Hey guys, another update! Thanks again for the reviews, you honestly don't know how much I appreciate them. After this chapter, I have one and half chapters already written so I'm going to start writing to update, so please keep the reviews coming - it's really motivation to know people are enjoying the story enough to review, and your feedback is really helpful.
Also, I'm hoping this one might be a bit more satisfying than some of the more Luddy-filled chapters, even though it's quite a bit shorter :(
I really hope you enjoy it, and don't forget to leave a review on your way out. Loveeeee xxxxxx
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Even though he was the last person Cuddy wanted to see, the next morning she found herself looking for House. Although, by the time she did end up looking for him it was closer to lunch time, as Lucas had stuck to his promise of keeping her in bed all morning. He only actually reluctantly let her leave when he got a phone call from a potential client about a job, and since she was going in to work that day anyway, he agreed to take it. The nanny came and picked Rachel up, deciding to wrap her up warm and take her to the park for one of the last times this year before it got too cold.
It was only when she got in to work did she remember that House, in all the drama of the previous evening, had actually solved his case, and therefore she needed to issue him with a new one or he'd just spend as long as he possibly could avoiding work. That caused a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach but this time it was more prominent than ever, and it was usually the feeling she got before coming up against the board, not the feeling she got when having to face House. But if anything, Lucas had reminded her last night how lucky she was to have him. She partially suspected this reminder was staged on purpose, as she did notice him falter and quickly change the subject when he mentioned her getting rid of him, but she didn't mind. She didn't want to insult his masculinity by mentioning the fact that he might be insecure but at the same time she wanted to reassure him that he had no reason to be insecure – even though, in reality, that wasn't strictly true given what had already accidentally happened between her and House.
Thinking about that in particular made her very uncomfortable and extremely guilty so in order to put it from her mind, she flipped through her inbox and pulled out a letter she had received only a couple of days before from the midst of the papers. It was pertaining to someone who wanted Dr. House's help and expertise in diagnosing unknown illnesses. She got about five letters of the same kind a week, but the only reason this one hadn't been tossed straight into the trash can like the rest of them was because this one actually looked extremely interesting, and was sure to get House's attention. Not to mention keep him busy for at least a week, if not more.
She picked it up and left her office with it, feeling increasingly sick and nervous with every step she took. What was even worse was the fact that it was extremely likely his team would be in the office too, so she would have to stay cool and calm whilst enduring his taunting jibes. The elevator had never seemed to move so quickly and when she stepped out of it on to the third floor, she could see his office straight away. She could see his team too, but infuriatingly enough, she couldn't see him. And right now, with the mood she was in, she really didn't want to have to wander around the hospital and look in every janitor's closet in case he was hiding from her in there.
Storming in to his outer office, she looked from one fellow to the other and this time not bothering to hide her annoyance, because if he'd gone absent without leave again she had every right to be furious. "Have any of you seen House? Even by his standards, he should be in by now." Her voice was quite demanding, even though she hadn't intended it that way.
Both male members of staff completely ignored her and they hadn't even flinched when she entered the room, because they both knew much better to rat out their boss when he was hiding from his boss - he would make their lives hell if they did. However, Thirteen at least had the courtesy to answer her, even if the answer wasn't very helpful. "He said he was going out and he'd be back sometime before you came looking for him. I guess he was wrong."
Cuddy tutted and made to storm out of the office in a moment of forgetting basic polite mannerisms, but when she remembered them, she quickly turned around and obeyed them. "Thank you." But instead of going back down to her own office and giving up like she really wanted to, she stalked down the corridor and walked straight in to Wilson's office without even knocking. "Do you know where he is?"
Any other person would have literally jumped out of their seat at the force that she entered the room without warning with, but Wilson was used to it because House never knocked and tended to walk around with the grace of a bull in a china shop. However, he did do a double take and blink a number of times in surprise when he saw the person standing in his office demanding to talk to him wasn't actually House, but in fact Cuddy. "I assume its House you're talking about, and if that's the case, I can't answer you because I don't know."
She paced the room for a couple of seconds, still highly agitated, but when she realised that if Wilson didn't actually know where he was, she couldn't go and find him to yell at him, and searching for him was going to take forever because he could be anywhere and he was very practised in hiding from her, so she might as well sit down. She did so, putting her head in her hands and sweeping them through her hair.
