Title: Lead Me Upstairs (9/?)
Author: nomad1328
Disclaimer: House and all characters therein belong to Shore Z, Fox, Bat Hat Harry, etc. I make no money off of them.
Thanks go to my reviewers and also to my beta, Armchair Elvis who does a steller job of knocking me down and building me back up. :)
House stands, leaning against the wall in the foyer of his old apartment, looking up the steep and narrow stairway. A burly bald man with arms the size of cantaloupes backs down the stairs with yet another box, another relic of his old life. It seems like years ago that he was running up the stairs every night, having domesticated dinner, falling asleep wrapped around Stacy. Three months, for all he recalls, has been an entire lifetime.
The two movers are breathing hard as they work to get down the stairway. House hopes that it's Stacy's precious breakable things in the box. They've bumped into the wall with it twice. He imagines that they'll drop it on the third stair and there will be a crash, curses, and apologies. But It doesn't happen, and he leans further into the wall as they pass, taking the box to the waiting truck.
Annoyed, he moves outside into the crisp fall air. It's the first hint of what he believes will be a long and cold winter. The smell of rotting leaves saturates his sense of smell and he holds himself up on one leg and one crutch while he wipes his nose. Hay fever will start soon. It should be a different experience this year. The Oxycontin he's been taking for his leg will get rid of the headache. On the other hand, having a body-wracking sneeze attack sounds like torture redefined.
He lowers himself to sit on the front stoop, and lays the crutches down. next to him. As he's slowly straightening his right leg out, he sees Wilson's Volvo pull up to park in front of the truck. Wilson gets out of the car and shoves his hands in his jacket, walking quickly up to the stoop. House eyes him, grimacing because the sun is hitting his eyes just right. Wilson is a black shadow against it.
"Where's Stacy?"
House shrugs and nods back towards the apartment. "I dunno. Up there."
"What's she doing?"
He shrugs again, looks out towards the movers who are coming back to the apartment to get more boxes. Wilson stands aside, watching them pass.
"How should I know?"
Wilson sighs and crosses his arms, looking down at the concrete. "Are you sure you're ready for this?" It wasn't that Wilson doubted House's ability to take care of himself, but he had his doubts that Stacy was going to put up with much more.
They'd always had their spats. Since day one, there have been plenty of ups and downs. Wilson recalls the time three years ago House intentionally missed a flight to Dallas. They'd been sitting in the bar when House's pager rang again and again. When he'd questioned House, he'd said it was nothing. Some nurse had handed out his pager number to every last invalid on the ward with instructions to call often and call loudly. When his own pager had gone off, Wilson stood and made the call and ended up on the receiving end of a near frantic Stacy, who was standing at the airport, just moments from boarding the plane. He hadn't known what to say and at his hesitation, she'd already made a correct assumption. House was ignoring her pages. She went to Dallas alone and brought her elderly parents back with her, letting them take the bed while Stacy and House were relegated to the sofa bed. While Stacy made excuses to her parents, House left the apartment and slept on the couch in the neurology break room for three days. Both were stubborn as hell and each refused to apologize until one day Wilson had caught them sucking face in Stacy's office. Conflict thus resolved. But there was never any doubt that it would resolve. Never any talk of a breakup. And the longest they'd ever been angry was a week.
It's been three months since House's infarction. House won't forgive and takes everything out on her. Stacy acts like there is nothing to forgive, but neither does she stand up for herself against House anymore. Their stubbornness has coalesced into a pool of stagnation.
Stacy had been still living in the apartment, inaccessible to House, so she began taking half-days to make up for the lack of contact between them. She'd head over to Wilson's in the morning, make breakfast, help him with PT, do anything he wanted. From what Wilson could tell (and from what Bonnie had said) it wasn't necessarily a relationship re-building success. More often than not, House had practically chased Stacy out by the time Wilson got home from work. But worse than House's obvious contempt was Stacy's refusal to answer with her own. Without a concrete wall to bounce against, House's sarcasm and anger had free reign. And then House had gotten more mobile last week. He'd graduated to crutches and all hell broke loose in the Wilson household.
House squints up at him, smirking. "Seeing as how you practically kicked me out last week, do I have a choice?"
House standing was much more of a nuisance than House in the chair. He was still disabled, but the crutches gave him more speed on the carpet and the ability to do things he hadn't done in over a month. Fraternity party week, as Bonnie called it, was more than she could take.
