Chapter 10
"I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn't over"
House dragged himself from the warm cocoon of his bed, cursing whichever suicidal, God-bothering intruder was intent on hammering his front door into matchsticks. Bad enough that they were trawling for customers on a Saturday, but if after one round of obnoxious pounding at a closed door had gotten no response, they really ought to take a hint.
Stumbling through his living room, he smiled slightly at the discarded beer bottles, a reminder that Wilson was back in the friendship zone. House was more relieved about that than he would admit, but he had been glad to slip in a quick apology about Amber after the beer had loosened both their tongues. If only he hadn't dished the dirt about Cuddy and her sudden oral fixation. Preparing some of his best anti-God material, he threw the door open.
Only to be confronted with the image of his father standing before him.
"Sir?"
"Can't you answer the damned door, boy? I've been standing here for the best part of five minutes." His booming voice made him stand more stiffly by force of habit.
With an ironic glance at his bum leg, House stepped back into the apartment and allowed his father entry.
"What can I do you for Dad? Some people make a telephone call before showing up at the crack of dawn on a weekend."
His father took in the mess of the room before him, eagle eyes not missing a single empty bottle, discarded wrapper or speck of dust. House felt his hackles rising, ready for the inevitable attack.
"There were some things I forgot to give you, and since I'm taking a trip, I thought I'd see you on my way."
House tried to wipe the suspicious look from his face, and limped into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee; it looked as though he would definitely need it.
Formalities dispensed with, House sat nervously on the edge of his own sofa, watching his father pace the limited available floor space. Both men had sipped from their coffee mugs, and a silence that was anything but comfortable had descended. Finally, his father spoke.
"Your mother left some things to you in her will. You need to sign the papers and send them back to the attorney. She also made me promise to try and fix this thing between us, though I'll be damned if I know what to do about that. I thought maybe you could go sailing with me, just a day or so before I set off."
When no elaboration was forthcoming, House pressed his father to explain.
"I thought I told you at home? I still have a boat moored down at the shore, taking a trip down to the Caribbean since I got nothing much better to do these days. A few of my buddies retired down there, and they say the fishing's pretty good."
Unable to bite back his sarcasm, House took aim at his father against his better judgment.
"So despite the fact that you're obviously grieving, you thought it would be wise to be stuck at sea for days with only yourself for company? Yeah, that sounds healthy to me. Great idea."
To House's dismay, his father merely shook his head, not even a shadow of his usual aggression present.
"It's what I need to do. Hell, it's what I would have been doing all these years without your mother. I was quite content by myself until I met her, quite sure I didn't need anything but the job and my drinking buddies. Now she's not around, well, there's not much more I can think of doing. I wasn't really asking for your opinion, boy."
Once more, House's own father had managed to make him feel like he was 12 again.
Resisting the temptation to kick off another fight, House shrugged and began to clean up some of the debris in his apartment.
"Give me 10 minutes and we'll go get breakfast. Not like I have anything in the fridge."
As his father shrugged indifferently, House blinked furiously and told himself that he wasn't looking at his future.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cuddy was sulking.
No, a powerful woman in her 40s didn't sulk; she was simply considering the injustice of the universe.
Sitting in Zach's Range Rover, mud caked from the toes of her brand new hiking boots to the knee of her soggy and soaked jeans. So far, she had resisted the urge to check out her reflection in the passenger side mirror, knowing that rain had the unfortunate habit of returning her hair to its more natural Medusa-like state. Zach was still thrashing around in the mud outside the car, cursing as he threw the remnants of their picnic into the trunk. Cuddy sighed as she wondered why two grown adults with five degrees between them hadn't done anything as smart as checking the weather forecast. A shame, since she had actually been enjoying some outdoor time with her man before the heavens opened.
He finally joined her inside the car, starting the engine with some urgency. With an apologetic smile, he reversed out of the makeshift parking lot and headed for the main road with a speed that made Cuddy nervous given the treacherous conditions. Neither spoke until he joined the freeway, his speed more appropriate for the faster road.