He couldn't help thinking that she even managed to be elegant when he could tell she was absolutely furious. However he, unlike Lucas, was not afraid of her so wasn't worried about opening his mouth and actually talking to her, even when she was this harassed and stressed out. He also assumed from the fact that she was here right now rather than away on her vacation with Rachel like she was supposed to be, that House had done something to screw that up and she'd had to postpone it or cancel it all together. "Lisa, I don't know how you can complain. You exactly what he's like, and it's taken him a lot of guts to admit to himself he likes you, even if he won't admit it to anyone else. And that isn't just going to go away – he's going to keep pursuing it because that's who he is."
Even though she felt slightly comforted by the fact that he obviously hadn't yet been told about the argument, and the fact that she already had a boyfriend, she was still annoyed. "I can't complain because I know what he's like? I may know what he's like Wilson but that doesn't mean its right, and it doesn't mean I should have to put up with it. How many times do I have to say that I've moved on and I don't want him before it'll sink in to one of your heads?"
"I can't speak for him, but I know you can say it as many times as you want, I'm never going to believe you. This tension has been building up from the day you met and things like that don't just go away – they don't just disappear or you don't just lose them like that. I'm not asking you to commit to marry him, I'm only asking you to give him a chance and waste a couple hours of your life seeing whether he really has changed, and whether you two really do have a chance." He wasn't quite sure why he was still trying again because part of him knew that if it hadn't worked the first two times that it was unlikely to be third time lucky.
Regardless of knowing she was getting irrationally angry because at the moment House and their relationship was a very sensitive subject, she resisted the urge to slap him. "You know what, forget it. I don't want to, or need to, listen to another lecture about him from you. Not right now, not today." She shook her head and got up, walking straight back out the office again and shutting the door behind her with perhaps a little bit more force than she had intended to.
It certainly wasn't the first time he'd been inside her house; in fact, it wasn't even the first time he'd been inside her house without her permission. However this time, he seemed much more sensitive to the tiny little details, and of course the signs that a man spent long periods of time here – after shave in the bathroom, boxers and socks in the drawers, more than one toothbrush in the cup by the sink. Everywhere he looked there was a memory of the fact that someone had got in before him, and it took all his self control not to smash all those things. Her house still smelled of her; it was now just a mixture of her, baby puke and a male scent that he was sure he recognised but couldn't place.
As he shuffled back in to the hall where the wireless telephone stood, he saw a light flashing on the docking station. Seen as curiosity only killed cats, he let his get the better of him and took a closer look, only to see it was notifying him that there was a message on the answer phone. If it wasn't enough that he'd broken in to her house without her permission, or even her knowledge, he seemed to think he had a right to listen to her answer phone messages before she did too. He wasn't quite sure how to use her answer machine but he took an educated guess and presumed he was right when an automated female voice began speaking to him.
"You have one new message. First new message left today at 14:32pm."
And then there came a male voice – at first he was completely at sea about who it belonged to but the moment he realised, he knew it all suddenly made sense.
"Hey babe, I can imagine you will have probably had a stressful day at work today, well, more stressful than normal anyway, so I thought I might bring a takeout home with me to save either of us having to cook? It's fine if you don't want one, just let me know. By the time I'm finished you'll probably have already put Rachel to bed, so give her my love. See you later."
It felt like there was a cold hard fist clasped around his heart, and hearing a familiar voice on her answer phone was more painful than he ever imagined it to be. Lucas was as close to a friend as he could call anyone – other than Wilson, but Wilson was just an enabler – and he was dating the woman that he had been in love with for probably over twenty years. What was even worse was, Lucas knew he was in love with her; they'd discussed it during one of those endless conversations that Lucas had charged him for.
He had a sudden urge to grab something, anything, and throw it against a wall so he shattered it in to a million pieces. Pain shot down his leg in a magnitude he hadn't felt for a long time, so much so that it was almost crippling and as it began to shake and collapse under him, he managed to stumble in to the living room and collapse on the couch. He gripped his cane so hard that his knuckles went white and in an attempt to distract himself from the leg pain he bit his lip so hard he drew blood. It made him even more angry that he'd let her get so far under his skin that in one split second she had the power to take him back that place in his head that he was in before all the rehab, before Mayfield. Before getting clean. And there was only one thought in the front of his mind at that one moment – he needed his vicodin.
He'd never been strong enough, or had enough faith in the system to believe he'd really come off drugs, properly. And because of that, he hadn't got rid of all his vicodin. There was still some left in his flat, hidden in a hole he'd hollowed out of his own wall and then hung a mirror in front of. The only think that was standing in the way of him and going back a year, undoing all the good that had been done in the last few months, was his own willpower. Because right now there was no one here to stop him getting back on his motorbike the moment his leg allowed him, going straight back to his apartment, downing half the bottle of pills in one go and passing out cold on his bathroom floor.
