A few weeks later

Jen had gradually been spending more and more time at his apartment. It wasn't something they'd discussed, but House hated being at her place, with the constant stream of other people coming and going; and the knowledge that any noise or movement in Jen's bedroom would be overheard by her sister effectively squashed his desire. Besides, he'd started to get the feeling that she preferred being at his place anyway.

True to her word, since she'd asked him that night if she meant more to him than sex, she'd never asked anything further, never initiated any kind of "where are we going?" type of conversation. He was relieved about that. Mostly.

At first he thought he'd resent having her around so much, but it hadn't worked that way. In fact, now he actually looked forward to going home, knowing that she would be there, that she would most likely have cooked him something to eat and that he'd generally get to have sex as well. She often made him lunch, did his laundry, and seemed to love fussing over him. She also seemed to know when to disappear, going back to her place to sleep every now and then, joining her sister and her friends for a night out, or leaving him alone or to have a poker night with the guys – but not before preparing some snacks and food for him to serve them.

House had to accept that it seemed like he was built to be in a relationship. He enjoyed being taken care of. And as long as he still had independence and a certain amount of alone-time, he actually began to thrive. He felt healthier. He was taking less Vicodin. He slept well. He stopped plotting revenge at anyone at work who told one of the "House-wife" jokes that had circulated after the fundraiser. And at that, even Cuddy had looked at him sideways, although he knew she wouldn't say anything – she was too scared to disturb whatever it was that was making him less of a pain in her ass.

Today, he was bored. He hadn't had a decent patient in for almost a week. Oh sure, he'd been sent a few charts, but none of them had been actually interesting and he'd sent his team off to deal with them – which they'd done, easily.

He knew himself well enough to know that bored House very quickly became destructive House and that's exactly what he was doing.

He'd spent his morning surfing the net, catching up on some reading and then cottoned on to the brilliant idea of making nuisance calls to Jen – suggestions for dinners she could cook him, new sex toys for them to try – he'd even read her a review of a movie he wanted to see. At first she'd been charmed, he could tell that she loved him calling her. But after a while, perhaps his sixth or seventh call of the day when he'd called to read her a joke he'd got via email, her tone had become clipped and she'd told him she needed to get back to work. He could tell he'd veered into "annoying" territory. His instinct told him to push it further, see how many times he could call before she stopped answering her phone or told him to get fucked.

He knew something had changed when instead he made his way into Wilson's office, realising it had been quite a long time since he'd just wandered in with the simple purpose of making his friend's life painful.

Wilson looked up at the intrusion and House was a little startled. Wilson looked, well, pleased to see him.

"House. Haven't seen you for a while."

"Ah, so many people to annoy, so little time…" House said airily.

Wilson pushed back from his desk. "No patient then?"

"Nah. Well, yeah, but nothing interesting."

"Right. How's Jen?"

"Good, good," House replied, wondering when it was that he and Wilson had slipped into small talk like strangers. "How's Amber?"

"Like you care."

House smirked. Good. The real Wilson was still there.

"Exactly. Wanna go bowling?"

Wilson looked at his watch. "House it's not even noon. I've got a patient arriving in five minutes. How about we grab lunch together after that instead?"

House shrugged. He didn't want lunch. He wanted to escape the hospital and go do something else. Jen was at work, Wilson wouldn't play… House picked up a puzzle toy from Wilson's desk and began fiddling with it.

"Awww," he whined. "I wanna go bowling."

"No bowling House," Wilson said warningly, his tone quickly warming up to its usual lecturing level. "Cuddy told me you're still months behind with your charting and what about actually supervising your team? You could catch up on some of your outstanding clinic hours if you were really pressed for something to do. Or go home and cook your girlfriend a romantic dinner – sounds to me like you owe her one or ten."

House smiled. He obviously hadn't given Wilson enough opportunities to lecture him in the past few weeks, and it was something Wilson needed. Wilson needed to lecture House in the same way that House needed to annoy him enough to provoke it – it was their symbiotic relationship, and it worked for them both.