Stacy had had a particularly busy case and she was unable to go to the house to keep House company. He'd claimed he was fine now that he was halfway mobile and resisted Wilson's attempts to stay home. Then Bonnie came home one night and there was a lubed condom on the doorknob. When Wilson came home, he'd made a mess of the toilet thanks to the saran wrap with which House had covered it. Then there was House's miraculous Rube-Goldberg at the end of the week, which stretched through the entire lower level of the house. Wilson had no idea how he'd done it in eight hours with a bum leg, other than he'd spent the rest of the week planning it.
The device itself was innocuous: ball bearings, dominoes, resistance bands, and a selection of cookware. However, the apex of the device was both lewd and precarious, involving a very private possession of Bonnie's and a selection of last year's fireworks pointed towards the neighbor's mailbox. House hadn't counted on much of an explosion. In the end, the neighbors thought they heard automatic gunfire and called the police. Officers Bonilla and Carlton found House sitting satisfied on the sofa, admiring the burnt section of ceiling and ruined carpet, beer in hand. All had not gone as planned. When Bonnie arrived shortly afterwards, she waved the police away, claimed that House was her mentally challenged older brother, and that she would soon be placing him in a home. The fallout that evening could have been called another domestic disturbance, but this time, the neighbors were prepared.
Needless to say, Wilson consented to his wife's wishes and told House that he had to go. The only problem was that his old apartment was logistically impossible. House had sat quietly on the couch as Wilson and Stacy shuffled through rental ads and made call after call. Three days later, they came back with five polaroid photos of a place in the south of town that was fully handicapped accessible. House had looked at the first photo and handed them back, nonchalent. His only response was a sigh and a "Looks great." Then he turned back towards the television and swallowed a pill.
Surprisingly, there had been no question or discussion that this was a move Stacy and House were doing together. She'd had her things packed up and moved to the new place as well. But the moving truck and the guys hauling boxes out bring worries to a forefront. House hasn't actually lived with Stacy in three months- not since she denied his dying wish and crippled him. Wilson can only imagine what a bored House could concoct to drive Stacy insane.
Wilson sighs, thinking, and lifts a leg up on the stair, stretching his calf. "You could make it easy and just kick her out now…"
House frowns and chews a nail. He seems to think about it for a moment before he looks down and shakes his head. "Don't want her to go."
"Well your overwhelming gratitude towards her and romantic Romeo gestures certainly show that you want her to stick around."
House's eyes squint, angry at Wilson's insinuation. "Well I'm not exactly in a position to show her how much I care."
"If you're not careful, she's going to leave you."
House eyed him, annoyed. "Well if she wants to go, I'm not stopping her." He pauses and taps his fingers on the cement next to the crutches. "Besides, what kind of person would leave a cripple?"
"You're an idiot."
Wilson and House watch as movers carry another box down towards the truck. This time, Stacy is following them and she stops next to Wilson. He's feeling awkward and responsible somehow and turns to her to say "I'm sorry."
She waves her hand down before he speaks and shakes her head. "We had to do it eventually," she says. She looks down at House, who seems to be in his characteristic sulk mode. She could usually predict his reactions before. A bad day at work and he'd spend hours running it out.
A bad fight and he might get a little drunk, crawl home, and initiate make-up sex. Nothing overtly bothered him because he could always take it out in his physicality. Now she has to be careful of everything she says and does because the release has become emotional and verbal. He can't run away anymore. She can't be too overbearing. She can't be too sympathetic. A wrong word or gesture and he'll either ignore her for days or verbally lash her for every last thing she's ever done incorrectly.
"It's going to be another few hours before they get everything down and into the truck. Wanna get some lunch?"
The question is neutral enough that House has no other answer except a sigh and a nod. He grabs the wooden crutches at his side and Stacy lets him get to his feet himself. They follow to Wilson's car.
Lunch is nearly silent and full of unspoken accusations. Stacy thinks of better days when she and Greg would talk for hours. Now she's lucky to have a sentence of civilized conversation a day. The sentence happens over lunch: "I've been thinking of getting a piano- a real one, maybe a baby grand." Stacy immediately perks up as she swallows the soup. She's not sure it will fit. She's not sure they can afford it, but it's the only positive thing she's heard from him all day. "I think it's a great idea, honey. Want to check them out tomorrow?"