Then he remembered the fantasy he had. He remembered the last time he took vicodin and the dream he created for himself because he wanted to believe it was true. She was his saviour – rescuing him from the rock bottom and bringing him back to the surface, helping him float. And he had some sort of feeling that that wasn't likely to happen in reality this time if he went back on the pills. Lucas didn't necessarily mean he'd lost her forever – Lucas was as much of a twat as he was at times, they were bound to break up sooner or later. He was too much of an immature, selfish man child to be the boyfriend of a responsible single mother, dean of medicine at a major hospital and the sexiest ball breaker medicine had ever seen. That's what he wanted to tell himself anyway. But he knew that if he took the pills, he would lose her forever. There would be no going back because she wouldn't scrape him off the floor again this time, even if last time she hadn't actually done it in the way he'd imagined.
He knew he was asking himself what would possibly be the hardest question of his life. Would he rather live without pain, or live without the possibility of living with the woman of his dreams? Because hoping to win her over, dare he say it, win her heart, would not only leave him open to physical pain. It would leave him open and vulnerable to the emotional and mental pain he experienced when he heard Lucas' voice on the answer machine – a type of pain he hadn't felt since Stacy left, and then she came back in to his life, married to someone else. The feelings he had towards Mark then were incomparable to those he felt about Lucas now, probably because he'd never seen Mark's actions as a personal betrayal. Mark never had any loyalty to him, supposedly Lucas had.
House had never been the sort of person who dealt with pain rationally. It was always his main priority – he did whatever he had to do to avoid any unnecessary pain because he was plagued with it every day of his life. And he wasn't quite sure he was ready to commit himself to feeling like that every time he saw her, knowing she went to bed with another man every night. But he was also just about rational enough to know that if he took the pills now, next time he saw her, spoke to her, took in her smell, he'd regret it.
So it was on that knowledge that he made his decision. For once, he decided to heed Wilson's advice and do what he'd been told to do all along. He was going to talk to her. But he was going to talk to Wilson first, to confirm he was doing the right thing. Because for the first time in a long time, he was actually being grown up and making a mature decision. He was actually accepting that something was extremely important and he knew, he couldn't mess this up. He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to do whatever he possibly could to convince her that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Wilson wasn't remotely surprised, in fact, he didn't even look up, when, for the second time that day, someone stormed in to his office without warning and with an urgency like the world was ending. However this time when he eventually did look to see the identity of his companion, he was relieved to see it was the more familiar sight of his best friend. Sighing, he set his pen back down on his desk, knowing it was be completely pointless to attempt to do any paperwork with House in the room, because House was in the room to talk about something and would not stand for Wilson's attention to be on anything but him. He let out a resigned sigh and raised his eyebrows at his best friend. "Was there anything in particular you wanted or do you just want to disturb me?"
House remained silent for a moment longer, as if he was thinking hard about something, then sat down on the sofa, still in complete silence. It was almost another minute before he actually spoke. "As amusing and entertaining as it is to just distract you for no particular reason other than you have a ton of work to do is, I actually need your advice."
Even though he tried extremely hard, Wilson could quite hide the complete and utter shock in his voice. "You're actually asking for my help? And you're not winding me up?" As quickly as the shock had appeared, it was replaced with a dark and almost accusing suspicion.
"No, I'm not actually! Yes, I actually want your help!" House was highly affronted and offended by the accusation because it took him a lot of humility to ask for help from anyone. However, he hoped an explanation would sober him up a bit and actually make him more inclined to help, quickly. "It's about Cuddy. I think I'm going to talk to her."
If he was to get any answer at all, that was not the one that Wilson was expecting – at least, not when House sounded so deadly serious. He knew this time he had to hide his surprise, as any inkling of shock might spook him and Wilson did not want to do anything that might make him change his mind. Instead, he made sure his voice was calm and encouraging. "Okay, well, what's brought this on? Why do you suddenly want to talk to her now when you've been spending the last god knows how long telling me you've got nothing to talk to her about?"
"She's with someone else. Someone else beat me to it, that and the fact that we had an argument and it made me realise that she wasn't going to wait forever for me to be a grown up about that, because she's already given up waiting." Then, he looked up at his best friend and masked the pain in his eyes extremely well, but still found it hard to say the sentence with much strength and conviction in his voice. "She's dating Lucas."
