Sorry that this took an extra week to finish. I got sick and just couldn't focus.
In my defense, it is a rather long chapter. Also I would like to encourage suggestions/requests for new H/C stories, and just to make friends. Feel free and comment/pm with me any.
I hope you enjoy this ending. Please let me know what think. Thanks for reading!
Alternate Ending: Remember, this picks up at the end of Chapter 8
--.--.--.--.--.--.--
X. Lies, Love and Presence without Pain
One thought, two souls, three hearts, one pulse.
The defibrillator paddles fall but the metallic heat rises, scalding Houses hands. Panicked, his fingers find and adjust the fetal monitor. Fearing nothing more than this loss, with the motion ofhis wrists there's a sinking regret, a prophetic despair. All he can think is 'I'm sorry (for everything)'
And then, as if the apology recompenses it all, each mistake all the blunders of his life, it returns- an algorithm.
A heartbeat. A soul.
His baby boy.
Keeping his mother alive as much as she's keeping him alive.
House finally breathes, realizing he hasn't since the start of this resuscitation- of himself, some previously pulseless, long-buried part of an ordinary man. The rise and fall of Cuddy's chest, the beating heart in her belly instills in him the most relief he's ever felt. The electricity is still stinging the tips of his fingers when he sits, never taking his eyes off the monitors.
a dream and a memory
For a long time Cuddy sleeps still, the fever slowly recessing.
Lost, she is somewhere between a memory and a dream. On a long, level, isolated stretch of the whitest sand, a beach she stands alone.
It is a midsummer's dusk and nowhere near New Jersey. Where the sun has set clouds have conquered, spreading a solemn purple with a furnace flame at one point along a hillside peak extending high and wide, soft and still softer over half of heaven. The east is a fine deep blue with a rising, solitary star - the alabaster moon still beneath the horizon. This woman strides in blissful silence apart from the lapping of the waters on the shore.
A portrait of paradise before her.
Ravens and seagulls push each other inward and outward above the coast, the flap of their wings synchronous with each hypnotic crash of waves. A wistful waft, the ominous ocean breeze passes her body, covered only in the sheerest white dress, stealing what warmth the gradual set of the sun has not already. Longing for protection she seeks and finds herself between two dunes. The sea's salty breath calms and she stoops to pick up a handful of sand, but can't hold onto it. As the grains run between her fingers, returning to their home, perishing so does time itself. It reverses somehow, she is young. She is not pregnant. She is somebody completely different. Standing she sees a sharp shadow of a man's frame from behind her. But when she turns no man is there.
Only a rainbow.
A gentle shower, the sky's tears wash her face one drop by one until her hair is damp, her eyes the same shining cerulean as the sea, her smile infallible. An entire spectrum before her, the brilliance, the saturation is tempera on a translucent canvas. Violet, indigo, emerald. Yellow, cyan, magenta. The refraction of this arch is a prismatic epiphany.
Twilight's rainbow defies logic. Eventide is near, the rays of light needed to create such an ephemeral aesthetic are diminishing, but here it remains before her eyes. It is an intangible but reassuring companion. And she gazes at it, knowing somehow it is hers and hers alone, until stars spot the dimming horizon.
With a cool gust she blinks and a hand takes hers. And though she can't turn away from the rainbow, she knows that it's House. He stands at a distance, just bent fingers and bone, a peripheral shadow. But his presence brings comfort, an inspirational union of imagination and reality, and she realizes that they've created this rainbow together, somehow against odds and reason, but hardly by accident.
In dreams the beach is the meeting place of two worlds, land and sea, which symbolizes the conscious and unconscious realms of the human psyche. But here it is more. More than a memory, more than a dream- a marriage of three worlds.
Cuddy is acknowledging something in her sleep, having a strange communion with her soul. Making a decision, a final wish, recognizing a long denied desire. She is committing to the pursuit of happiness.
House is not at her side the entire time. Watching her sleep would make his role in this overtly obvious. He wanders the halls when those who might suspect are around, not wanting to wait in his office, not wanting anybody to know he hasn't left since this all started.
In the middle of one night, when it's so quiet even the nurses seem sedated, and no other doctors are in sight, he slips into her room, turns the TV on and tells the baby how he almost died because his mother can't cook.
And falls asleep for the first time in days, at her side.
Morning brings the rising altercation of the season through a small window and the sun shines change on four closed eyes. Pale tiny toes are the first thing he sees and reaches to pull the blanket down and cover her cold feet. Turning his head he watches Cuddy breathe, so close, so beautiful, so alive and fast asleep. House can't take his eyes off her, he can't even blink, and though the hall is congested- they will have an audience, he leans in and kisses her softly on the lips. It is brief and warm and with his eyes closed he can pretend that it matters. Then he stands, picks up her chart, and feigns reading it while staring out the window, knowing she doesn't want him here, certain this is not the happy ending to some fractured fairy tale.
Briar Rose awakens, not from the kiss, but rather a kick. In the ribs and from her son. She sees House brooding in the early dawn, leaning on the window seal in lieu of his cane, he looks miserable, worried, lost. When he turns to see her awake they share a quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife, best friends, in this first moment of refuge from the recent weariness, the omniscient danger.
"What's wrong?
Why am I here?"
House turns around trying to conceal the elation he feels hearing the sound of her voice.
"You have Listeriosis."
"No...
Is the baby?"
"Fetus is fine."
A sigh of relief parts both of their mouths. House sits because the pain in his leg is interrupting the momentary defeat of his misery, and pulls out his flashlight to examine her pupils, to see her faultless sapphire eyes wide open and looking back at him.
"How do you feel?"
"I have a headache."
"Yeah, meningitis does that."
"How long have I been here?"
"Few days."
As her eyes adjust from the miniscule but blinding light, Cuddy sees the dark circles under his eyes, the week's worth of beard, and realizes he's been here the entire time. Consumed by gratitude, she conceals it,
"What made you think Listeria?
My only symptoms were bleeding and a fever."
"Process of elimination.
We initially approached it as a threatened miscarriage, my team were all blaming your 'donor.' "
"Oh God, do they know?"
"No."
A beat.
"Not yet," under his breath.
He puts the flashlight in a pocket, leans away, and pretends he's not in love with her.
"I didn't know about the chemical pregnancy.
But that miscarriage shouldn't matter. We've run enough tests, there is absolutely nothing else wrong with you. You're both responding well to antibiotics and the infection should be gone before he's born..."
There's a smugness about the declaration of his victory, House is becoming House again.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me.