"All right, lunch. I'll go play in the clinic until then. See if I can scare me up a trifecta of STDs. Wanna bet twenty bucks I can get in three crotch rots before lunch?"

Wilson shook his head, trying hard to look disapproving, but House could see the smile he tried to hide.

As House was leaving the office, Wilson called out to him.

"I heard a good one today, House."

"What?"

"How many of House's wives does it take to change a light bulb?" Wilson recited.

House groaned and clasped his hands over his ears. "No, not a new one."

"One. She just stands next to House and waits for the world to revolve around him."

"Funny, Wilson," House said deadpan, walking out and closing the door without so much as cracking a smile.

"You're hilarious," he called from the corridor outside as he could still hear Wilson's chuckles from within.


--

House saw Wilson's startled look when he produced a container filled with leftovers and salad at lunch.

"Jen made me lunch," he said, his eyes daring Wilson to say a thing about it. Wilson shook his head.

"You've got it cushy, House. Your shirt even looks ironed."

His phone rang while they were eating and when he saw it was Jen he couldn't resist answering it, even though it was pretty much the only time he and Wilson had spent one-on-one in a couple of weeks. There was satisfaction in letting Wilson know that he'd interrupt their time together to talk to Jen. Just like Wilson would if Amber called him.

"Hi sexpot, what you up to?" House never used endearments, but he did it then because he thought it might annoy Wilson. Instead Wilson smiled a sappy kind of smile and House knew he was thinking instead that he had gone soft. Damn.

But then Jen's sob immediately distracted him.

"Greg, my dad has had a stroke."

"Oh." House didn't quite know what to say in response, and it was such a sudden change to the playful and silly mood he'd been in all day. Not only that, but he wasn't very good at comforting words, especially not in public and not in front of Wilson. "How's he doing?"

"Not good. He's in ICU. Sarah and I are flying to Boston to be there for him and Mom. Sarah's organising flights. I think we're trying to get out this afternoon." Jen was obviously crying, her words chopped up by shaky breaths.

Wilson narrowed his eyes, noting the change in House's tone and posture.

"Oh, well, that's probably a good idea," he said, still not quite sure what the right thing to say was.

She paused, seemingly waiting for him to say something. When he didn't, she sniffed. "I'll call you when we get there."

"Yeah, give me a call and let me know what's going on. If I can help on the medical side of things I will." He knew a couple of people in Boston, could call in a favour if he had to. Well, not a favour as such. Very few people owed him favours, but he still had ways of getting them to do what he wanted.

"Thanks." Jen's tone didn't sound too thankful. "Gotta go."

She hung up before he could say anything more.

Wilson raised his eyebrows in unspoken question.

"Jen's dad had a stroke," House explained. "She's flying to Boston with her sister this afternoon."

"Then what are you still doing here?"

"What? I'm not going to Boston!" House was surprised Wilson would even suggest it.

"No, but you don't exactly have a busy afternoon. You could go pick her up, give her a hug, help her pack, take her to the airport."

"Nah, I'd just get in her way."

Wilson shook his head. "Yeah, House. You probably would."

House could see no logical reason why he should leave work to help Jen. Sure he wasn't busy, but she had a lot to get organised and she'd be upset about her dad. Surely she'd just want to be left alone and get on with things.

It was what he'd want.


--

Out of boredom he actually found himself back in the clinic that afternoon, thinking to himself that things must be rough if it had come to this: actually volunteering for clinic duty. Especially on a Tuesday. He had no idea why, but the clinic on Tuesdays always seemed to attract the weirdest, most idiotic patients. But he wanted to be distracted, didn't want to spend any more time wondering if he'd done something wrong with the way he'd handled Jen. It didn't matter anymore really – she'd sent him a text message to say they'd got a flight, and according to that she'd already be at the airport by now. It was too late to wonder if Wilson was right, if he should have been more helpful.

