Hello readers. At long last another chapter. I'm very sorry for the long delays and appreciate your continued interest. And on that note, if any of you like Star Trek, please check out my new story "Mantarra's Tale" co-authored with my very best friend in the world, Murlynd'sGirl. It's fully our own creation, and written in RP fashion over the last year or so. There are literally dozens of chapters already written. We are testing the waters with it, trying to see if there is enough interest and liking to continue to revise and edit it for publishing here. If you like Star Trek and particularly Klingons, please give it a read and leave a review. And of course reviews of this story are always appreciated.
The day after the visit from Gaius and his clan, House returned to his flat. He was glad to be back with his piano and guitars, along with all his books, but the place felt cold and grungy. Grimacing, he put his coat on the coat rack and put his collar on, dropping the necklace into the bowl. A pile of mail sat on the table, testimony of Wilson's presence. He moved into the living room and switched on a couple of lamps, turned the heat up to warm the place up before going into the bedroom to get into a tee and sweatpants. He poured himself a fingerful of bourbon, grabbed his mail and leafed through it disinterestedly, tossing it all onto the coffee table before turning on the TV and putting on a game.
He pulled an old afghan he kept on the back of the sofa over his lap as he turned to lay out more fully on the sofa. It felt strange to be back here now, alone. He realized he'd grown used to having his clan members around him, that they had become a family. Part of him wanted to go right back to them tomorrow but part of him still wanted to stay and try to take care of himself for once. He knew that the accepted wisdom was that he should get back to doing this and yet he found that he really didn't want to. He enjoyed having the burden of house cleaning and laundry lifted from his shoulders. He enjoyed having servants around the house. Wilson would mock him endlessly for that, he thought. And John House… well, let's not go there, he told himself.
It wasn't as if he couldn't take care of himself, although house cleaning was admittedly difficult sometimes with his leg. It wasn't as if he didn't know how to do it, because he did. It all just boiled down to the fact that he simply didn't want to do it. It was boring, that was part of the problem, but it really came down to just wanting to delegate those tasks to someone else. And even he could admit to how arrogant and entitled that sounded. He'd never let his ducklings get away with an attitude like that and he couldn't allow himself to rise above 'duckling' status in the clan. A promotion had to be earned and then given by someone with the authority to do so. And in this case, that wasn't him.
Meeting Gaius and his clan made him wonder about the long-term future, something he hadn't done in years since even the short-term had seemed so bleak. Initially, his time with Marius and Lucius had been to get him through the crisis and stabilized. It had worked and was still working. He was feeling better than he had in a long time with the massage, pain management, and nutritious meals to eat. This was something he wanted to hold onto. And since he didn't have any servants of his own, he was going to have to buckle down and discipline himself to do all those things he simply didn't want to do.
Still he couldn't pretend that the idea of moving up to master wasn't tantalizing. It was, immensely so. He knew he had a long way to go before being able to do for someone else what Marius had done with him, and taking care of himself was step one. But he couldn't help but think about Chase. He thought the younger man would fit right into the clan and would do well from being a part of it. How to lure him in, he wondered then the way he joined came into stark clarity. Marius had taken care of him, given that care freely with no obligation of return or even thanks. If he wanted to encourage Chase to join, he'd have to do the same thing that Marius did. Unfortunately, he'd messed with Chase so much over the years the man had worked for him, that Chase had a healthy suspicion built up about House's motives. That would take a long time to undo.
He looked back at the game and was surprised to find that it had ended while he had been lost in thought. It was 11:30pm now; he supposed he should go to bed, since he had to go to work in the morning. He haphazardly folded the afghan and tossed it back into place and headed into bed.
The alarm went off far too early for his liking and a slap silenced it, sending the clock tumbling to the floor. Laying there with his eyes closed, he nearly went back to sleep but shook himself and took a deep breath. He was supposed to be practicing taking proper care of himself. Great, he groused. Whose brilliant idea was this? Oh yeah. Mine.
Sitting up he carefully worked out the stiffness in his leg and slowly got to his feet to go shower and get ready for the day. It was definitely less fun doing it alone and without a hot breakfast and coffee waiting for him. He'd have to buy a new coffee maker, one with a timer so at least that much would be done in the morning. He chose the least wrinkled of all his clothes and shuffled out into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. There wasn't anything to eat in the place, so he'd have to get something at the hospital. He put on his necklace, gathered up his bag, coffee, and cane and headed to work.
