A/N: Short update, another partial chapter, but it filled the available time, and it seemed to end well here. Hopefully more soon.
(H/C)
House tried to prepare himself as he opened the door into his house. Even so, the force of the girls' greeting rocked him. "Daddy!" It was a stereo salutation, Abby almost as fast there as Rachel for once.
"Hi, girls." He picked them up one at a time for a hug. Rachel was a bit impatient when she had to be put down for her sister's turn, but she knew that he couldn't hold both of them at once. Not while he was standing. "Did you miss me?"
"Uh huh. We went to the park! There was a puppy!" Rachel started to launch into a recital of her day.
"With pots," Abby specified.
House could usually follow her thoughts, but he was too tired tonight. "Pots?"
"On the puppy," Rachel confirmed.
Marina rescued him from a mental image of a puppy in a kitchen, wearing an apron and a Wilsonish expression while it whipped up a gourmet meal using a whole assortment of pots and pans. "Spots," she clarified. "It was a beagle."
"Oh, spots."
"I wanna puppy," Rachel started.
House grinned. "I doubt Belle would approve." He doubted Cuddy would approve, either, especially not a beagle. He could just picture her expression the first time it went roo-roo-rooing through the house in the middle of the night at a passing possum or something out in the yard.
Rachel gave him an impish grin. "I wanna pony, then."
He laughed outright. "Bargaining up, are you? I'll let you in on a secret, Rachel. Maybe, someday, when you've grown a little more, we can manage a pony."
"Yay!" She went galloping off to find the stuffed Ember, all thoughts of beagles driven clear out of her head.
House turned to Abby, who was standing at his left side. "What do you want someday, Abby?" he asked her.
She took a few moments to consider it. Really, the kid could look frighteningly analytical at 2 1/2. Then she said, "Music like you."
He picked up one of her small hands, comparing it to his. "You're going to have to grow some, too, but I think you'll get your wish."
She smiled and spontaneously gave his good leg a hug. Rachel was heard in the distance, coming back to the accompaniment of her stuffed horse's sound effects, and Marina spoke softly before she could get back in the room. "Do you want me to stay, Dr. House? You could probably get in an hour's nap before Dr. Cuddy gets home. I'll distract them."
Tempting, but he was afraid once he got to bed tonight, he wouldn't get back up. Cuddy wasn't likely to wake him. Besides, his girls had been shortchanged last night, and he wanted to see . . . well, he ought to be out here when everybody else was, helping to draw some of her parents' attention. He knew she would probably dig her heels in and kick them all out early tonight anyway. "No, I'll just play with them for a while." He took a step, and his leg, still a bit offended from his crawling on Kutner's closet floor, protested more than usual. "On second thought . . ."
Rachel wasn't waiting for second thoughts. She cantered up and squeezed the whinny ear. "Ember says hi, Daddy!"
"Hi, Ember."
"Belle says hi," Abby pointed out. Sure enough, the white cat had appeared and was sitting a short distance away, studying him as if deciding whether to forgive him for being gone last night.
He didn't respond quickly enough, and Rachel poked his arm. "Say hi, Daddy!" she prompted.
"Hi, Belle." The cat blinked, then slowly stood and sauntered over to sniff his ankles. He smiled. "I haven't been with any other cats, I promise."
That reminded Rachel. "We saw Jet!"
"I heard about that."
"Belle said GRRRRRRR! SSSSSTTTTTTTTT!" Abby had such a great rendition of it that Belle herself broke off her inspection of House's ankles and looked at the toddler. Her ears went back. Then she turned and stalked off, tail erect, dignity bruised at the mockery but still present.
"But she licked him, too," Abby continued.
Marina broke in gently, not wanting to interrupt the family time, but she thought House had lost track of his intentions himself. The poor man looked exhausted. "On second thought?" she reminded him.
He turned to her blankly, and it took a few seconds to click. Oh, yes. "If you could keep an eye on them just five more minutes, I wouldn't mind taking a quick shower." Maybe it would settle his leg and also give him a second wind for the evening with all the parents.
"No problem. Come here, girls." They both objected, but she drew them aside skillfully as House promised to be back in just a few minutes.
The hot water was heaven. Five minutes turned to ten and then fifteen as he let it soothe not only his leg but also other muscles that he hadn't even realized were tight. He did indeed feel more human as he got out, and his leg was a little better. He applied a heat patch, put on clean but comfortably old clothes, and finally went over to the nightstand, exchanging Kutner's watch for his grandfather's. He took a moment to admire the workmanship and to read again the inscription on the back. This is your time, my son.