"I'm sorry, Lisa. I wanted one perfect day, and instead I've probably given you pneumonia. There's a fleece blanket in the back you can use."
Zach gave her knee an affectionate squeeze, withdrawing his hand a little too quickly as he came in contact with sodden denim and rapidly drying mud.
"You can't help the rain, Zach. I'm fairly sure I won't get sick if I get home and get changed soon."
He smacked his hands off the steering wheel.
"I just needed today to go well. I had this idea that…Well, it doesn't matter."
Cuddy was at a loss for something to say. Zach's bad mood seemed disproportionate for bad luck with the weather, but this mind-reading situation was generally where she failed at relationships. Opting to keep her own counsel, she reached into the back seat for the fleece and wrapped it around herself for the remainder of the journey.
When they arrived back at her house, she was unsure whether to invite him in. As it turned out, she didn't have to make a decision because he followed her in anyway. She shrugged off her wet clothes en route to the bedroom, puzzled by Zach's silence and apparent lack of interest in her newly naked self. Grabbing her fluffy bathrobe and slippers, she was relieved to burrow into their warmth, cranking the heating to high on her journey back to the sitting room where Zach had taken up residence.
"I really hope I don't regret asking, but what's wrong? A bit of rain isn't that big a deal, Zach."
Cuddy fought to keep the panic from her question. Usually when she was screwing up a relationship, she knew why. Had he sensed the moment when they reached the top of the hill and she had thought suddenly and wistfully about House, how moments like this were lost to him now? It had been unintentional. She was just used to him popping into her thoughts at random, especially on a day like today when she wasn't being paged from the hospital every five minutes.
"It's just… I had this plan. I wanted us to have a wonderful day, so that I could take you out tonight and… oh, I don't know."
Cuddy felt an odd sense of foreboding--this felt a little too much like the weirdness before a breakup and damned if she wasn't used to that.
"Hey, if you don't want to see me anymore, you don't have to buy me dinner to tell me. I understand."
Zach leapt up from his chair so quickly that Cuddy would have been forgiven for thinking the furniture had spontaneously combusted. He grabbed her hand and looked her directly in the eye.
"Lisa, that is the absolute last thing I want. What I wanted today was to make you happy, happy enough that if I were to say something a bit stupid like, 'I love you', you wouldn't freak out about it."
Cuddy's expression froze in a half-smile, her brain unable to adequately process the words she had heard. Was this really happening? Had the perfect guy just told her that he was in love as she stood in a bathrobe with frizzy hair? She felt her brain grasping for a suitable response and failing miserably.
"Don't worry, Lisa, I know it's really early in our relationship and I don't want you to feel pressured into saying anything back. I just wanted you to know as soon as I was sure. It's the first time I've felt this way about a woman in years, and well, there it is."
Zach caressed her hand with his thumb, seemingly entranced by the feeling of her skin under his. Aware that she was standing there with her mouth hanging open, Cuddy suddenly felt pretty dumb.
"I'm having a great time with you Zach, and I think we're going somewhere really wonderful. I hope it's okay that I need a little more time to sort out the whole feelings thing."
She noticed the flash of disappointment in his eyes, though he made a valiant attempt to hide it.
"Not a problem, Lisa, really it's not. Listen, I need to head for my place tonight – I have the assessors coming in tomorrow and I need to actually prepare something for tomorrow's lecture before they get their evaluation sheets out. I'll see you for lunch, maybe?"
Cuddy shrugged, knowing as well as he did that lunch plans were hit and miss at best. She could plan for every eventuality and still something would crop up that would reduce her to grabbing a sandwich en route to a meeting instead.
Zach leaned in and kissed her deeply. There was no denying that the man had an excellent flair for parting shots. Perhaps he expected her to wheedle him into staying, but she had a load of proposals to read over for the finance meeting the next morning, and felt like a quiet evening to get everything done. He was smiling as he left, and Cuddy congratulated herself on managing not to screw up for once.
