House sent Foreman and Cameron to test his patient but called Chase into his office.

"What's up?" Chase asked, hands in the pockets of his lab coat.

"I need a prescription for Vicodin," House said without catching his eye.

"What?" Chase asked disbelievingly, staring at him. "What the hell for?"

"My leg is hurting again," he muttered. "The ketamine didn't work."

"So take ibuprofen," the other man suggested. "Don't go back to Vicodin now."

"I have been taking ibuprofen," House said. "It's not enough. It's worse than it was before. I need something stronger."

"So why are you asking me?" Chase asked. "Cuddy wrote your Vicodin prescriptions before."

"She said no. She doesn't want to believe my leg is worse, but it is." He stared his employee down. "I'm not addicted to the stuff anymore, I'm not asking because I'm addicted. I'm asking because I have a medical condition and I need it."

Chase raised his eyebrows. "What if I say no? Are you gonna...fire me if I refuse?"

"That would be illegal," House said.

Chase reached a hand into his pocket, then hesitated. "If Cuddy finds out, I'm fired anyway."

"But you're not gonna tell her," House clarified. "You're not writing this prescription as my employee, you're writing it as my doctor. Which makes it privileged information. So if you're not gonna tell her and I'm not gonna tell her, she's not gonna find out. Write the scrip, Chase."

"House, you're living together," Chase pointed out. "Odds are she's gonna find out at some point."

"I'll take my chances," House said. He held out his hand. "Scrip. Gimme."

Chase sighed and scribbled a prescription down. "Make it last," he warned. "I'm not writing you a new one for another week."

"That's less than five pills a day!" House protested, grabbing the slip from his employee's hand. "This isn't a scraped knee, Chase."

"Like I said, make it last," Chase said. "Don't take your whole day's dose at once. You've been off narcotics for a long time, you'll overdose again if you don't space them out."

House glared at him but didn't object. He slunk past him and went down to the pharmacy.

.

"There you are," Cuddy smiled at House as he came through the door and into their living room.

"I cured my patient," he announced.

"Good," Cuddy said, walking over to him with a flirty smile. "Because for the next twenty minutes I do not want you distracted." And she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, pressing their bodies together and curling her leg around his good one. He dropped his backpack on the floor and kissed back, wishing this would happen every day when he got home from work, and the two quickly made their way to the bedroom where they shed their clothes and made love.

"I'm gonna take a quick shower," Cuddy said, pulling her bra and panties back on for the walk from the bedroom to the bathroom. "If you want you can call for some food as long as you get me something with vegetables in it."

"You're actually giving me permission to get take-out?" he asked, staring at her disbelievingly.

She shrugged. "I don't really feel like cooking."

"Awesome," House said, and she smiled at him before heading to the bathroom. Halfway there, though, she paused, bent down and picked something up off the floor.

"Greg, what's this?" she asked, turning to him and frowning.

House's heart dropped into his stomach. Idiot! He'd left his Vicodin in his pants pocket and hadn't had time to move it because Cuddy had accosted him the second he got home.

"Greg," Cuddy repeated, sitting back down on the bed and looking at House seriously. "How long have you been back on Vicodin?"

He looked away. "A few months now," he muttered.

"What?" Cuddy said. "'Months'? You've been hiding this from me?"

"See, I knew you'd get mad," he pointed out. "I told you the pain was getting worse, you didn't want to listen to me. You thought I went back to using the cane because of how sexy it makes me look."

"What about all the extra-strength ibuprofen scrips I keep writing you?" she asked, furrowing her brow.

"Oh yeah, those. There's this guy in the CVS parking lot that pays me a pretty good price for–"

"–House!"

House rolled his eyes. "Relax, I was kidding. But I need it, Lisa," he said, turning serious. "And I don't take as much as I used to—just one bottle a week. You know before I could go through a bottle in a weekend, but I'm being careful this time." He looked down at his knees. "I don't want to OD again."

"I can't believe you kept this from me!" she said, looking at him in shock. "After what we went through to get you sober, after–"

"–What 'we' went through?" House repeated, staring at her angrily. "I was the one who had to suffer through withdrawal, not you."

