Cuddy kept a close eye on House and tried not to be too obvious about it. She really didn't have to worry, House was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice, and most assuredly would have said something if he had. For hours he sat quietly and pretended to watch television with Cuddy curled up beside him. The only conversation came from the people in the movies that played, interrupted only by the rattle of the Vicodin bottle.

The diagnostician fought another losing battle to stay awake before he had to call a truce and stumble back to bed, where he fell into a restless slumber. Cuddy was on edge, and his every twitch and jerk woke her up. It wasn't until well into the early hours that she was able to keep her eyes closed simply because she was so worn out.

No nightmares, on that night anyway. Right now that was a very good thing.

They both managed to drag themselves to the kitchen the next morning. House switched on the coffee maker, then took one look at his lover's haggard face and fixed her a bowl of cereal before making his own breakfast. The smell of the frying eggs made Cuddy a bit queasy, not that she was feeling all that hot to begin with.

"I'm keeping you awake," he said as he set a plate of toast and eggs on the table and slid into a chair. A Vicodin was chased with orange juice. "I'll sleep alone tonight."

"Are you going to actually sleep?" Cuddy asked pensively, picturing him pacing around his apartment for hours on end to avoid facing another nightmare. He could probably go for days before collapsing, he had done it before.

House smushed up the eggs and piled them on his overdone toast. "Maybe I will, maybe I won't. There's no reason why you shouldn't. This isn't your problem."

"We're a couple, remember? Your problems are my problems, and vice-versa," she said while aimlessly stirring her Grape Nuts around the bowl. "There's no reason for you to wake up screaming bloody murder."

"I'll be fine. You don't have to worry yourself to death about it."

"You're not fine," she practically spat. "Dreaming of me being mangled by a car is not fine. Not fine at all. Something is eating away at you and we need to find out what it is."

"We do?" House frowned. "Can't a nightmare just be a nightmare?"

"Not this time. Is something bothering you, Greg?"

"There's always something bothering me. Feel free to pick any of them, Lisa, and you don't have to pick just one."

"What's bothering you?" Some of House's stubbornness was rubbing off on her. Right now that was a bad thing.

"Let's see..." he sighed, getting annoyed. "There's my leg, and my pain, and the lingering memories of Stacy for starters. Oh, I'm a drug addict too, can't forget that one. But I'm surprised you haven't pointed the obvious."

"Obvious?"

"This is my subconscious giving me a message, telling me that I'm terrified of losing you. Yes, that's obvious, but it's too damned easy," House said with a small tired smile.

The Grape Nuts had turned into a thick gooey mess, but Cuddy kept eating. No words, she quietly waited for him to continue.

"It's never that easy," the doctor said. "It never is, never is. If it was we wouldn't be sitting here talking about. I would have figured it out by now, my subconscious would be satisfied, and we'd be on our merry way."

"You've had this nightmare twice now," the Dean of Medicine told him as if it were breaking news.

"So?"

"You don't get enough sleep as it is and now you're getting scared to sleep because you don't want to have it again. That should tell you something if nothing else."

"Yeah, silly me, that's because there's nothing in this world I love more than seeing the one person I care about getting smashed to pieces right before my eyes." The anger rose in his voice. For a few seconds Cuddy thought he was going to hurl his plate across the room, but he settled back, still gripping his glass so hard his knuckles were white, the bones ready to cut through his skin. "You always have an answer, what is it?"

House waited silently for an answer. The clock ticked the minutes away.

"There has to be something we can do. I'll look into it," Cuddy finally offered and steeled herself for snarky reply that didn't come forward.

"Fine." House said as if it were the answer to everything. "You do that. In the meantime get some sleep because you're going to need it."

The doctors didn't say another word as they finished breakfast.