Stacy didn't go home, but when she returned to the hospital, House no longer paid her office calls. A week went by without any real contact between the two of them, until Stacy felt like she'd made a complete fool of herself. She walked down to lunch one day with Wilson in hopes of catching House off guard, but he wasn't there, apparently having chosen that day to skip lunch. Maybe, she thought sourly, he'd seen her approaching and escaped to go eat with Cameron and the rest of his precious "ducklings."

Dejected, she stalked back up to her office and plopped down at her desk. Her email yielded little of interest, other than the occasionally amusing name under the "probable spam" category. As she clicked through the pages, she heard the door slide open behind her, followed by the tapping of both a pair of feet and a cane against the ground. The sound was uneven, almost broken, and Stacy swung around in her chair to find House standing lopsidedly in her office doorway, his limp more pronounced than usual.

"Anything good?" He asked, nodding towards the computer. Stacy shook her head.

"Spam and chain letters," she replied, frowning at his slumped posture. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," House muttered, "Peacy keen, how are you?"

Stacy shrugged. "Peachy keen," she echoed. "What can I do for you?"

"Well," House started, "I realized that I never paid you back for dinner the other night." He stopped, and Stacy waited expectantly for him to justify the statement. When he didn't, she raised an eyebrow.

"Greg, when have you ever paid me back for dinner, even when you were expecting it?" She asked. "Keep the money, my treat." She paused. "Do you want to sit down" she asked, vacating her chair abruptly and gesturing for him to take a seat.

"Yes," he said, sliding unceremoniously into her chair. He stretched out his leg, and made a face, his body spasming as he did so. "Haven't made it home yet, I presume."

"No," Stacy agreed. "I'm still staying at the hotel." She added, firmly, "I'm staying at the hotel."

"Not for good, I hope," House commented, trying to flex his leg. "Costs money for every night you're there, not that the hospital can't keep shelling out, not with all the legal trouble I've been getting myself into lately. And let me tell you, I am perfectly willing to get into more if it helps your cause, but that's just between us, don't tell Cuddy."

He waited for a moment in silence, watching Stacy's fingers clicking away at her keyboard, before he continued. "I hear you've been terrorizing my staff."

Stacy looked up at him. "What?"

House shrugged. "Cameron says that you and she had a bit of a run in a week or so ago. I can't condone you women going at it over me, not at the workplace. Fight over me on your own time, why don't you, but don't clutter up the office with that kind of hormonal conflict."

Stacy stared calmly in front of her, choosing not to respond. Unperturbed, House watched her for a few more moments before continuing. "Cuddy, Wilson and I are going out for a few drinks tonight, if you want to come with us."

Stacy stopped typing. "Are you sure? I thought you were kicking the habit."

"You can bring Mark, if you really want to," House added, pointedly. "But I don't like him, he's stuffy."

Stacy nodded, trying to ignore the disappointment that came unbidden, and continued rifling through her email, before closing her program and swiveling around to face him. "Sure, I'll be there, assuming Wilson and Cuddy don't mind."

House snorted. "Please. They'll be happy for someone else to talk to. That you didn't have to be told." He pushed himself slowly from the seat, averting his face so that Stacy caught only the shudder that shot through his body as his legs touched the ground. "We'll see you at eight, then," he added, and departed, leaving Stacy staring contemplatively at his back.

She wondered to herself if that was his purpose all along, for her to be a mitigating force to those friends and forced companions that he had to entertain against his will along the way. Men like him were notorious for treating women like that, stringing them along, using them as crutches to get to an end. A means to an end, she thought.

As promised, at the end of the day she found herself walking through a crowded downtown bar, looking for the sign of a cane sticking out into an aisle. She was alerted of House's prescence by a waitress stumbling over something protruding from a corner.

"I'm sorry," she heard Wilson say, and the can retracted itself back into the booth. "We'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

Stacy made her way over to the table where she found Wilson sitting next to House, across from Lisa Cuddy, who looked like she was a cross between sorry that she'd come, and amused that she'd been invited to a fest of the two stooges. When she saw Stacy, should stood up, and called out to her with a warmth of relief in her voice. "Stacy! Over here, we're glad you could make it"

Stacy slid into the seat next to Cuddy, and folded her arms beneath her chin. Wilson smiled at her, waved politely. House nodded in her direction. "Stacy," he said, "decided to ditch late night showtime movies alone to join us tonight."

She ignored him. Wilson inclined his head, raising an eyebrow. "How have you been holding up, lately?"

Stacy suddenly felt as she had weeks ago, as if she was suddenly surrounded by a group of extremely well meaning simpletons, who failed to care as much about her actual feelings on the matter as they did about the juicy tidbits of gossip they'd get from the encounter. Glancing over at House, she saw him roll his eyes at her, and she thought for a moment that she might have seem him wink lopsidedly, before gesturing at Cuddy.

"Cuddy tells us," House began, "that you're going to go shack up with her for a bit. Two hot babes in one apartment, I salivate at the very thought."

"Lisa's offered," Stacy said, attempting to be demure, "But I don't think I want to impose."

"And yet you'd impose on me," House noted. "Must be my darkly intense good lucks. Women love cripples. We're not threatening, but there's something very intriguing about being needed." He said this disdainfully, and Cuddy shot him an irritated look. Stacy, as usual, ignored him. In the back of her mind, she wondered why he'd choose to tease her now, when a week ago he'd put her from his house for being attracted to those same darkly intense good looks.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Wilson asked helpfully.

"Sure," Stacy nodded. "Sounds good to me."

Author's Note: Thank you to EVERYONE for all of your comments, they've been very constructive, and I will try to take all of them into consideration when writing this story.

I have only one rebuttal to make. ;)

I understand that it is important to follow through with House's kicking the addiction, and so I've made sure to try and make note of the fact, chapter to chapter, that he is suffering. HOWEVER. This is not a story about angsthurtcomfort House and his inability to cope. That is a plot device, something that must be remembered, but is really just a means to a metaphor. There are several fics which expound greatly on House and his addictions and pains, which I will gladly recommend to you if that is what you are looking for, but I personally do not wish to write every waking moment of House's life as pain, misery, and suffering. The man knows how to deal with pain, not to say he does not have any. He will probably not spend all of his time bemoaning his fate, and neither, therefore, will I.

I am also firmly aware of the effects of pain drugs. Having recently been involved in an irreversible accident myself, and no, I'm not making this up for sympathy's sake, I know on a smaller scale what it feels like and how it is dealt with. Please, bear with me.

Yours, Rebecca 