He grabbed a chart without looking at it and headed for an exam room. A thirty-something man was in there, turned away. He spun around when House entered and House's eyes narrowed, already starting the diagnostic process. Blood-shot eyes, pale skin, several facial piercings, greasy hair, slightly sweaty, shallow breaths…it even looked like the guy might have the shakes. Flu? DTs? Some rare tropical disease? House sighed – he couldn't be that lucky.

"So, what seems to be up with you?" He sat down heavily onto a wheeling stool, rolling himself across to grab some gloves from the dispenser.

"Oh doc, it's not me, it's the girls." House belatedly noticed a double stroller in the room and flipped open the chart as the man reached in a scooped up a baby.

"I think they might need to come back into the hospital for a bit, they're not sleeping and they cry all the time…"

"Well, that's what babies do…" House started blithely, until he saw the father lay the floppy body of the silent infant on the examination table, its skin blue-tinged. He leapt across the room and flung open the door.

"I need a crash cart and some help in here!"

House ignored the man's constant questions, working with the nurses who arrived to bring life back into the tiny body. Finally, the baby began to turn pink and he could tell he wasn't the only one who experienced a rush of relief when it uttered a small cry.

They all stepped back, taking a moment to calm down from the rush of adrenaline.

Afterwards, House wasn't sure what made him do it, but something in the back of his mind itched and he turned away, walking over to the baby carriage. As soon as he looked at the twin girl there was no room for further conscious thought. He dropped his cane and bent down and grabbed the child, and in just a couple of limped strides was back to the examination bed, lying a second blue baby down.

"Come on people, lets do it again."


--

As distractions went, it was a good one. By midnight that night the twin girls were just barely stable in the hospital's NICU. As soon as their breathing had stabilised they began vomiting blood – within barely minutes of each other.

House and his team had run multiple tests, but no conclusive results had come back yet, so they were still in the dark about what might be the cause of their dramatic illness. They'd even examined the father from top-to-toe, House convinced by his appearance that he must be sick, but eventually they'd concluded that he had no virus or other illness; he was just father to two newborns and hadn't slept properly for days.

House wished he still had Chase's neonatal experience on his team.

"I'm going home," he announced finally, having stared at the white board long

enough to leave reflections of it on his retinas. The board was divided in two halves, one titled "genetic" the other "environmental". With both babies sick with the same thing at the same time, he was sure it would be something under one of those two headings.

"Yeah, there's nothing we can do until we get the new tests back anyway," Kutner agreed.

Thirteen walked back into the conference room from having been down the NICU.

"Something weird," she said, a little uncertain.

"What?" House demanded as he continued to pack things into his backpack. Anything weird could be a clue.

"The twins' mother hasn't come in. The dad's still there but no mom."

"She still alive?" House asked.

"House!" Taub exclaimed.

"What?" he asked defensively as the team muttered about his insensitivity. "It's one of the possible options. Death in childbirth still happens, you know."

Taub pulled the charts back to him and flipped to the last pages.

"The records we have only go up to when they were discharged from the hospital. Five weeks in NICU after they were born at 33 weeks by caesarean," he read. "Mother took a while to recover from surgery, but I don't have any further info on her here. But definitely still alive." He emphasised.

"Dig up the mother's chart. Tell me what you find. See you tomorrow."

He got home, tired, but with his brain still whirling. He didn't even remember Jen or her dad until he was in the bathroom and saw a box of tampons open next to the sink. Well, that explained why she'd seemed so irritable, anyway. It was too late to call, so he made a mental note to get in touch in the morning. He figured if her father's condition had become more serious she would have let him know.

He wandered into the kitchen, feeling peckish. He wondered if she'd had a chance to cook anything before she'd left. He opened the refrigerator and was disappointed to find it empty. Well, empty of anything he could reheat in the microwave.


