Summary, disclaimer, etc. in Chapter 1.

This is a clean version of chapter 4. It contains the same adult themes of sexual dysfunction but it is not explicit. It is, however, suggestive in a few places at the beginning. Please be aware of that. The suggestion is T-rated.

To anyone who read chapter 4, this is all the same stuff except for the opening paragraph and a few minor changes in other places. Nothing new.

Chapter 4: Sailor's Delight (clean version)

Playboy: House is described as the thinking woman's sex symbol. But really, why would anyone want to sleep with this guy or spend any time with him afterward? Can a damaged man be fixed?
Laurie: That's an interesting question, but it's not the same as asking if a damaged man can be fixed by women having sex with him. Repeatedly. Why would they make that leap? I don't get it myself.

—20 Questions with Hugh Laurie, Playboy, Jan. 11, 2006

Sometimes you don't want to love the person you love
you turn your face away from that face
whose eyes lips might make you give up anger
forget insult steal sadness of not wanting
to love turn away then turn away at breakfast
in the evening don't lift your eyes from the paper
to see that face in all its seriousness a
sweetness of concentration he holds his book
in his hand the hard-knuckled winter wood—
scarred fingers turn away that's all you can
do old as you are to save yourself from love

—Grace Paley, "Anti-Love Poem" New Yorker Dec. 12, 2005 p. 64

He did know how to make her happy in this way if not in others. But she wanted something more from him. He tried everything he knew; she tried everything she knew. For all their efforts, it wasn't happening. This wasn't going to be the marathon of love making they both wanted. Neither was at fault.

Trying again, trying desperately, she sat up and was reaching for him when he leaned to his left and sat down, palms flat on the bed to hold himself up.

"I can't," he said. He didn't look at her.

"Yes, you can," she said.

He felt her eyes on him.

"Greg. Look at me."

He glanced over briefly before letting himself fall back.

"No," he said, eyes on the ceiling, "I can't." He rubbed his chest, glanced at her as she lay down on her side next to him, and said again to the ceiling, "I can't."

"Not even if I do this?" she said coyly and reached for a special area.

"Don't."

Her hand paused in midair and she looked at him questioningly.

His gaze flickered to hers momentarily. "I can't," he said again.

"Can't?" she asked, "or won't?" And her hand began moving again as she leaned down to kiss him.

"Stop!" He twisted the upper half of his body away and she recoiled.

Her hand fell on his chest as she drooped on the mattress in frustration.

"Why not?" she asked, voice muffled by the comforter.

He didn't answer.

She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at him.

"You never had any problems before," she said. "Even after your surgery."

"Yes, I did," he said. "You just don't remember."

But she did remember. "Is it still easier in the morning?" she asked.

He waited, breathing in and out, remembering. "Yeah," he said after a while. He glanced over at her. "But even then…sometimes…"

She smiled a small wry smile. "I'd ask if you'd tried Viagra but I know you."

House said nothing for a moment. Her hand was still on his chest, playing with the hair there. He hadn't had so much intimate physical contact in a long time. It felt great. He didn't want it to end.

"It's…uncomfortable," he said after a while.

If she was surprised at his admission, she didn't show it.

He pushed himself up on his elbows and her hand fell away.

"Look," he said, "if you just want me back for sex, I don't think it's going to work."

She searched his face. "I don't," she said. She studied him, gauging his reaction. "I miss more than just the sex."

He sat up and stood as quickly as he could, awkwardly bending to retrieve his underwear.

"Either way," he said, "I don't think this is going to work."

She sat up too now and watched him wriggle into his briefs.

"Do you know why I came over here tonight?" she said.

He glanced at her as if she'd asked the most obvious question in the world.

"Other than to sleep with you," she clarified.

He refused to look up but she knew he was listening.

"When…I saw you again for the first time…a few months ago…you were just like I remembered you being before your leg…happened." She paused, thinking, watching him pull a shirt over his head. "You were…just as funny…and irritating…and cocky…as you were when I met you. And even more sexy."

She smiled warmly to herself at the recent memory and how good it felt to say these words.

He'd stopped dressing. He turned to look at her, one hand on his night table to keep himself steady.

"And over the past few months…you've become even more the way I remembered you." She smiled again, looking down for a moment. "You're a nuisance. You're a pest. You're more reprehensible now—" she looked up at him again, "stealing my file, I still can't believe you did that, but God, it's so you."

He had that stunned look on his face she'd seen so often recently.

"Part of the reason I left—a lot of the reason probably—was that you weren't yourself anymore. You had become someone else—someone miserable and mean…and irritable and bitter—but now you're back." Directly she looked at him, explaining and beseeching, asking him to understand. "That's why I came over. I missed you." She looked down again. "It took me a long time to stop fighting it."

House was silent for a moment, his eyes turned to the floor, taking in what she'd just told him.

Then he looked up at her—directly; almost fiercely.

"What makes you think I wanted you back for any reason other than that I couldn't have you?"

She slid to the edge of the bed and stood up.

"Because I know you," she said.

She moved closer to him so that their bodies were almost touching.

"I know what you want," she said.

He could feel her breath on his shoulder through his t-shirt and he was very much aware that she was naked and he was half-dressed. The sight of her and her proximity; it still did things for him even if he couldn't go all the way right now.

"I'm still miserable and mean and irritable and bitter," he said. "More now than I was then."

She put her arms around his shoulders. "I've grown a harder shell," she said and leaned in to kiss him.

He kissed back, tentatively, before breaking it. "You can't just leave Mark," he said.

"You don't give a damn about Mark," she said.

"I don't want someone else to go through what I went through."

"That's a lie," she said.

He stared into her eyes for a long time.

It was a lie. They both knew it.

Then he said, "I don't want to go through it again," and took a step away from her.

She let him go. "I don't believe that," she said evenly.

He limped to his dresser and found a pair of pajama bottoms.

"I can't," he said, not looking at her.

He limped back to the bed and sat down to put them on.

Stacy slipped into her blouse and panties quickly, then sat next to him while he struggled.

She caressed the back of his neck. "I still love you," she said.

House got the bottoms over his right leg and leaned to the left in a quick motion to get them over his hips. "I know," he said.

She sat next to him for a moment longer while he tied the string. Then she got up and finished dressing quickly. He sat and watched her. The scene was so domestic. He was tempted to ask her to throw him a pair of socks and his Vicodin like they were living together again. It felt so much like home.

She leaned down to kiss him. "I'll see you tomorrow at work," she said. She kissed him again: the quick, familiar goodbye kiss of long-time lovers.

He heard her let herself out and fell back on the bed again, eyes on the ceiling.

The apartment was silent and fully lit: a home with no one in it. He was utterly alone.

But strangely enough, he thought as he closed his eyes and recalled the taste of her on his tongue and lips, he felt good.

Yes.

He felt good.

END