Wilson found it extremely difficult not to let his jaw drop in shock. "Lucas, as in, Lucas Douglas, the private investigator? Lucas Douglas, the man who practically stalked her for almost a month? Lucas Douglas, the only person other than me that you probably would call a friend?"
House pulled a face at him, making it clear that he was not impressed in the slightest by the reaction he got. "Do you mind not repeating that over and over again? Every time I hear his name I get the almost irrepressible need to punch him."
"Oh, right, sorry. Well, if I didn't think it would piss Cuddy off even more than you've already managed to – and yes, I know that you've managed to because she was in here ranting at me about you when you went absent without leave this morning which, by the way, you never actually told me the truth about where you went but we'll discuss that later – I'd suggest you go and do just that. It would make you feel better at least. But instead, you need to vent your anger in another, more healthy way. And you also need to not panic because they won't last. He's too simple and not enough of a challenge – she'll get bored of him following her around like a love sick puppy sooner rather than later, but when that time comes you have to play it delicately. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it anyway." And Wilson said all of this extremely was extremely bizarre – in the back of his mind he was well aware that he was talking to a man his own age, well, if he was honest, probably older than his own age, yet he felt like he was coaching a son on how to go about winning over a girl he liked the look of in the playground. He knew that House and Cuddy had never really grown up from their university days together – that's where their relationship had started and it had set the foundations for everything in years to come.
House remained silent for a couple of seconds, taking in Wilson's advice but then couldn't resist picking up on exactly the same thing that had crossed his best friend's mind. "Remind me why you never had kids again? We're not twelve and she isn't some girl in the playground with pigtails and ankle socks that I want to get to notice me. We work together, and worst of all, she's my boss, and probably the only Dean of Medicine in the entire state that would actually hire me and let me do exactly what I want to do. So I don't think pissing her office by treating her like a school girl is a good idea. I'm just going to be an adult, and go and talk to her." He nodded, as if confirming his actions to himself, then got up from the sofa to leave. He nodded in Wilson's direction to thank him too, but only got as far as putting his hand on the door handle before his companion started to speak.
"House, are you okay?" Even though he knew what answer he was going to get to the question, Wilson asked anyway. For the first time since House had left Mayfield, Wilson was really worried. He'd kept away from the pills so far, but it was fantasizing about her that forced him in to rehab in the first place, and there was a very real possibility and danger that this could force him back on to the drugs to ease the pain. He knew that House would never admit it to him, but he hoped he'd be able to work out the truth from his body language.
"Me? I'm fine, I'm absolutely ecstatic. I've got a new game to play – he may have got in there first, but I'm playing the long game, and I'm going to win in the end." Making sure he looked extremely self satisfied, confident and as close to content as he ever was, even though he didn't actually feel it, House was trying to keep Wilson off his back - though he couldn't quite meet his eyes. However, he looked up slightly and caught a glimpse of the extremely solemn and anxious look on Wilson's face and felt obliged not to ignore it. He took a deep and over exaggerated sigh, then pulled a mock serious face. "Wilson, I'm fine. I'm not back on the drugs, nor am I going back on the drugs. And you know how I know that? Because I thought about it. When I found out it was Lucas, I really considered it. I asked myself why the hell I'm still bothering staying clean and proving to her that I am the man she wants. I also asked myself whether I'm really prepared to put myself through as much emotional pain as this is going to cause me, as well as the physical pain of not taking the drugs, rather than being completely devoid of any sort of pain. And all by myself, I decided that I didn't want to take the pills. Because, in fact, I've waited twenty years for this chance with her and its going to be bloody hard work but I will do my very best. At the end of the day, may the best man win, but I will have absolutely no chance if I go back on the vicodin. And that's the best assurance that I can give you."
Wilson simply nodded, as an indication that House was dismissed from the room, again like a father talking to his son. But as the door shut behind him, Wilson marvelled about how much the man that had just stood in front of him and given him a rational explanation for staying off the drugs had changed. He gave an explanation that involved the feelings of somebody else and he seemed completely dedicated to winning Cuddy's affections. It didn't sound like it would be quite in the most gentlemanly way possible, granted, but that was just House through and through. Wilson truly couldn't believe what Mayfield seemed to have done to him – the last time he had seen House so serious about anything in his life, he had been trying to win his boss over under the premises of a hallucination. Before hand, he wouldn't have believed it possible, but he really did seem like a changed man, in all the ways he needed to be. Well, most of them at least.
Syd, you did ask for Huddy angst ok... XD