A cheerful clatter sounded from the kitchen as he opened the bedroom door, and this time, his imagination offered up his daughters as beagle puppies with human heads, spots, and pots, cooking busily. He limped down the hall and then around the corner to investigate.
Marina was working on mixing up something in a large bowl, and the girls were "helping," getting out an impossibly excess number of pots and pans from the lower cabinets.
The game ended as soon as they spotted him. Abandoning their mess in the middle of the floor for the nanny to cope with, they charged over again. "Daddy!" "Mama called."
"She called?" His mind was still lagging, as his first thought was that he hadn't heard his cell phone ring.
"She called me," Marina said, not looking back from her mixing bowl. "She wanted me to start the meal so it would already be cooking before she got home."
"Oh." How organized of her, preparing in advance for the relatives to cut down dead time, but he still felt a little overlooked. "Did she want to talk to me?"
"No." Marina's hands were busily kneading the contents of the bowl, but she added after a few seconds, "She did want to make sure you'd gotten home."
"Daddy, come on!" Rachel was tugging at him, wanting him to go back into the living room. He followed her, guessing her intention, and sure enough, she scrambled onto the couch. He sat down beside her, and she climbed into his lap, as did Abby. As did Belle. Buried beneath his girls, he sat back and let the tensions of the day start to unwind. Family was even better than a shower for aching muscles and minds.
"Daddy?" Abby asked.
He looked over into those startling eyes that were his own. Somehow, they looked better in her face, he thought. "What?"
"You fix the sick people?"
"You mean the one I was working with last night?" She nodded. He tried to think up an explanation she could understand, an answer that was neither yes nor no. He didn't want to frighten her, but she had radar for evasion on answers to questions. "Kind of. I know why he's sick. Now we have to wait and give the medicine time to work. He's still sick, but the medicine is helping."
She smiled ear to ear. "You fixed him."
"I didn't quite. . . he's not well yet."
Rachel chimed in. "You give him med'cine. That fixes him."
Abby nodded. "You give good med'cine."
The old fear suddenly seized him again. They trusted him too much, looked up to him too much. What would happen when he disappointed them? He scrambled to change the subject. "Tell me about Jet."
"Belle's fused," Abby said, returning to her earlier point.
"People get confused lots of times, so I guess cats are entitled now and then." Belle, who had worked herself into position over his bad thigh, gave him a cold golden glare.
"Jet was asleep." Rachel launched into a description. "He's black and little, a little kitten."
"All kittens are little," he said. It was a game they had, him pretending not to understand and protesting little points in a description to make his girls expand on it. Abby usually quickly grew annoyed with it, but Rachel loved it.
"No, he's little." She held her hands out, and he was impressed. Even at the vet's rough guesstimate of 16 weeks, Jet should have been bigger than that. "And he's soft. Real soft."
"How soft? Soft as a book?"
Rachel giggled. "Books aren't soft, Daddy. Soft like . . . like a blanket."
"No." Abby objected to that description, but she quickly dodged to a bigger issue for her. "Big Band-Aid on his leg."
Rachel had been about to argue softness quantification with her sister, but she got sidetracked in sympathy. "Poor Jet."
"What kind of Band-Aid, Abby?" House asked, curious how much she had observed of it. "Pretend I'm Jet." He started to shift, then realized again with a pang that there was no way he could get on all fours to emulate a quadruped. The old man had done it Friday night, even with his recent injuries, and had been a horse for the girls to boot. But House couldn't, not to be a kitten, much less a horse, not even on a good day. And today wasn't a good day. Finding out that part of Friday night's events had stung. He'd been just waiting for Thomas to point his failure there out, to apologize for being stronger at 75 or to pity him, but the old man had remained silent.
Abby stood up at his side. "It went here, and here." She pulled on his right arm, getting it out straight, and traced a path up around his shoulder and across his back. Even in the middle of her demonstration, she paused as she started to come around his chest on the left side. "You okay, Daddy? Not hurt?"
"No, I'm not hurt. It's all healed up now."
"And here." She ran her hands right across his recently broken ribs. "Back here." She finished up on his right arm again. "Big, big Band-Aid."
A car door was heard outside in the driveway, and the girls looked up. "Grandpa Thomas!" Rachel said, but in spite of the open eagerness in her tone, she didn't get off her father yet. Neither did Abby, who settled back down snuggled against his right side after her splint demonstration. Neither did Belle.
House took a deep breath and collected his weary thoughts for the evening. "Marina, can you get that?" he called as the doorbell rang. "Kind of busy here." So was she, but he thought he was busier underneath all of them.
Marina came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel on the way, and opened the door. But it wasn't the old man, not yet. It was the Cuddys.