You got meningitis and endocarditis because I didn't diagnose you soon enough.
You almost died because of me."
Grateful eyes tell him 'almost' doesn't matter.
"Oh, and I got you pregnant.
Blame me, don't thank me."
The poignancy of the remark leaves them both mute, and struggling to ignore how close they came to complete devastation. Denying that they were taking it all for granted. House turns her blanket down, lifts the hospital gown a little, and on an impulse runs a hand across her stomach, leaving it rest a few seconds longer than he intended.
"What are you doing?"
He blinks, trying to seem insensitive.
"Fondling a defenseless pregnant woman, obviously.
It's a hobby I picked up while you were unconscious."
He reaches for the ultrasound wand and drops a wad of lubricant from the tube onto her belly.
"House," she says trying to not be warmed by the familiar touch.
"You're right, I'll close the curtains, put on some mood music."
He turns the fetal doppler up so that the drum of their baby's heart echoes. The little boy moves, lives, takes shape on a small dim screen. It's the proof she needs, the reassurance. A man and a boy - a wide awake Lisa Cuddy finally has everything she's ever wanted before her.
"Thank you," she says.
And it's clear she means for everything. Giving her life, saving her life.
Just being here.
House nods and on the subtlest motion the impact of the last six months falls on him like a ballast, some immeasurable weight, all at once he sees how much he nearly lost, and for the first time in a long time, how much he still has. But he hasn't forgotten that it's all dependent on what she gives him.
What she wants from him, with him, if anything at all.
Cuddy stays in the hospital another week, occasionally slipping out of her room to do her job. House doesn't bother her much, brings her plenty of untainted food, half her wardrobe and most of her paperwork.
Even at this distance though, an eventual epiphany seizes House as he realizes that by saving her, by helping her, he has inevitably and without his own consent compromised everything he knows about life and replaced his simple, weightless and irresponsible bachelorhood with fatherhood.
In an existential contradiction even he can't understand it's not the whole burden of responsibility he fears. No, a day from his own childhood is replaying in his mind while the woman who's about to change everything for him recovers.
He was five, or maybe six.
John House was stationed in West Germany and the Cold War had the Western world frozen in nuclear expectation. It was spring but snow fell in defiance of the season. John was growing frustrated and impatient with his son who showed no interest and little promise in the ability to ride a bicycle. But Blithe insisted he keep trying to teach him. The training wheels had broken the previous summer so it was learn to ride or don't ride at all. House struggled with it, falling and falling again. John persisted with the "When I was your age..." shame as a last resort.
His father ran along side him forestalling collisions with trees and mail boxes, losing pride and confidence in his son the entire time. At the end of a week's worth of effort, John resigned from holding House's seat but stood beside him like the drill sergeant he was. House would pedal perseveringly, driven by the dread of disappointing his dad.
With no encouragement but this heartfelt desire to not disappoint.
And as he started to get the balance, to ride it on his own - stay upright long enough to pedal a considerable distance House, ecstatic, looked to his father to say as much and in the process of exclaiming his success saw that his father was no longer beside him. He panicked, braked and flew over the handle bars.
John laughed.
And though House had scraped his chin and fractured his arm, it was his heart that was broken.
Irreparably.
A callous or a scab or some figurative emotional barrier was created that day. At six years old he was filled with contempt, with anger, he was hurt and handling like a man, though he was only a little boy. He swore vengeance in the form of proving everybody wrong.
He became House.
And continued riding with the cast on his arm. He rode the bike everywhere, practicing, learning maneuvers ever pro cyclists could not do - all by the age of seven. It was his first obsession. At fifteen he had his first motorcycle.
Through all the physical and emotional abuse he was subjectedto by his father over the years of being a military brat, the memory of the bike incident is the one he can't block. Not only did his father abandon him, letting him fall, he was expecting it, amused by his failure. The injury and his childhood has deterred House from paternal aspirations but at the same time insured that he'll never make his father's mistakes.
He's is terrified of becoming that person. Of inheriting the parental incompetence. It's going to require a nurturing resistance, at six he swore he'd never do that to his son. And as an adult he swore he'd never have kids. It would after all, end his status as one himself. Outside looking in through the glass at a pregnant, radiant, Lisa Cuddy completely alone and working from her hospital bed, he realizes he did that.
All of it.
And Greg House wants to be a grown up.
love and sleep
When she's finally discharged, House becomes an essential hindrance. Mostly out of paranoia, not being with her when she fell sick is his biggest regret. He stays with her most nights at first. His guitar, his bike helmet and a certain portion of his porn end up in her living room. But he never officially moves in. In an unintentional and subliminal way they slowly transition into espoused silhouettes, one day at a time.
The life they created continues growing and whether they realize it or want it, they draw closer to each other than they have ever let themselves be with anyone else.
August fades into September as the seasons change. The heat becomes tolerable, the garden state's foliage picturesque, and Cuddy's belly much, much bigger. She decides against lamaze, although a friend recommended a good instructor and class. Part of her knows that when it's time for the baby to arrive she's not going to be concerned about or concentrating on breathing techniques, no matter what. And lamaze requires a coach, a husband, a life partner, someone.
House would say 'yes' at this point, she knows, but can't ask him. It would be obscenely awkward, push to the foreground an issue they'd rather leave in the background for as long as possible.
What they have isn't courtship, it's friendship. It's not marriage.
It's complicated.
So she convinces herself that she already knows the real deal about birth, what to expect in terms of pain, duration of labor, and the various esoteric bodily movements and functions that occur during delivery that nobody ever talks about. That she's a doctor who doesn't need any advice on how to inhale or exhale. Still, part of her wishes they could go.
Cuddy does yoga until it becomes impossible. Both because of her body's bizarre shape and also because she can't hold any position longer than five seconds before having to pee.
The fact that she will have a real live, shrieking, shitting tiny person in less than four months still feels like fiction, for both of them. Reality comes in fleeting glimpses.
Cuddy sings to the baby as she soaps her protruding belly in the shower,
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away.
The other night dear as I was sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms...
And then she breaks down at the thought of how she had nearly lost it all. On days she drives to work, the little one enjoys getting a morning workout by gently pounding her lower abdomen, reminding her she's not alone and will never be again.
The surreality of it is sustained by House's refusal to admit that they have a relationship. He tells her he's just protecting his investment and she believes him. When he says the sleepovers are enhanced by her increasingly ample fun bags and the fact that she has Cinemax, she knows it's the truth. Never would she describe him, her House as a paranoid, paternal husband type. His ego is still there, she thinks, he just doesn't want the guilt - he can't handle anyone else dying.
