A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, readers. Enjoy!
Cuddy lay stretched out on the couch. Her ankle by this point had stopped hurting except for a dull ache at times, and she was, through diligent practice, getting much more secure on the crutches, but the inconvenience remained. She still felt like it was encased in cement. House had told her the night before that she now had one-sixth of her sentence served with the cast, but that didn't make her feel better. The remaining time still stretched out in front of her like a long road with no exits.
Thomas interrupted her thoughts. "Think of spring," he said. "Everything coming back to life, and this will be over."
"I'm trying," she grumbled.
Thomas gave her a sympathetic smile. He was seated in the recliner, yet keeping an ear cocked toward the nursery. The girls had been very restless today, and neither of them expected this nap to last very long.
Cuddy sighed, then abruptly realized that she could talk about her other thoughts. Thomas was there. Amazing, just to have somebody who was there, available. She and House had never been closer than at the moment, and she loved talking to him right along with the other parts of their relationship, but to have another adult family member outside that bond who was approachable without having to plan strategy for it was new. Her conversations with her parents both growing up and in adulthood had never quite been relaxed, although they were now in therapy at least, and she hoped some small gains were being made between them.
"Part of me keeps thinking about Greg," she admitted.
He nodded, looking at the cast. "It brings it home, doesn't it?"
"I never really understood how he must have to plan every single movement. Even getting up, he always has to think about it and break it down. I knew that, but I don't think I understood it before." She sighed again. "Of course, this still isn't really like what he deals with. This is temporary for me, and it doesn't really hurt much anymore. But for him, it must be like those early days all the time."
"Not quite," Thomas countered. "I agree with you that his experience is different, but he is doing better himself. The methadone has helped."
She relaxed into that wonderful new fact. "It really has. I wish it did more, but you're right, he is doing better. Not that he talks about it a lot, but he does some. That's not just with you, Thomas; he's never been comfortable talking about his leg with anybody. But things are improving, as much as they can, anyway." She glanced at the clock. "I wonder how he's doing with Stacy."
"We'll know soon enough." He paused to stamp down curiosity visibly. "At least you will. I realize this might not be any of my business." His tone was so reluctant there, forcing himself to say the words, that she had to smile.
"We'll tell you if we can," she assured him. "What did you think of her?" Thomas had only seen her for a few minutes in the lobby last week, but she trusted his perception.
He tilted his head slightly, considering. "Focused," he said after a moment. "Obviously, she's quite intelligent, but right then, she had one goal she was entirely locked into. It took her a minute to even notice me or to be aware of anything else, and I was standing close to Greg. Whatever she wanted, it was major to her."
"What on earth could it be?" She reminded herself that she, at least, would know soon.
Thomas shrugged. "No idea. I don't really know her, but I don't think she was trying to start something again. She's more perceptive than that; she'd see the state of things now."
"I agree. Which leaves me totally in the dark. Maybe her husband is sick again and she wants Greg to consult on him?"
Just then, Rachel was heard climbing out of her bed; Rachel rarely did anything softly. With the girls in regular, if small, beds now, escape was quite possible, and in the next moment, Rachel galloped down the hall. She stopped in the living room and looked around. "Daddy's not here?"
"No, Rachel. He'll be home soon, but you know he had to go to the hospital for a little while."
Rachel nodded. "He's fixing people," she pronounced confidently. That was what her father did at the hospital, fix people. Most of the time anyway. The concept that some things could not be fixed did come up now and then, but Rachel preferred not to think of those. Instead, she walked over to the couch and touched the cast. She and Abby both were fascinated with it. "Is your leg still fixing?"
"Yes. It's doing better, but it's going to take a while."
"Should have used Daddy. He fixes things faster." At that moment, Rachel looked toward the front window, though she couldn't see the driveway. "Victory! Daddy's home."
Cuddy started to prepare to get up. Really, the process was frustrating, the careful turn, being sure not to bang the awkward cast on anything, retrieving the crutches from the floor.
Thomas, of course, made it to his feet far before she did, and then, forcing himself, he sat back down, yielding the greeting line. No point in making his son feel pressured physically. Still, he followed the process intently, hearing the garage door open and close, timing the steps from car to door. The gap was slightly longer than required. Yes, whatever that conversation with Stacy had been about, it was major, and his son was chewing over it mentally.