Just as he'd finished collecting his messages, Cuddy came through and caught sight of him.
"Good morning, Dr. House."
"Good morning, Dr. Cuddy. You're looking particularly scrumptious this morning. Big donor meeting?" he smirked, checking her out.
"Yes, as a matter of fact," she said with a smile.
"Oh, by the way, I found out this weekend, there are women in the group. At least, one anyway."
"So it isn't an all boys club then. Has she broken the glass ceiling yet?" Cuddy asked.
"Yep, she has, just recently."
"Really?" Cuddy asked, surprised by his answer.
"Really. And she has a man under her. In all the various meanings of the word. Gotta go grab something for breakfast now."
"Wait, I'll go with you. Since when do you eat breakfast? Willingly?" she added.
"It's a new experiment I'm running. It's called, House takes care of himself 2.0."
"Oh? How's it going?"
"Been going for about 12 hours now and so far so good. Not much of a chance to test it out yet," he shrugged as they walked to the cafeteria.
"Was this something Marius asked you to do?"
"Nope. This was my idea, although I'm already having second thoughts."
"Why?" Cuddy asked, grabbing a muffin while House got a tray and ordered some eggs and bacon.
"Doing stuff like keeping the house clean, laundry, grocery shopping… I just really don't want to do any of it. I liked having Marius' servants around doing all that for me. But, I think I need to prove to myself that I can do it."
"I know you can do it," she encouraged him. "You just need to find some way to reward yourself for doing the boring, mundane things. Most people just like to have the job done and the loose ends tied up. That's not enough for you, so you'll have to figure out what works for you. Have a good day, House," she said, paying for her muffin and heading back to her office.
House fished out some money to pay then settled down at a table to eat. He snapped a picture of his tray and sent it to Marius. At work on time. Having breakfast. So far, so good, he texted.
Excellent! Came Marius' reply. Have a good day at work.
The day went fairly slowly, as the ducklings were looking for a new case. Mid-afternoon, he went to visit Wilson.
"Hey. Got a minute?" he asked, poking his head in through the door.
"Doing paperwork but you've never let that stop you. Come on in," Wilson replied, never looking up from his work.
House plopped himself down onto the sofa. "Did you have lunch yet?"
"Yes, sorry, you'll have to buy your own if you're hungry," Wilson said, looking up with mild amusement then back to his paperwork.
"I already ate, just wondered if you had. So, I wondered what you know about coffee makers," he said.
"Uh… fixing them, nothing at all. Buy a new one if yours is broken."
House let out an exasperated sigh. "Duh. Yes, mine is broken and I'm going to buy a new one. Since you spend time reading reviews on everything for days before you buy something, I thought maybe you could tell me which brand was a good one. But forget about it. You're obviously busy. Stop by my office later if you want."
House got up and was out the door and gone while Wilson was still sputtering at him to wait.
Wilson stared at the closed door in confusion. He had thought House had come in his office to hide from Cuddy, from working, to bother him or borrow money. All the usual reasons. But this… he wanted advice on which coffee maker to buy? There had to be more to it. Some prank for his fellows. His friend never spent money on anything other than books and music. The cheapest drip coffee maker had been all he'd had for years now, bought right off the grocery store shelf since the man couldn't be bothered to go to a department store. Shaking his head, he went back to his paperwork. Budgets were due soon and since he did his own, unlike House who made his fellows do all his work for him, he didn't have time to think about House's coffee maker mystery.
House went back to his office, grabbing his ball and throwing it up against the wall to play catch. It wasn't often that Wilson played the disinterested card with him, but this was the first time in a long time that he hadn't just done some stupid thing that had caused Wilson trouble first. His first instinct was to be angry at him, to give him the same attitude back but that always escalated into a big fight between them and he didn't want to do that. He'd never wanted to do that, but had always taken everything out on either his ducklings or Wilson. He sighed then, remembering the morning email from Cuddy, that departmental budgets were due next Monday. No doubt that was the paperwork Wilson was up to his elbows in, even though he had an assistant. Wilson always insisted on doing it himself.