In actuality, Greg House is waging a secret war. Against himself. Against everything he's feeling - that he's never felt before.
And he's losing.
When he's with her he stays in the spare bedroom, what will be turned into the nursery. But he rarely sleeps. Just stares at the ceiling, takes a few vicodin and thinks about winter. Some nights Cuddy sleepwalks, shuffles into the room half conscious, lies down beside him and murmurs something about colors or a fragmented lullaby.
Those are the nights he sleeps.
The yearning for shared sleep, just to lay beside each other in the same bed is something neither can negate, though House assumes there's no space for him in hers, and offers to leave most nights. But she always finds an excuse for him to stay. So this is how it is.
The man's afraid to touch her in a way, recent events have proven how fragile she is, and their relationship is just as tenuous. It could all break, shatter, fall apart in an instant and they never forget it.
Sex is a recurring temporal theme due mostly to its physical denial. Though it only comes after the longing for coinciding slumber. Cuddy is all hormones - months of longing with the awareness that lovemaking can accomplish something, not just transitory but permanent, perpetual, inside her. And House has wanted to be with her again since the night he put the ring on her finger.
It's not that they aren't intimate, he brushes his teeth while she showers sometimes and on a peppermint whim sticks his head in and kisses her. But he doesn't shove his tongue down her throat or grope any of the parts of her he easily could. If Monmouth was their first date, this is all just their second.
Some nights, when the insomnia is agonizing, he tiptoes into her room, as quietly as his limp will allow and watches her sleep. House tells himself it's voyeurism more than vigilance but it takes all his will power to not collapse beside her, kiss her until morning and make love until they run out of time.
They become roommates, with an agenda, an impending responsibility, just trying to make this work. Sex they know would feel good but it's a calculated jeopardy and there is already so much cognitive dissonance in this situation that they continue avoiding the carnal in exchange for the consolatory.
When it becomes too much House takes one long look at her and retreats to the shower. He closes his eyes and lets his soap slicked hand slide and pull and jerk until he feels something, but too quickly it dissolves into the pounding downpour of hot water and is rinsed away before he can regret it. It's never enough. Coming is hardly relief, there is a need in him that doesn't dissipate when he dries off. A need intensified every moment she's in his field of view.
As autumn advances they get used to the charade, comfortable with otherwise uncomfortable circumstances. Cuddy starts considering names for their baby boy and both are contemplating the complications of keeping this casual.
The advantages of commitment.
It's been an unusual progression, from classmates to colleagues to lovers. And now parents. They never really dated, or sought each other out, it's all been cyclical -accidents, chance, luck. Somehow they skipped the entire exposition of normal relationships, of marriage, no wonder it is such a foreign concept.
It's as if they're approaching it backwards, or missing pieces ofthe puzzle, incapable of forming or ever seeing the whole picture.
But they confront it as well they can, that is by not addressing it at all.
They become best friends. A single soul dwelling in two bodies. Two volumes of one book. They become everything to each other- a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in an increasingly insane world.
House deals with her mood swings as best he can. When she's as petrified as an unmarried pregnant woman he makes her laugh. When she' irritable he argues with her and when she's happy he gets away with leaving the toilet seat up. Now he calls the fun bags boobie traps, and sneeks an admiring peek when it's possible, Cuddy sees him most times but pretends she doesn't. He bites his tongue every time he thinks of a crude joke about her rotundous ass, but can't manifest an appropriate complimentto commend her for not really gaining much weight.
House decides she's his ocean, she showed him an island of potential, waves of confusion and when he was drowning in his own selfish sorrows Cuddy rescued him. Time and time again she stood up for the man even when she knew he was wrong.
And to Cuddy he's the entire world. A world not born until he arrived. Michigan, the infarction, the night he took her hand, somehow it all led to this. He got her pregnant - repaid her for everything she's sacrificed for him, everything she's risked, he's reciprocating her loyalty. Gratitude, vertigo, and relentless love is all she can feel in his company.
Silence between them is comfortable.
It's isn't that they're inarticulate or uncommunicative, they just understand each other.
Words are unnecessary.
One night she comes home late and utterly overwhelmed by everything. The preparation for the baby, how close they came to dying, how she's going to end up doing this all alone. She weeps for minutes in the foyer. And she isn't alone. House comes out of the darkness, takes her jacket and her purse and returns to take her hand. They sit on the couch and don't say a word. After a few minutes Cuddy leans to kiss him on the cheek and lies down, resting her head in his lap. He doesn't complain about his thigh, though it hurts, and in spite of being aroused by the very idea of her head between his legs, he's not considering how fantastic being fellated would be right now. No, all Greg House can think about with this sad sleeping beauty in his lap is why she's in pain, how he can fix it, and that he doesn't deserve her. As he strokes her hair, curling a long loose dark strand around a finger, cherishing the sound of her breath and the peaceful sight of closed eyes he sharesher suffering, feels her anxiety and loves her more than anything.
Tears don't cure, smiles are never accurate and some things never change, but as his ego rebels the manipulative bastard is slowly slipping into the beautiful guise of a loving husband.
presence without pain
House shaves her legs when it gets hard for her to reach her ankles. It is a marvelous intimacy, elevated by trust, the kind some couples don't have even after decades of being married. He is dressed and sitting beside the tub, his face flush, almost embarrassed by the honesty and simplicity of it all. Buoyed up and concealed by bubbles, Cuddy drifts while he runs the razor along a leg. He doesn't gawk at or rant about her breasts, he's impeccably gentle as if the warmth of the water, or the moment, melt something away. Soften some callous, some cynicism. As if running a blade along her flawless porcelain skin - without cutting her - is a new challenge, something more mundane but just as rewarding as a rare disease or revelatory diagnosis.
A hand lathering each limb is enough, it's closer to completion than his own hand will ever bring him. It fills him with such rare joy that he can hardly resist saying something, 'Lisa,' 'I love you,' 'You have nice knees,' something. But he's so confounded by his own happiness that he can't speak, silence is golden, like infinity, like the ring she still has.
When he's done House kisses the knee closest to him and rests his chin on it, staring at her, saying more with his eyes than words ever could.
It is a fantastic parallel he decides, to be with each other without hurting each other. Presence without pain. It is the struggle and failure of most relationships. And she's not bleeding, he didn't cut her once.
It doesn't stop there either.