--

Saturday

House and Taub walked into the NICU to check on the twins' status – over the five days since they'd been admitted their conditions had stabilised briefly and then continued to decline, each twin following exactly the same pattern. They were still determined it had to be genetic or environmental, given that both babies had identical symptoms. But they had yet to come up with anything definitive.

The father was sitting in a chair near their cribs, his head cradled in his hands.

"I didn't want this, I didn't want this," he kept repeating to himself quietly.

House frowned, wondering what he meant. "Where is your wife?" he asked without preamble.

The father sat up abruptly, obviously surprised by House's words. He gave both doctors a brief glance before look back down at his feet.

"She's…" he drew in a breath. "She's too sick to come in."

"What do you mean sick? You told Dr Taub that your wife was healthy." House frowned at Taub and Taub began to stutter a protest.

"Physically yes," the father said. He shuddered and seemed to reach some internal decision. He looked up and House was momentarily shocked by the desperation in the man's eyes. "Mentally no. She barely gets out of bed anymore. She didn't even come to visit the twins in hospital once she was discharged. She ignores them completely."

"You mean you've been looking after the babies alone?" Taub asked, surprised.

"Both our families live interstate and after the first visits from the nurse there's been no one else…"

Both doctors cringed with embarrassment as the man began to cry.

"I didn't want this…I didn't even want kids in the first place…" he said again, swallowing hard and trying to bring his emotions under control. "Need…sleep…need my life back…" he said sniffing.

House sighed irritably. This wasn't getting them anywhere, but he had the feeling the father knew more than he was letting on. He needed someone who'd sit with the guy and sympathise and cajole him into revealing whatever it was he was hiding. Someone who had that perfect blend of inherent sincerity and hard-learned deviousness.

He needed…

Cameron.

Thirteen would have to do. He wasn't sure why, but Cameron had been avoiding him even more than usual lately.


--

Saturday evening

House got back to his office, still musing over what they'd eventually discovered. He'd thought his threshold for people's stupidity and cruelty was pretty high. It took a lot to shock him, but this case had affected him.

Not that he'd be letting anyone know that.

Through the day, the twins had progressively deteriorated and when their organ systems began to fail – the point of no return – he'd made Thirteen quiz the dad again. After a heart-to-heart, the father had admitted that he had been feeding the babies ever-increasing doses of ibuprofen to make them sleep. At first he'd stayed within the recommended dosages, but as his exhaustion and despair had mounted, he'd decided that he needed to get the babies sick enough to be admitted back into hospital. Then he'd planned to disappear.

But his guilt wouldn't let him escape once it became clear exactly how sick he'd made his daughters. The idiot had no idea that a seemingly innocent, drug-store medicine could do so much damage. Couldn't believe that he'd killed them. Not even when the police came and took him away.

House still felt nauseous about watching the two babies die. The drug had laid waste to their stomach and intestines, not even the most dexterous surgeon able to fix the multiple ulcers and tears, let alone their tiny livers that had collapsed under the strain of trying to filter out the massive doses of drugs they'd been poisoned with. They'd simply bled until they had no more blood left – there was no point transfusing them, it was all too late. Far too late. He wandered into the conference room where his team all sat, silently, as if needing the reassurance of other people's presence, but not talk.

He sat at the end of the table and nodded towards Taub. "What were their names?"

"Jessica and Taylor," he replied, not even acknowledging the oddness of the request.

House just nodded.

"I'm going to have a drink," Taub said, rising from the table and packing up to leave. "Anyone want to join me?"

"Sounds good," Thirteen added, also getting up.

"What about you?" Kutner turned to House.

House waved them away. "Go, get drunk. It's what I'm gonna do to. Alone."

Once his team had gone, House spent a little while staring out the window at the sunset. His mind thankfully kind of blank. Then he got up and started packing up, planning to head home to a bottle of whisky.

He checked his cell phone and saw two missed calls from the last three hours – both from Jen. He called his message bank and cringed as her voice reminded him that she was flying in from Boston and he was supposed to pick her up – he looked at his watch – about an hour ago. The second message was from just twenty minutes ago, Jen at the airport, telling him she was getting a cab and that she'd see him later.