House barely beat Rachel in opening (or at least attempting to open, for her) the door. "Hi, Rachel." He stopped on the steps outside and leaned in the doorframe gap to give her a hug. In the last several weeks, he had stopped efforts to pick them up, and Rachel had learned that by now. She leaned into him, enjoying the hug, then backed off, letting him finish coming up the stairs and through the door. "Did you miss me?" he asked her.
Rachel nodded vigorously and squeezed the whinny ear on the stuffed Ember for added emphasis. "Um-hum. Did you get the people at work fixed?"
House looked past his daughter to Cuddy. "Not yet, Rachel. This is going to take a little while."
Rachel tossed her dark hair impatiently. "Like Mama's ankle. Everything is slow!"
House crossed over to Cuddy, who was leaning on her crutches waiting for her turn. He hugged her tightly, taking a moment to whisper in her ear, "We'll talk tonight." Cuddy felt like tossing her own hair impatiently, but she knew that serious conversation at the moment was out of the question, not with a very active 4-year-old underfoot.
House advanced on into the living room. "Hey, old man." Part of him was glad to find Thomas here being a help for Cuddy if needed, as promised. He hadn't really doubted the old man's word, but it was good to see it fulfilled. "Hello, Belle." The white cat had materialized and jumped up onto the arm of the couch, presenting her ears at perfect scratching level. House obliged. "Where's Abby?" he asked.
"She's still asleep," Thomas stated.
"No, I'm not." Abby came down the hall, still rubbing her eyes, but her tone was offended, as if being the last one up represented a serious failure. Her hair was still a bit rumpled from sleep. She hugged her father's good leg, and then he sat down on the end of the couch, a signal for both girls to pile on. Couch time had no weight restrictions. "Be sure to leave room for your mother," he reminded them.
Cuddy, reminded herself, crutched back over to the other end of the couch, sat down, and worked her leg up. His unspoken suggestion that she put her ankle back up was undeniably a good idea, but still, she wished that everything didn't have to be about her injury at the moment. That thought was immediately followed by the realization once again of how many times she had told him that an oblique reference to his leg was not a statement of failure or of pity, simply a fact. It was harder to remember that with the shoe on the other foot here. She sighed.
House smiled at her and ran his fingers along her toes, protruding from the end of the cast. Then he turned to the girls. "So, girls, nobody's going to be working anymore today, so what should we do?"
"Piano," Abby requested, with Rachel's voice right on top of hers stating, "Aristocats!"
"Piano," Abby repeated.
Rachel debated, as she loved to hear her father play piano herself, but she was in the mood for the movie. "Aristocats has music," she countered.
"What about both?" House suggested. "A movie followed by a concert. You can have your cake and eat it, too."
"Cake?" Rachel looked around quickly, and House realized too late the phrase he had used.
"No cake, Rachel. It's just a figure of speech."
"What's a figure of speech?" Abby asked.
"A figure of speech is when you say something you don't really mean exactly. Like say, Victory flew over the roads. He wasn't really flying, just going smoothly. You just said flying to show how smooth it was. Having your cake and eating it too doesn't mean there's a real cake, it just means that you get both sides of a choice. You don't have to pick one or the other, like a movie or music. You get both."
Abby nodded after a moment. "Okay, but lots of music."
"I promise," he said. "Let's get up, girls." They scrambled off of him, and he stood to retrieve the DVD. Soon the whole family was settled in watching the movie, but House was aware of the bilateral curiosity from Cuddy and from the old man, too, not that he would be in the discussion later. But for once, House found himself wishing that one of their family afternoons, usually treasured privately even though he still was afraid to admit that fact, would move along a little faster.
(H/C)
Later that evening, after the girls were asleep, Thomas carried them back to their beds one at a time, and House and Cuddy sat looking at each other with pure sympathetic understanding. Neither of them was up to that task presently. At least, Cuddy reminded herself, she would be again. Unlike him.
They both gained their feet slowly and went on back to supervise the tucking in. Thomas gave each of his granddaughters a kiss and then headed back out of the room. "I'll see you two tomorrow," he said softly.
House followed him down the hall. "You're seriously just leaving tonight?" he asked.
Thomas turned to face his son. "Do you want me to stay?"