After a mostly sleepless night, Monday morning brought its own fresh hell for the Dean to navigate: a power failure on the second floor that knocked out a whole bunch of vital equipment, and a backup generator that decided in mid-crisis to now choke up and die. After relocating patients to anywhere with functioning electricity, her limited energy reserves were depleted and she fled to her office for an emergency nap.
So much for sanctuary. Her supposedly locked office had been infiltrated by her least favorite doctor. She shouldn't be surprised, really. She doubted the Pentagon would be able to keep him out if he set his mind to it. Opening her office door, she forced down the relief at seeing him again, at the color in his cheeks and the fact that he was at least vaguely presentable. Perhaps she hadn't given him enough credit for staying functional; he was a grown man after all.
He greeted her with his usual disdain, as though the past week hadn't occurred.
"Wow, that's a slutty blouse. I'm surprised the electricians haven't finished by now. One quick flash of the girls should've had them performing miracles. Well, you are getting older. Anyway, I need approval to cut this kid open, or you know, she'll die. The usual, really."
"Get consent from the parents. I'm not going to override their wishes just because you don't want to deal with them. And give me back the key you stole to get in here."
Cuddy marched past him, all business, in the hope that not engaging him would allow her to reclaim her office and some desperately needed sleep.
"Who says I have a key? You look tired. I'd have thought you'd be past the staying-up-all-night-discussing-your-hopes-and-dreams stage by now. You know your complexion can't cope with it."
Unlike his usual confrontational style, he wouldn't look at her as he landed these jibes, though he did risk the occasional glance to gauge her reaction. Her patience for his mind games was thin at the best of times, but totally non-existent today.
"Oh silly me. For a minute I thought we were discussing something that was any of your damn business!"
She couldn't help her defensive posture, arms crossed reflexively across her abdomen, willing him not to come any closer. For once he seemed to take the damn hint and when he raised his lazy frame from the furniture, he headed directly for the door.
"I'll get Kutner to talk the parents round. You should go buy some of that crap women put under their eyes."
Cuddy waved him away, her gaze falling gratefully on a bag from Armando's Deli sitting atop her morning's neglected paperwork. Realizing that she hadn't eaten since that bowl of soup the previous evening, she attacked the salad it contained with enthusiasm. She smiled at the thought of Zach dropping it off. They had worked out two weeks ago that it was the halfway point between their two offices, and she had sent a quick text mid-morning saying lunch was predictably a no-go.
House watched her from the other side of the glass, a smile forming at the edges of his mouth. He knew by now that in times of crisis her own needs always came last. It was no big deal. He had wanted a better Reuben than the cafeteria could offer, so why not pick up a little something for his boss at the same time? So he remembered to order the Greek salad without olives, since he had seen Cuddy pick them out of countless dishes over the years. It certainly didn't mean that he cared.
It made him feel funny, in a surprisingly good way, to see her devour the green leaves and chunks of feta cheese as though she hadn't eaten in days. She leaned back against the soft leather of her chair and he caught the faint sound of a contented sigh. Twisting the plastic fork between her slim fingers, she chose her next morsel with precision, skewering the helpless bits like a woman possessed. House could hear his brain ordering his feet to keep going, that there was no reason to stand there. The command was ignored as he watched Cuddy trace her finger across the olive oil on her bottom lip, her tongue darting out to finish the job. It was like that British woman on the food channel, the one who treated every meal like soft porn, only much better.
Realizing that he'd be completely busted if he didn't get moving, House turned and began his slow walk towards the clinic exit, only to run straight into Wilson.
"You paged me? Since you weren't in your office, I figured you'd finally decided it was time to pull Cuddy's pigtails again. Seems I was right."
House couldn't stand Wilson's schoolboy smirk so he simply glared at him.
"So why did you page me—with a 911 no less?"
With a quick scan of their surroundings to make sure nobody was in earshot, House leaned in to whisper to Wilson.
"I need a favor."