He felt bad. Guilty. He had promised to pick her up. She'd been in Boston for five days and he'd spoken to her only once in all that time, getting a quick debrief on her dad's condition and telling her that he'd see her at the airport. He'd only agreed to do that because he was already feeling guilty about not being better at sympathy, at not being the type of person she needed right then.

Great, guilt trip on top of guilt trip. On top of feeling shit about the assholes in the world who would kill babies to get a good night's sleep.

This was why he avoided relationships.


--

Jen was absolutely exhausted. She was the sensible one in her family, the reliable, smart, dependable one, and when she and Sarah arrived in Boston, their mother had collapsed into a mess of tears and terror. Their father was still in ICU, but the doctors were positive about his outlook.

So Jen had spent the next couple of days dealing with health insurance, hospital administrators and doctors, and finding care options to help her parents when her dad got out of hospital. Sarah had comforted their mother, keeping her stocked with magazines and coffee and trying to ensure that her hysteria didn't affect their dad.

Her father's speech returned quickly and if another person told her that that was a "good sign" she felt like she'd hit them. It might well be a good sign, but he still couldn't move his left arm or leg properly and his face still had the odd twist to it that made him look not quite like her dad.

Sarah had been able to arrange a few days off work, so she was staying on until Wednesday to help out. Jen had to go back to work Monday, but found she could get a flight almost two hundred dollars cheaper if she flew out on Saturday instead of Sunday so, although feeling guilty about leaving Sarah, she'd decided to save the money. By the time she'd left, her father was out of ICU and they'd even encouraged him to get out of bed, although it would be a long while before he walked properly again – if ever.

The fact that Greg hadn't come to the airport – or even left her a message to say he wasn't coming – hadn't really surprised her, although she'd still been disappointed. And stupidly hopeful enough to wait around for forty minutes in case he was running late.

The fact that they'd only spoken once in the whole time she'd been away should have been a clue.

He told her he had a patient, a sick baby or something, and of course Jen felt very sorry for the sick baby, but she felt very sorry for herself as well. All she wanted was a hug. She just wanted his arms around her and for him to tell her that everything was going to be all right, even though they both would know that it wasn't.

She'd told the cab driver to take her home, but as they drove along, the city lights starting to come on, she changed her mind and gave him Greg's address.

He might not even be there. He might not be happy that she'd presume to go to his place without him. But she didn't care. She couldn't face her own empty apartment.


--

House noticed the lights were on when he pulled up outside his place, but he didn't really process what that meant until he walked in and saw Jen sitting on his sofa. With a sigh, he dumped his stuff, mentally preparing for her attack. His normal strategy was to attack first, put the other person on the defensive, but tonight he didn't have the energy. He figured he'd just take it on the chin, and that might help relieve some of his guilt too.

He sat down heavily on the sofa next to her. She didn't look at him, just sat staring at the blank television screen. He wondered absently how long she'd been sitting in silence, staring into space. He knew how comforting that could be sometimes.

After just another few seconds' silence, Jen practically threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder. She wasn't crying, but her breathing was laboured, as if she was holding back tears.

Momentarily shocked, House sat frozen. Yet again, her reaction was not what he expected, not what he'd planned for. He wondered if her father was worse, or even if he'd died. But no, she would have told him if that had happened. Like him, she'd just had a rough few days.

Slowly he wrapped his arms around her, leaning down to kiss her hair, breathing in the now-familiar floral scent of her shampoo and the faint but unmistakable whiff of aeroplane air-conditioning.

There was comfort to be gained from just holding another person, he realised. A connection outside of sex, somehow both simpler and more complicated.

He tightened his arms around her, thinking about the stupid, idiot father, and the two lost children who'd probably had very little affection in their short lives.

"It's okay," he said, not sure where the words were coming from. "Everything will be okay."

But he knew it wouldn't. Because the world didn't work like that.