"No," House admitted. "But I expected -"
Thomas gave him a smile. "Yes, I am curious, and I'll no doubt be trying frantically to come up with the answer later instead of going to sleep. But some things aren't my business. Believe me, Greg, that was a hard life lesson to learn, and I still don't like the answer. You come by your curiosity honestly."
House still couldn't believe his father wasn't going to have to be kicked out. With the tables turned, he himself would have resisted exit as long as possible and then would have considered creeping back around the house to listen at a window, even knowing that in winter, he was unlikely to get any information that way.
Thomas put his coat on. "Good night, Greg," he said. Thoroughly envying Lisa at the moment, broken ankle and all, he left the house.
House heard Cuddy coming down the hall behind him. "Let's go in the bedroom," he said. "It's not close to time for us to go to bed, but it will be more comfortable." They also could get closer that way, side by side.
She heard the unspoken thought. "Okay." Back they both went and stretched out on their respective sides of the bed on top of the covers, not getting ready for sleep yet, then slid together.
House sighed and then dove straight in. "Stacy had a request for me. She wants a child."
Cuddy tensed up so quickly that she almost hurt her muscles doing it. "She wants you to-"
"Laboratory method only, she specified. But she and Mark haven't had any success in that department, and apparently, from the medical workup so far, it's due to him."
Cuddy stared at him. House squeezed her hand. "This is crazy. I don't see any possible way that that's going to work out. She insisted that I think about it, though, damn it. She'll meet me again next Saturday for an answer."
Her brain slowly started functioning again. "You're right, it wouldn't be- Mark actually agreed to this?"
"Yes, according to her." House drummed his fingers. "I'll admit he wasn't too receptive to me back when he was a patient. On the other hand, if it would make her happy, maybe he's hit the point of accepting things. They've been trying for a while with no luck, apparently." He sighed again. "Stacy also said that she always wanted a child and that she would have loved to have my child back when we were together, but I was so dead set against it."
Cuddy nodded, remember his initial fears with Rachel about what kind of father he would be. She could easily believe that House had been nothing short of adamant about birth control back with Stacy. Still, part of her could sympathize with someone wanting a child. "She never talked about it?"
"Not that I remember. We didn't have that many long intimate conversations; we were more about doing things together. But I definitely was against it myself, and I let her know that. Only she didn't know why."
Cuddy squeezed his arm. "She still could have spoken up if it was a critical issue for her then, Greg. She's hardly timid or hesitant to speak her mind. As Jensen would say, there's two in any relationship."
"Yeah. You think she's remembering it being more important to her back then than it really was?"
"Maybe. She was young, after all; now, she isn't as young anymore. The tick of the clock has to be getting a lot louder now. Maybe she's projecting or whatever they would call it into the past. I'm not saying she didn't want one, but it might not have been such a huge deal for her then as she thinks it was." They sat there side by side against the headboard for a few minutes. Belle had crawled up tightly wedged in between them, purring and warming both House's left leg and Cuddy's right. "What are you going to do?" Cuddy asked. He had already said Stacy's plan wouldn't work, which reassured her, but she had no doubt that her husband would be trying to think of something, some way he could help without going as far as Stacy wanted.
"To start with, medically, I'd like to explore the case a little more. There are causes that might not have been diagnosed, even though she said there was a workup. There are also treatment techniques that can help, especially if it is Mark's problem. I don't know if those were ever suggested, either. The other doctor could have been an idiot; no shortage of them in the world."
"That's for sure." She gave his arm a squeeze. "I'm glad you're going to try to help her. And I'm glad you aren't going to go as far as she wants to try to help her."
"It wouldn't work," he repeated. "It would make a difference to me - and to us, too, even if the kid was totally theirs in name. I couldn't do that and just impersonally step aside like she's asking. But I do want to try to do something for her. I owe her that much." He shook his head. "But I doubt Mark is going to be glad to get into medical discussions with me, especially on this subject. Accepting for himself that he can't hit a home run, at least currently, is hard enough. Having me as a doctor isn't going to make it easier."
"No, it won't." Cuddy remembered Mark's attitude when House had been his doctor before. They definitely didn't get along, to put it mildly. "Thank you, Greg," she said abruptly.
"For what?" He was puzzled.
"Not trying to keep this to yourself." She leaned over and kissed him, and Belle, with a low growl, got up from between them and moved down to their feet, ears eloquent, tail lashing. Both of them started laughing at that, but the humor was short lived against the looming difficulties ahead.