As he helps her stand and hobble out of the tub, Cuddy almost pulls him in, it's such a maladroit effort. And he doesn't stare at her body, this body that inspires the same amount of awe now that it does arousal, no he looks at her face, her eyes, her hair, and wraps a towel around her in an equally possessive and protective embrace. Without thinking he calls her beautiful before he steps out to let her dress.
As the spare bedroom slowly transforms into the nursery, House stays at his apartment more. He had to make a life to keep himself in hers, and now that life is pushing him away,out of her life, eventually. And ironically.
He helps paint the room and choose a crib, which he has agreed to assemble.
One day when he's there alone, assembling the mahogany contraption, or really watching soap operas, the phone rings and he makes the mistake of answering it.
An egregious conversation with a stranger ensues.
"Hello," he says not really hearing himself, eyes glued to the television.
"Good afternoon. This is Miles. I'm with Land America Credit.
Could I speak to Lisa Cuddy please?"
A long pause. House still isn't listening.
"Hello?" the stranger asks.
"She's not here."
"Okay.
Is this her husband?"
A few consonants steal his attention.
"No," he says a certain strife in the two letters.
"With whom am I speaking then?"
'Her baby's daddy' House thinks of saying, but doesn't. It's too heavy a moment and all he can manage is,
"Nobody," under his breath.
It is a humble self realization and he hangs up immediately because the harbinger has given him an idea.
--
Later, as the mechanism that is his conscience makes progress, devising a malicious coup, Cuddy comes home gorgeous but exhausted with bags full of baby clothes, Rogaine for her live-in boyfriend and enough diapers to supply a small country consisting solely of newborns.
House feels like talking, like having another circular disclosure, longing for an exigent epiphany. He cavorts childishly helping her put things away.
"How was your day?" He asks. And she squints suspicious of his need to distract her with small talk.
"Fine."
"Some credit agency called. Said you should stop charging all your bondage gear to your Visa.
S & M ironically does not improve your credit rating.
It's not going to help when you need a new car"
"God House, did you wreck my Mercedes?"
"No."
"Why are you here?"
A beat.
"Came over to work on the uh, room. Brought my toolbelt, six pack of beer, but then the phone rang, which kept me from doing any actual work."
Cuddy sighs, frustrated and dejected. He offers,
"I can make dinner if you want. I mean since I'm already here. Do you like stir fry?"
"I do," She says instead of 'yes,' leaving House more fascinated than frightened by the combination of words.
They eat and talk, a certain tension mounts but they never discuss roles. They don't want to be actors again, just reading a script, cast in some drama they don't even have the rights to. In real life denial is easier, silence satisfying, and happy endings infrequent and convoluted.
They never say 'I love you,' rarely manage 'thank you' and don't call each other Greg or Lisa. But something changes. They start seeing each other differently, with rising deferential esteem- indirectly heralding all the love, thanks, luxury of newlyweds.
lies
Sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving it becomes unavoidable, at least for one of them. As Cuddy sits watching an old movie House appears beside her, takes the remote and changes it to football. Games, he thinks. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. When it reaches half time Cuddy puts her movie back on and wiggles restlessly, trying to get comfortable on a couch that simply doesn't fit anymore.
After a while, House takes the initiative,
"What are we doing?"
"Watching TV," she says the hormones tainting her tone with sarcasm.
"No, I mean...
What are we going to do? In seven weeks, when this part is over?"
Cuddy shakes her head. Their eyes disconnect. A beat.
"Do you want to get married?"
She freezes, stops breathing and doesn't answer. House clarifies,
"I don't mean to me. Just - to anyone. Ever?"
"I..." She starts.
"I don't know."
A profound lie.
"Do you?"
House shrugs, looking past her and down at the floor. Silence, stillness, effort to say something and then tranquil repose in the moment.
"Things are different now," he says as if it's resolution.
Cuddy nods. The television's droning does not quiet their internal discord. Their silent whispers in a world or noise. After a minute,
"Do you still have the ring?"
Shocked, she hesitates then reaches for it, in her wallet where it's been since the fateful day of her doctor's visit. Her heart is pounding and she swallows hard when her fingers touch it, fearing or anticipating a proposal. Her mind is racing, trying to run away from 'yes' but her heart is pushing her toward it with a force she cannot overcome. An inevitable inertia that began with this miraculous conception - a motion, a momentum that cannot be slowed let alone stopped. Her mind can formulate no response except 'yes.'
Holding her breath as she hands him it, overwhelmed by expectations she never knew she had, Cuddy squints and a smirk starts to shape.
But House doesn't get down on bended knee. He just examines the ring between his index finger and thumb a moment and then puts it in his pocket.
Cuddy blinks bowing her head. It is a resolved rejection, a familiar torment, an unexpected loss. Assuming it's because of her vague response she accepts that this is slowly reaching it's end and somehow feels everything and nothing in a simultaneous sigh. Smiling in the absence of spectacle. She wants to hate him for this but is flush with only the most unconditional and absolute love. She wants to cry but can't. 'Lisa House' sounded absurd in her head the last few months that she mused about it, but suddenly she misses it. Now she realizes, that she can't have it, it sounds like the most perfect nominal juxtaposition in the world.
Life doesn't come with guarantees.
Their intermittent affection wanes after this. Cuddy feels estranged, like they're divorced now. But House doesn't change, he continues preparing for the advent of a new life, and grins when she pulls away from his kisses, the way he does when he knows something nobody else even suspects.
Cuddy doesn't want to believe it. She can't decide whether he's deliberately building a barrier between them or if this is just intended to make eventual surrender more significant. She stops asking his opinion on names and though she is indecisive about the first, part of her is trying to tailor it to the middle - Gregory.
It's the least he deserves. Even if this does end between them in two months.
winter and a widening circle
People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist. But Cuddy sees no such line in the future. Only looking back brings her consolation. Summer, the days with House when they were both somebody other than dean and diagnostician, when they were their other selves. The future is insecurity and uncertainty. Nothing more than unrealized anxiety and fast approaching.
House works on the nursery instead of doing clinic duty and she lets him. He starts buying the necessities. Pacifiers, bibs, the most Bond gadget-like baby monitor he can find. She isn't having a baby shower. And has only told a few people outside the PPTH realm, this still doesn't feel likes it's happening for her.
It's a habitual refusal to get her hopes up, really. Though they never speak of the complications that could arise in the next few weeks, at birth, and after the baby's born, they know there are still risks, Cuddy never lets herself forget how easily it can all be lost, again. So in an ironic avoidance of reality, of the impending future, House is the one nesting.