"I had to watch you overdose, almost kill yourself, and cut into your trachea with a pocket knife!" Cuddy retorted. "You think that was a walk in the park for me? Greg, I was in love with you, don't you have any idea how scared I was that you weren't gonna make it? I don't want to have to go through that again."

"Well you won't," House insisted. "You're here to babysit me and make sure it doesn't happen again. Besides, like I said, I'm taking less than I used to. It'll be fine."

Cuddy shook her head. "House, no," she objected. "I don't want to take that risk. I want you to go back to rehab and get off the Vicodin."

"No," House insisted. "I need it. And if you fire me I'll fight it because I don't take enough to get high and I do my job just as well on the drugs as off them."

"I'm not going to fire you," Cuddy said. "I'm asking as your girlfriend, please, do this for me."

"Lisa, I tried handling it without Vicodin–"

"–and you did fine!" she interrupted. "You were doing well, Greg. We were doing well."

"It was not fine," House argued. "It didn't do enough for the pain—the only reason I got through it at all was because I had you to distract me."

"But you still have me," Cuddy pointed out. "It can be like before."

House shook his head. "It's not enough. After the ketamine my leg was even worse than before. The ibuprofen barely did anything last time, it's not doing anything now. Lisa, I need it."

"Greg, I don't want you on narcotics!"

"Well that's how I come!" he shouted back at her. "You want me, you get me and my Vicodin. I need it. If you're gonna break up with me over it then do it already!"

"I wasn't gonna break up with you!" she said, glaring at him.

"Then this discussion is over," he said, turning away from her. "Go take your shower. I'll order some pizza."

.

Cuddy was sitting on the sofa with a faraway look in her eyes. House knew she wanted to talk to him, and he knew what she wanted to talk to him about, but he wasn't gonna ask her about it. She would bring it up if she wanted to bring it up. Or, if he was lucky, she would forget about it. Not likely.

"Greg..." she said slowly, still staring into space.

"Yeah?"

Sighing, she turned to him. "I really wish you would reconsider going off the Vicodin."

House was surprised. "The Vicodin fight again? Yeah, it's been awhile since we've had it, but I thought you were gonna ask me how I felt about adopting a baby."

She stared at him. "How did you...?"

House rolled his eyes. "I saw the way you were staring at the little pooping bundle that killed my patient. You're forty-two—if you're gonna be a mommy, you need to do it soon or you won't have long to know your grandchildren. My question is, why start a baby conversation with a Vicodin argument?"

Cuddy sighed. "I have been thinking about a baby for awhile, but Greg..." she looked at him. "I don't think I want to raise a child in a household where my boyfriend is addicted to Vicodin."

"It's not like I'm shooting up heroin, Lise," he said, glaring at her. "If you need me to watch it every once-in-a-while or drive it to soccer practice, you don't have to worry about me being too stoned to care for it. If you want to have a baby, it's your life."

"But you would be a big part of its life," Cuddy pointed out. "Even if you don't become a legal guardian with me, you'll be a father figure to it just by being my boyfriend, by living here. But I don't want to set the example that we just solve all our problems by taking drugs."

"Lisa, we're doctors!" House said, rolling his eyes. "How many drugs do we prescribe people every day? And like I said, it's not like it's heroin. I have a medical condition and I take medicine for it, just like the majority of the human population. How is that setting a bad example for your kid?"

"Because unlike the majority of the human population that takes medicine on a controlled schedule, you just randomly pop Vicodin whenever you feel like it. You...you're practically abusing the drug, Greg. That's the example I don't want to set."

"And if I get off Vicodin you think I'm only gonna take ibuprofen when I wake up in the morning? What difference does it make, Lisa? It's not like I'm gonna announce to the kid what I'm taking and what it does. It'll be years before it's even old enough to know the difference between Vicodin and ibuprofen—and it's not like it'll be any of the kid's business what medicine I take."

"You know what, just forget it, Greg," Cuddy scoffed, turning away. "Forget I even brought it up. You know, I saved your life, but you won't even consider doing something that would help bring more meaning to mine."