Catching and holding up the ball in his line of sight, he wondered why Wilson did that. Did the other department heads do their own budgets too? He'd initially done his own budgets, enough to know exactly how to do them and then foisted them off on his fellows. It had the dual benefit of saving him work and teaching them to do department budgets, which would be valuable for them if they got through the fellowship and got a department of their own. Now days he simply looked over the budget, order them to make any corrections, and then sign the finished copy. Putting his ball down, he grabbed his cane and decided to go for a walk.
One by one, he visited each department in the hospital and bugged the head with questions about budgeting. He was met with quite a grab bag of reactions from them, ranging from hostility and annoyance to outright amusement, but he came away with the conclusion that most department heads got figures from their people and then decided on what to put onto the budget that year and did the final step themselves. That made more sense to him than the way Wilson did the whole thing himself. As he headed back to his department he wondered if he should actually follow the general trend and do part of the budget himself this year. It would go along with his 'take care of myself' goals, by being more responsible with the administrative side of his department. Gods, that made him shudder. Responsible with the paperwork, what was he thinking? Keep this up and Cuddy would expect him to be up to date on his billing too, he thought with a smirk.
Wilson met him in the hallway outside his office door.
"House. Out for a walk?"
"Research for a new project I'm doing. Giving up on the paperwork for the day?" he asked as they both entered his office.
"Taking it home with me. Listen, what was all that earlier about a coffee maker?" Wilson asked as he watched House start to gather up his things to head for home.
"Just what it sounded like. My coffee maker is broken, I need a new one. I thought I'd get one with a timer and figured a Jewish housewife like yourself would know which was the best brand to buy."
"Okay, well, having one would a timer would work best if you got up at the same time every day otherwise you're just going to have sludge."
"Oh, you're brilliant," House shook his head. "And no, it doesn't mean that, it just means that I have to set it to go off about 15 minutes before I leave, so I can bring my coffee with me."
"That still means knowing what time you'll leave the night before," Wilson pointed out.
House rolled his eyes at that comment. "Obviously you haven't noticed that I've been coming to work on time for weeks now, which means that I'm leaving at about the same time everyday, so I can subtract fifteen minutes from that and figure out when to set the timer."
"You got here on time because Marius drove you here. On your own, you'll be rolling in at 10am again in no time," Wilson shrugged.
"Gee, thanks for the encouragement. Your support means everything to me," he sneered.
"Well, historical data supports that theory. Alright, I'm sorry," Wilson said, holding up his hands to prevent House from saying anything more. "Do you want me to just buy one and bring it over or are you going to come to the store with me and mock my choices?"
"I'm coming with you," he grumbled, not entirely certain why he was stung by Wilson's barbs today. They were no different than any other day.
After putting his pack in his trunk, he got into Wilson's car to ride to the store with him, since they'd have to drive back by the hospital anyway when they were done. Wilson broke the silence.
"So, does this need for a coffee maker mean that you're living at your apartment again?"
"Yes. I'm still going over to Marius' place when he calls and a weekend a month, like in the beginning but yes, I'm back at my place again."
"Good. I'm glad to hear that. Marius must be doing much better now."
"Yeah, he's doing better."
"I think your piano missed you. I kept hearing phantom notes when I took in the male, like it was trying to entice me into playing. I apologized to it and said that I couldn't torture it that way," Wilson said with a smile, trying to work a smile out of House. It worked.
"You know it's like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors. The notes entice you closer and then the top slams down on you and swallows you whole," House teased.
"Glad I was able to resist then," Wilson laughed and like that the tension was broken between them.
Wilson chivvied House into a Bed, Bath and Beyond store because of the 20% off coupon he had in the glove compartment. House just rolled his eyes and followed him in, trailing behind him with the cart. He had to admit, there were some pretty neat gadgets in the aisles. They spent some time bickering about the coffee makers and the benefits of a Keurig single cup machine vs regular machine with a timer. In the end it came down to convenience over higher quality beans and House chose a Keurig machine, throwing several boxes of k-cups in the cart as well. Wilson insisted on buying him a filter that he could grind his own beans and use them and House let him, knowing that it would be Wilson who used it when he came over. After cashing out and driving back to get his car, they decided that Wilson would get some take out and come over to watch the game. Wilson washed and set up the new coffee machine and was flabbergasted when he found House ironing a shirt for the next day. It turned out to be a really good night.