As the frigid season progresses, House speculates. Watching Cuddy closely he sees that she's different. Most women want everything. They want to own everything. His mail, his future, his fantasies. Cuddy's always been there, she's always had possession without wanting it, of his body, his soul. She's never wanted to own him and is willing to suffer so that he doesn't have to sacrifice. Somehow she knows the pleasure isn't owning a person. The pleasure is what they have.
What they've always had. Having another contender in the room.
It's already marriage. Without the idealization or the illusory utopianism of American wedlock. What they have is real, it's working. It's never really been seduction. Adduction, yes. Serendipity.
Luck, fate, chance, but that's no solution.
Early on the first day it snows, with a light head, weak stomach and heavy heart House makes breakfast. Coffee, whole grains and eggs scrambled as best he can. Cuddy sits at the kitchen table as despondent as the frost coated windows, her feet cold on the tile, gooseflesh and a constantly shifting baby making the start of winter seem less than adventitious.
She's not watching House, sort of behind her at the toaster, but he picks a plate up to finalize the ruse anyway, and puts it back down quietly. Then with resolute certainty, an intrepid stride, he walks over to the unsuspecting and somewhat sad mother-to-be and on the motion of putting his hands in front of her Cuddy sees it's not a dish covered with breakfast food, it's a necklace.
A gold necklace. And on it:
A gold ring.
Before she can exhale, let alone say something, House clasps the chain at the back of her neck leaving her so captivated, so surprised, so indescribably happy that tears come before words.
Sitting, his eyes are bright, deep, searching and almost soft. There's a rare beauty in the interrogative harmony of his expression and formidable severity about this reluctant exposure.
A crooked boyish smile forms, he goes to say something but doesn't, just stares at the nape of her neck knowing that for once he's done the right thing.
It's capricious more than romantic she knows, but she can't imagine a more perfect proposal. Neither sentimental nor meaningless, it's greater than a proposition and an answer more than a question. House tells her he wants her to have it and knows she won't wear it on a finger unless tax breaks are involved. He tries to make is sound like he was just insulted by her leaving it in her purse, but she knows this is his declaration, his promise -here, in her kitchen, matrimony, the world outside pure and white. Inside it's home, for the first time since she's lived here, she feels safe, like she belongs - with him, and never alone again.
Cuddy eats a little suppressing tears of joy but buried no less in an avalanche of emotion. Smiling, she laughs nervously at the strange security she now feels, understanding the paradox she felt in loving him for taking the ring back. When House gets her another glass of juice she's overcome with such unbridled passion, such candid appreciation that it takes what little logic is still residing in her lovelorn conscience to not take him by the hand and run like their lives depend on it to city hall. To finally get the piece of paper, ink and certification of what they can no longer deny is the last truth in the world.
Instead, she takes his hand when he sits, not knowing what else to do but hold onto him. Their fingers align, the corresponding contours of their palms fit together, it's the last piece of the puzzle.
United it is a clasp commensurate to the gold around her neck.
As sentimentality seeps into the moment, or when the outside world begins intruding with traffic ambience and snow shovels scraping on gravel, House rants a little about the poeticism of a pregnant woman and guilty man standing in front of a justice of the peace. He gauges Cuddy's reaction but evokes no clues about her inclination. Morning ends when he reaches across the table to examine the ring, knowing they have more than a chain's connection and decides it's a formality they owe each other.
After this Cuddy wears the necklace everywhere but the shower, underneath her clothes and close to her heart, she decides is the most appropriate place for the ring. House is right.
He starts to act like the baby is as much his as hers and talks to their upside down offspring often, telling him that it's both brave and stupid to enter this world head first.
And that he's proud of him.
As it nears completion, there's no 'theme' for the baby's room. No matching Disney or animal patterns. Just a blue sky with a pale green border.
One night after she thinks House has gone, Cuddy takes a shower in an attempt to drown her doubt and anxieties as childbirth and this whole solitary single parent scenario becomes imminent.
Alone, it is a vain attempt.
When she gets out, in just her bathrobe, the gold on her night stand, hearing a hollow thump she goes to investigate. Finding House has snuck back in to finish the nursery, she watches him a while, seeing again somebody only she has ever known exists.
Something remarkable happens when he finishes assembling the baby's bed, however. The completed crib startles her. It makes the idea of a child entering her life more tangible. It makes it reality, disconcerting truth, not just a dream anymore. A kind of visual bridge between now and the end, just weeks -it solidifies just how permanently and completely her world will change. Cuddy stares at it for a few seconds, with a faint feeling and a raucous heart.
Involuntarily she utters, "Oh, wow."
Then panic comes, an attack. An invasion. Her whole well being under siege.
Tears build, her voice cracks,
"I don't know if I can do this," she admits to the pastel walls, afraid of seeming weak to the man in front of her.
House stands a long minute leaning on the object that's causing this reaction. He's not used to placating people, but wants to say something. Something that would ease the pain, silence the sobs, something that will change everything.
After several more stagnant seconds he takes her by the hand and out of the nursery, still searching for the right words. They end up in her bedroom, standing in front of a full length mirror, he's behind her, just tips of fingers on each side.
House kisses her high on a damp warm cheek, closes his eyes and whispers,
"You are doing this."
Staring at the reflection of their inseparable single form, the three of them, Cuddy can finally see how it all connects, how it's just meant to be this way. She turns and kisses him blush with solace as his long eyelashes flicker against her forehead, his lips faintly chapped but soft in the corners. The taste of him is homecoming, return, a journey's end.
The kiss is a calm exhilaration. An epilogue that feels like a prelude. It obliterates insecurity. Replaces doubt with relief. Cuddy opens her eyes just to see him and wonders when she fell so in love with him that the sight of his eye's lashes and lids leaves her breathless.
Bearing his child makes her complete.
She sits on the bed, brings one of his hands to her face and rests her lips on it. A palm cradles her cheek while her fingers fumble with the button of his jeans. With her mouth pressed against his stomach, she unzips, the warmth of her breath making his legs falter, the sound of the zipper rediscovery.
Gravity transcends denim when Cuddy tugs at his pants. She keeps planting hot wet kisses all over his torso and can't resist letting a hand caress him through the cotton. As a fingers slides across the elastic it becomes unbearable to not have her lips on his so House leans down, kisses her tenderly and just hovers like this a minute staring into her eyes, staring past her eyes into some kind of lucid dream, a shared vision that they've somehow made real.
They exchange air and revel in the exalted quiet.
