here that you've been made legal guardian of Katherine here…"
"Katy."
"What?" Angelina looked up at him and raised one eyebrow over faded dollar bill green eyes.
"Her name is Katy." House muttered. He hadn't meant to say anything and looked around the office when Angelina subjected him to an intense scrutiny. He found himself staring at photographs all over one wall with Angelina surrounded by various kids at various family holidays. She was covered in face paint in one, done to look like a vibrant butterfly around her eyes and the other had her smeared in what looked to be a mixture of whipped cream and flour, with the little urchins scattered around her not much better off. All of them looked like they'd had a damn good time getting that mucky though.
"Right, and you want to…put Katy up for adoption, it says here." Angelina pursed her lips and flipped through the file. "Your Katy's only legal guardian now that her parents are dead and you're…giving her away."
"I'm not suitable parent material." House said slowly to her. Sounded uncomfortably like he was explaining himself to her. maybe even defending himself.
"Yeah, your 'rap sheet' with the good Detective Tritter." Her lips twisted wryly.
"You've met him?" House's brows raised despite himself. There was something disarming about Angelina. Something so completely harmless that you couldn't help but talk to her. House realised he was probably being manipulated by her in some way to get this response from him but he'd be damned if he could actually figure out how she was doing it.
"Oh yeah, guy likes to pick up my kids and arrest them now before they can do anything really serious. Because that way they obviously won't be tarred with the criminal brush and judged for the rest of their lives at a glance. Yes. Detective Tritter and I are acquainted." Angelina flipped the file shut with a trifle more force than was necessary and looked up at House.
"Here's how this works. You sign Katy over to us and she'll be placed in a crèche home until suitable foster parents can be found. She's a cute baby and still young enough to grow up without knowing who her real mommy and daddy are so chances are good that she'll be shipped off to the next adoptive home and raised there like the cute little button she is."
"What if she's not?" Despite strict orders for nonchalance, House's mouth mutinied and demanded what his mind was warning him against.
"What if she's not what?"
"Adopted."
"Then she'll be a charge of the state until she's eighteen. The chances of her staying in the same home for more than one year at a time are slim at best. She'll be shunted around like so much meat until her self esteem puts her at somewhere just above animal vomit and refuse and then she'll probably run away before she reaches the age of eighteen. Again, the chances are that she won't be able to find a legal job and since she's pretty now she'll be pretty later. I imagine she'll be quite the popular one on her street corner." Angelina sat forward leaning her elbows on the desk and glared. Not at House but at the future she saw for the child in his arms. House was caught somewhere between anger and admiration for the sheer force of Angelina's personality. He was prevented from saying anything by her next words though.
"You don't want to take her, which makes me wonder why. You're injured, sure, but it obviously doesn't affect your job judging by the fact you're wearing a hundred dollars worth of sneakers alone so, my guess is, you're either an abused child yourself or you just don't want to grow up." She watched him for half a moment, judging his expression. "Or quite possibly both." She reached into the drawer and filed out some papers, double checking them and jotting down a few details before sliding them across the desk at him.
"It's not as easy as it sounds…" House began and stopped when her thousand degree glare lanced him.
"Sign the papers or get out of my office. Sounds pretty simple to me. You either get some stones or you get gone. Just quit wasting mine and Katy's time with your theatrics though." She snapped at him and returned to her filing. Looking over the file of the next poor sap she was about to bully into parenthood obviously.
Katy whimpered and squirmed in his hold and it took him a moment to quiet her by fishing her bear out of her bag for her. He bounced her a moment on his good leg and then slid the papers across the desk to lie in front of him. He picked up the pen and stared at the dotted line with the red arrow next to it, pointing jauntily to where he was going to sign one little girl's life away.
House flexed his hand and put pen to paper to sign.
Sinister Scribe
"Hey, you okay?"
Cuddy looked up from her morose staring out the window and blinked a little guiltily at Wilson standing over her.
"I'm fine." She answered automatically. They both knew she didn't mean it but then, they both knew her well enough to leave the subject alone too.
"Here, I bring goodies." Wilson sat opposite her and opened a bag from the nearest deli. He passed her a sandwich a mineral water and then a large tub of oh-good-God chocolate mousse! Cuddy abandoned any pretence of a healthy meal and chowed down immediately on the mousse. She may have felt sorry for Katy but there was also a healthy helping of self-pity in there too.
"That bad, huh?" Wilson wondered aloud and ate his own sandwich with impeccable manners.
"Worse." Cuddy lapped the back of the spoon and dug for more. It tasted heavenly and she was in no mood to stop any time soon. Wilson looked like he planned on saying something to that but he was stopped by the sharp rapping on the door from Brenda. They both turned and Cuddy nodded for Brenda to enter.
"Doctor Cuddy, it's Doctor House, he says that…"
"I'll be right there." Cuddy sighed tiredly and got to her feet. She licked her lips, savouring the most of the chocolate she could and strode out into the clinic. She had wanted to put off seeing him today for as long as possible but she supposed what she wanted and what House did were quite often two very different things. She saw him hovering by exam room one and walked over to him, planting her hands on her hips she made her demand with as much cool and calm as a woman who constantly pictured him naked and, ahem, ready for her, could.
"What is it, House?"
"Well, I was just wondering," he turned to her on his good leg, swinging the baby carrier around with him. "Do I get time off clinic for daddy-time?"
Cuddy's jaw dropped open on a gape that rapidly reformed itself into a smile. Katy waved a tiny fist at her and babbled happily.
"You're keeping her?" Cuddy looked like he'd just offered to personally go out and do a year's worth of schmoosing of donors for her and be good at it too.
"Well, there are conditions but…"
"Who the hell cares?!" Cuddy replied jauntily and did something neither of them expected. She threw her arms around his neck, hugged him tightly and kissed him soundly on the cheek.
In front of the entire clinic.