When he collapses beside her on the mattress, House pauses before kissing her jaw and neck, teeth anchoring her bottom lip as he starts to peel the robe from her still shower moist body. She smells like the ocean and summer - an impossibly tangible memory and when it's off eternity is suddenly before them. Cuddy's round, full and undeniably perfect body. A certain fear and frailty in both their eyes. Their love and the consequences of their love is before them.
This is the future, the hereafter.
This is forever.
The incandescent halo of the bedside lamp is defeated by the season's blue moonlight as it streaks across the room in victorious intervals. House runs his lips across her pale shoulder and brushes them against her eyelids. The room is cold, so he pulls the covers over her and then ventures beneath them, his hands and mouth incessantly everywhere, shrouded in cottony refuge. Loving her in the here but hidden way he always has. It is a gradual exploration of her geography but he doesn't need a map. Cuddy boxes her damp hair with her hands, squirming as he kisses and strokes her breasts, his tongue lapping languidly around each sensitive areola, his erection still hampered by boxerbriefs, pushing into her thigh.
Continuing the odyssey of her anatomy, House's beard scratches the swell of her stomach and he rests his chin at the bottom of it, grinning at the belly button that was an innie months before and is now unmistakably an outie. His lips stop at a hip and trail down her thigh, teasingly zigging and zagging to the inner and outer parts of the leg until he reaches the knee. Static breath builds and he starts his way up the other leg letting his mouth linger just below this hip.
With his forehead resting on the limb he almost sighs, attempting to dream. It's not hesitation, he wants her. Now and in any way she wants to be taken. But part of him thinks this is a dream. And he doesn't want to wake up he wants to dream more. Verve inside conception, vision inside illusion, infinite dreams one framed by the other until he is so consumed by rhapsody that it becomes his only reality.
Blinking he blows, a waft of warm air eliciting a gasp, Cuddy preparing herself for what will happen next. Restrained, he pushes the need for his own release to the corner of his mind, bearing up her fragility on his strong arms until she's poised, nothing but molecules of thin air between her pleasure and his lips.
In light kisses he flicks his tongue along her slippery folds, smoothing away hair, parting the lips gently with his fingers and moving slowly inwards with his mouth, nuzzling at first, his nose abundantly present. Cuddy whimpers in suspense, not believing this is all happening. Or what it means. She can't see what he's doing or what he's going to do next. It's tantalizing agony - each touch is a surprise every sensation is unexpected.
After tracing a path from the crease of her thigh down with firm fingertips he slides two inside her. Rubbing at the tender spot that gets her keening, a high helpless sound like nothing else he's ever heard. Without her consent Cuddy's pelvis starts rocking against his hand.
When he can tell she's nearing the brink, his fingers curl and she squeals, clenching before they evacuate to be replaced by his burrowing tongue. Cuddy bucks erratically as it thrusts into her, his hands trying to keep her still, long hot fingers creeping down her leg and then back up, until he can't resist dipping them inside her again. As he laps and massages with his mouth her back arches and body sways, forcing him deeper.
The tilt of her hips is tension, the pleasure sharp and advancing making her toes curl and her hands fist into her comforter. House lets his teeth glide over the delicate skin and she moans in expectation. Each sound from her resonates through his body in pulses, making his passion more palpable. His rough cheek grazes her supple thigh, just letting his palate absorb the salty sweet deliciousness of her imminent orgasm. The blanket's shadows crosshatch along their bodies as the silhouette that is House delves deeper.
Savoring the delectable flavor he sucks and slurps, slick and still stroking inside her. Suddenly she tightens around his fingers. With a sharp gasp and involuntary flutter of her muscles Cuddy comes hard, jolting against his hands and saturating his mouth. A guttural moan and his lips vibrate against her making her writhe uncontrollably beneath his palms. The pressure's perfect extending the euphoric release, it lasts minutes -months of mounted pleasure washing over her in waves and he stays with her kissing, licking up the exquisite ambrosial taste, suffusing as he salivates until they melt together in a satiated puddle on the sheets.
House is still gripping her thigh as the lift of her hips drops letting him draw spirals on the dimly illuminated limb with the moisture on his fingertips. He strokes and caresses lightly while she tries in vain to prepare for what he's going to do next.
"I love you," he says into the curve of her belly.
No sound, just irreverent lips on immaculate skin.
Though she can't hear him, Cuddy feels the phrase, the friction and the flow as his mouth forms the words, so warm, so real. She doesn't even know if he's saying it to her, the baby or at all, but a spontaneous second orgasm seizes her and she succumbs, the shock taking her breath away. He's barely touching her but the vigor, the brilliance is electricity, it's invincibility. Maybe it's not an orgasm. It's something more, beyond physical pleasure, some involuntary reaction to his intuitive confession. The exhilaration of his honesty, the mutual exposure. Maybe just the thought, the possibility of the narcissistic, abrasive, egomaniacal bastard admitting that he loves her makes the woman come. He stays there while the sensation elevates and dissipates, kissing down both legs, massaging the arch of her foot when her toes uncurl and smiling a proud smile.
After a minute, coerced from the closure of being under the covers, House comes up. He kisses her lightly on the lips, protectively on the forehead and when he reaches to turn the light out sees that the necklace is on the night stand. Rolling onto his side, he fits behind her, trying to find his place.
The warmth of his body makes her drowsy. Cuddy takes his arm snugly settling into a new series of readjustments, ringing it around her as if she wants it to be right because it's going to be there forever. His skin is ardor against hers, his breathing melodic as a lullaby. House's ribs notch into her vertebrae while his knee bends against the back of her leg, the rasp of his hairy calf inducing a rare relaxation she only experiences with a familiar and masculine presence beside her. Outside the snow is falling, burying the world in ice and inclemency but in his arms, in her bed it's serenity, safety, it's summer again.
With no motives other than the sight of her still open eyes, House, following a fleeting stretch of time, kisses her neck and behind an ear, brushes his cheek along a shoulder and reawakens the near sleeping beauty. Spooning, she can feel the throb of him, and can't resist provocation, pushing back against him. Their limbs crisscross, ankles tangle, toes twine. They just do this for a while.
Flirt, librate, a cozy horizontal dance. He blows into her ear then nibbles on it. When she needs to feel his skin on hers, Cuddy stretches a hand back, overestimating her reach and slides it into the back of his briefs, caressing each cheek and slowly inching the cotton down. His lips roam aimlessly across the bluff of her back, down each shoulder blade and finally he pivots forward to kiss the corner of her mouth.
She's aware when it happens, that thing, the connection. This time it's in the moment of prepenetrative anticipation, but many times it's in the aftermath of an argument- the rage, the energy, the passion they finally requite.
The expectation of retaliation.
It's different now. The thrill's intensified by personal proximity, by concentrating all emotion into a transient glimpse of happiness, unadulterated desire, approximate love. It goes beyond intimacy, it's an almost ethereal connection, the most ephemeral fusion, precognitive union.
When he penetrates her Cuddy doesn't gasp of shiver, she relaxes. She exhales.
Because she's been holding her breath. Waiting months for this. It isn't some carnal hunger, it's discovery: finding the missing piece of the puzzle, it's not lust it's the difference between being empty and being whole.
House takes his time. Not to prolong the ecstasy that still feels new, the experience that's different every time. No, he just wants to be in her for as long as possible. To be a part of her, physically if no other way. To deny a few hours longer that he's just temporary. That this is all just the result of some convenient accident.
Holding her closer than ever, each thrust is strong but shallow, each movement a throe of accumulative enthusiasm. Even the air around them is charged. Torsos align, the tickle of his chest hair slickened by sweat smears across her back. Cuddy's astonishingly pert astoundingly plump ass form fits into his pelvic contours and there's a brief transfer of power when she starts moving against his thrusts rather than with them, taunting him, goading him to drive deeper, harder, faster.
At first House cradles her breasts or traces circles around her clit, never letting her forget he has two free hands. When his thumb rubs over a taut nipple she reaches back and fondles his testicles, stretching to massage his perineum. With a low desperate grunt, she feels him thicken inside her and relents as he slows down.
Side by side they find a new rhythm.
Fantastic and deliberate, salaciously centripetal motion, she grinds against him as he drives into her, searching for a center, a destination, bound and navigating.
Cuddy's almost forgotten what it feels like to have him inside her. How perfectly their parts fit together. That in this way, if no other, they're simply made for each other. It feels so good, so right she can hardly resist squeezing and coaxing the heat out of him just to feel it spread through her. There's an immediacy to making him happy, relieving him the way he did her. The temptation to instigate his euphoria, responsibility for his release, Cuddy wants to make him come. In her, for her, with her. Now.
Except she's beginning to accept that this may never happen again so she holds back, just ardent, expectant and present, wanting this to last more than anything, wanting it to be perfect, wanting him to still want her when this is over.
Wanting him to want her more.
It should always been like this, House thinks, each of them protecting the other against everyone else. Each of them to the other comprising everyone else. Bare, complete and dancing beyond the ordeal of the rest of the world a little while longer. In this blissful preorgasmic instant he knows that their coupling is more than the drama into which they decant all the angry disappointment of their lives. It's success, it's become unconditional, and here, now he can deny that
it's obscenely evanescent.
Cuddy's about to unravel with House's arms wrapped around her, his face pushed into her shoulder, her muscles clench to entice him but she only succeeds in inciting her own ecstasy.
It's amazing to be in her, the heat, the moisture and genuine sense of belonging. He steadies his hips as she shudders, motionless until she nods and they start again, his lips on her neck, hands between her legs, over her stomach and breasts, holding her tight, moving slower, smoother, reminiscent escalation.
"God," she says. And says again. And again.
Until it's an endearment. Until it's his identity.
Because right now entangled with this man, dissolving into each other, on the verge of convergent vulnerability, the edge of exaltation, she worships him. It's more than love, it's impossible piety, it's all her life's passion being focused and directed at one person. It's not commitment, it's faith. House is God to her now, her whole world, more than her whole world, her hope of heaven. His broken body and misery marred eyes are between her and every thought of religion, he's an idol, a hero, he's everything because he did this for her. With her. He didn't let it die.
When the pressure is paragon, she feels the flare of his aura into hers.
"God I love you," is what Cuddy thinks she says, but this time she substitutes one misnomer for another. She calls him Greg.
Forsaking resistance, his pace quickens and he thrusts deeper. The urgency culminates, he closes his eyes and moves with her, in her, until he feels the cusp of her convulsions and then he lets go.
House inhales, he gasps like it's his last breath, slow and deep reveling in the scent of this woman, her perfume, her pheromones, the prepossessing fervor of her skin. Her muscles catch and clutch, remembering. Reciprocal rapture as his orgasm becomes hers, consuming him, filling her.
A synchronous spectral panorama - they see every color at once in a world that's been black and white for months.
Cuddy turns her head back to see his tranquilly azure gaze through the dark fringe of long lashes, he's staring at her, smiling at the spectacle of what he can do to her. What he can do with her. Cherishing her countenance as they coalesce. Coveting the deep pools of blue and black that are her eyes as they combine. Again. She kisses him softly on the lips, to taste him, to merge even more and to get him to close his eyes because she's ineffably and equally relieved, susceptible, and satisfied.
The duality of body and soul, the physical and metaphysical, psychological and emotional are suddenly in the foreground as the consummate completion continues. Pumping, gushing, and then motionless, more than it ever was.
Their awareness of a purpose, to transform from creation to creator, letting two become one is more than love, shelter, belonging or companionship. It's completion. It unity. It's matrimony.
It may be the last time.
Both suspect that every simultaneous surrender they share may be the last.
Neither wants this to end but both expect it.
They remain undivided and tangent a long while. When she yawns House pulls out reluctantly and lays on his back a few minutes. The adrenaline and endorphins ebb into afterglow and the glimmer fades rapidly as reality recurs. Then, as if he suddenly realized that they just made love, that she came three times and he was utterly inarticulate for each, he feels an all consuming impulse to say something. Bracing on an elbow he leans into the sleeping beauty one last time to kiss her, to wake her, to speak. Cuddy kisses back, all four eyes closed, the suspension of disbelief waning - it feels like the end of some fantastic dream.
An ending that requires a profound proclamation, "Lisa," "Marry me," "Now."
Something that would only matter with his lips on hers. Suddenly he's stricken also with the overwhelming and irrational need to hear her voice, to feel the vibrations of her words on his mouth, to swallow her idealized reciprocity. To know that she loves him as much as he loves her.
Say something. Say anything.
Aphony, reticence, the sound of a winded diagnostician's chest heaving but no words. The clamor and scrape of snow plows, but no plea, no proposal.
Nothing.
House collapses undespairingly beside her, stretches an arm behind but not around Cuddy and broods. Loathing himself for not talking, for not making this everything it could be, everything it should be.
Panic comes as he starts to doze off. The same panic that forced this winter's night into intimacy. The panic that allowed them to recapture what they were both doubting was revivable. Except it's not the foreboding burden that the finished crib caused Cuddy. No, for House the completion of that bed, the finished room and his long sustained subconscious procrastination in finishing it all clearly mean something. Now that it's done, he may be done. It's all he offered to do.
It's all she expected him to do. This may be over before it begins.
The end of the end.
He doesn't understand his panic, why he feels anxiety instead of relief for being spared the responsibility of a wife and kid. He can only explain it in terms of selfishness, they're his. He doesn't deserve them, he knows. And has no idea why it's ending here.
Cuddy still hasn't told anybody that the baby's his. He isn't sure how the secret's been kept. Other than Thirteen's fear of the news of her mortality leaking. House has joked dozens of times about the identity Cuddy's baby's daddy. And he's joked about impregnating her, yet this scenario seems so absurd that nobody suspects.
Reality betrays us all.
Though he chastises himself for being not just affected by her denial, but also insulted, it still hurts in an unfamiliar pang of blighted hope. Because not only has she failed to mention he's the one that did this to her, she's not wearing the neckless now. The interpretation of both leave him convinced beginnings aren't so simple, and goodbye is what she wants.
The temperature plummets, House is cold. It's more than a shiver, it's an existential chill. His ego is frozen. Suddenly aware of his nudity, he anxiously tugs the blanket away from her a little and stares, the peace of her face reflecting off of the pain in his eyes. Abruptly, Cuddy turns over inadvertently looping his arm around her and pressing her round belly into his side. He readjusts and she nestles into his embrace as if he's a downy stack of pillows and not cool flesh and sharp bone. Hooking a leg over his hip, she drapes a lithe arm across the breadth of his chest, comfortable with him, somehow that hurts even more.
Pain with presence, a cruel reversal of circumstances.
With certain hesitation he strokes down the length of the arm gently, rests his hand on her stomach and leaves it there. He's waiting to feel their child kick or move, remind him that this is all real. But it doesn't come, baby is as asleep as his mother. When he sees goosebumps on her forearm he relinquishes his portion of the blanket and wraps it around them tight, tucking them in together, staying separate. At a distance.
House decides that until now it's been like a ship in a bottle. Impossible, intangible, some magnificently complex thing they created, confined for nine months just to potential and always at risk for shattering. Marvelous, elaborate, impossible, in jeopardy - it's demise a constant fear. It redefined their limits, together they've escaped predestined boundaries and achieved something they could not have done alone. He's pursued the absolute for so long and has now accidentally attained the infinite. Her stomach is a wine bottle with his hand on it, struggling to believe the ship they built is real.
Before he can fall asleep, reality's betrayal relents and Greg House is forced wide awake by the movement of that elusive animation of the life he's created. He's struggling to decide what he really wants. The indecision is a tug of war, a revolt of his ego against his conscience.
His heart combatting his brain.
It is a stalemate.
Considering birth, how things will change, if he wants them to change, he watches her a while longer, her cheek against his shoulder, her breath filling the hollow of his collarbone and when she moves closer unconscious but somehow consolatory, putting her head on his chest House trails his fingers through her hair and makes a decision.
He wants to be the doctor who puts Cuddy's trembling legs in stirrups and delivers their child. The last to see her before motherhood and the first to hold their son. He wants to be
the man - a husband who holds her hand and stands by her side. To coach and encourage, maybe.
He just wants to be there.
House wants to be the first person to see their baby's new eyes- to find salvation, permanence, honesty - redemption.
What will the narcissist see when he looks into his son's eyes?
Himself? Truth?
What will their child see when he looks into his father's eyes?
Lies? A damaged nihilist?
Will the atheist see an angel? Or will the doctor's desire to be God finally be fulfilled?
Beyond perception, what will happen after? Will convention come naturally, will his presence be uninvited, will it all fall apart?
Or into place?
Greg House is not a husband. He's not a father. He's a doctor. An accomplice. But he wants to be something more. More than a warm body in an empty space on her bed. More than the weather against her window as she sleeps through a winter's dream.
More than this.
With closed eyes House reaches for the necklace. Uncertain what he's going to do next, he slides the ring off the chain and sighs. Soft moonlight diffused by pale curtains illuminates the jewelry in the darkness and for the first time ever he understands the aesthetic virtue of a gold circle. Cuddy's fingers are splayed across his chest and he just enjoys it, her warm palm on his cold skin, the constancy of her touch.
Again a hand seeks the adjacent flesh and sorrow parallels desire in the immense complexity of love. Stroking her hand with his thumb it's barely a grasp, barely a glance. For an instant he contemplates with the few remnants of his objectivity why in his life it must perpetually be all or nothing at all. Then he puts the ring on her finger. Not to see if it fits, or to propose marriage, just to see eternity again before his eyes and with her. He holds her tighter hoping that the heat of oppression might make her uncomfortable, might wake her. He still wants to talk. A transitory whim, he knows, there's nothing he could say that would make her change her mind. If her mind's made up. But she doesn't stir. Somehow her subliminal awareness that he's with her makes her fall deeper into slumber. So House's grip loosens, allowing a certain space between them.
Everybody lies. Is he just lying to himself? Does complacency just seem more convenient than the complete abandonment of his old lifestyle? Somewhere behind the perpetual cynicism and beneath the existential callous House knows he's already changed. An irreversible change.
A permanent eversion. In nine months he's transformed more than the pregnant woman.
The birth of his son will be his own rebirth. Restoration, reincarnation- he can only long to not experience it alone.
By now the pain is reclaiming his leg and he wants to reach for the vicodin, or get up and distract the agony away by pacing, by leaving, but he's torn. House can't let go of her hand, he doesn't even want to try. When he finally blinks his eyes find asylum in the opacity of the room, sanctuary in the solace of her bed and beauty in the woman by his side.
Decidedly, he grins. A naked obstinate grin. He will fall asleep with that grin composing his face because he's going to leave the ring on her finger. He's going to hold her and listen to her breathe and think of last summer and the new year. Of how he almost died and how he wants to live now, for her. With them.
House will dream of a future, consider their past and sleep with her.
The first and final yearning, the crucial desire for shared sleep, a blatant and impartial preference which is true love.
Outside December's pure impatient banks await resolution, content with silence until tomorrow. With a clasp of hands, presence, pain, and peace these two souls will dream, refusing to let go of each other. They have shared this winter, they will share tonight and if she's still wearing the ring when he awakens, they'll share their lives.
Together. In the morning.
Everything.