Chapter 15 – The Hunger Games
It felt good to be in church. It was something familiar, and it brought a certain sense of comfort to me. The sermon was about as boring as to be expected, the choir was decent, and the velvet pews were comfortable. It reminded me of the church I went to back home, a Presbyterian affair with a towering steeple and well-kept garden out front.
When the congregation fell silent for prayer, I prayed for answers. I prayed for guidance. I prayed that I didn't fuck up whatever I was sent here to do.
An hour later, I exited the front doors, crossing my arms against the cool November breeze as my eyes scanned the street for House. He was there waiting for me, seemingly taking in the exterior of the church as he awaited my arrival. Huh. Getting driven around by House on his motorcycle...I once again got the feeling that all of this was just too damn surreal.
I trotted up to the bike, lifting a hand. "Hey."
"Get your weekly dose of self-righteousness?" he asked, by way of greeting. I rolled my eyes at him as I clambered on the bike, preparing my already speeding up heart and flipping stomach for the ride ahead. I really, really wasn't a motorcycle fan.
"Of course," I replied. House unbuckled the helmet from his head and passed it back to me without a word. "Awfully noble of you," I commented.
"If one of us is going to fly off of this thing, it's going to be you, not me. Plus, I want to prove Cuddy wrong. I'm totally fit to be a parent." He revved up the bike without warning. I frantically finished buckling the strap and gripped the sides as House raced away from the curb. Please don't crash, please don't crash, please don't crash...
An indeterminable amount of time later, I was stumbling off of House's bike once more, and making a beeline to his apartment, wanting to collapse on the couch and nap. I had only gotten roughly four hours of sleep the night before, so I was running on empty, and having the fear of God being put into me by another ride on what I was now referring to as The Japanese Death Trap, I needed a rest.
A few moments later, we were back in House's apartment, and I threw off my jacket and flopped down on the couch, nestling my face into one of the cushions. The living room smelled like pizza. "I'm gonna take a nap," I mumbled to House as he walked in after me, snorting with amusement at my form sprawled out on the couch.
"You do that," was the last thing I heard before falling asleep.
When I woke up, the apartment was silent, and that led me to believe that House was absent. I cracked open an eye and looked around, and I didn't see any signs of the doctor. I yawned as I slowly sat up, brushing my hair out of my face. Oh, that nap had definitely done me some good. I was actually fairly coherent now. Judging by the clock, about two hours passed since I got back from church.
I stood up shakily, stretching languidly. I peered into the kitchen and noticed a single note sitting on the table, along with a stack of bills and House's car keys. I raised my eyebrow at the sight. No way...he wouldn't...
Dear God. He left me a shopping list. He actually listened to me?
After I managed to get over my initial shock, I nabbed up the list and scanned my eyes over it. It was basic stuff that any household would need, along with a few things I already knew that House liked. At the very bottom, House had left me a solitary parting sentence before disappearing off to nowhere.
"I don't want rabbit food."
I was honestly glad House wasn't much of a vegetable man. I was more of a meat and carbs person myself. However, I was disconcerted by the amount of trust House was showing in me. I hadn't even been living with him for a full week yet, and he had left me with what looked to be about one hundred and fifty dollars, along with the keys to his car. True, I had demonstrated irrefutable proof that I had knowledge of the past and future, but this was House we were talking about, a man who thought trust was a joke.
Something was up, but for now, I decided to just go with it. I grabbed the keys off of the table after carefully folding the shopping list and bills and placing them in my pocket. I raked a brush through my hair, not wanting to go out in public with bed-head (or couch-head?) before slipping my coat on.
The weather had warmed significantly since this morning, and the sun shined on my face as I stepped out of the apartment. It was still blustery, but for the time of year, it was fairly nice outside. Winter was slowly closing in, and I realized that I'd soon be experiencing my first New Jersey winter.
Well, I guess I'll be experiencing my first New Jersey everything, I thought to myself as I unlocked House's car, sliding into the driver's seat and settling my hands on the wheel.
"I'm about to drive House's car," I said to myself, my fangirl side taking over for a moment. I adjusted the seat, as it was pushed back fairly far to accommodate House's lanky build. Where I was sitting now, I could barely see over the dashboard.
After scooting forward, and adjusting my side and rear-view mirrors, I was ready to go shopping. It seemed such a strangely adult thing to be doing. I had never been grocery shopping before. My mother never trusted me with the responsibility, convinced that I'd buy nothing but snacks and forego the essentials.
Okay, that was probably true at the time, but I was eighteen now, and if we were talking about maturity, I was the only adult in Taj MaHouse.
I pulled away from the curb, but the fact that House had placed such implicit trust in me was unsettling. Nice, I suppose, but unsettling nonetheless. Maybe it was a test? He leaves me the money and the car keys, and sees if I take off. Was House trying to prove whether I was trying to scam him or not?
But I had already proved that I clearly knew more about him than he had ever bothered to tell anyone...I had demonstrated that I knew the future when I told him what was wrong with Rebecca...
I drove around aimlessly for a couple minutes, obviously having no clue where I was going. I knew the general direction of downtown and the more commercial center of Princeton, but I hadn't been paying close enough attention the other night when I went shopping for clothes and essentials, so I didn't really know where to start grocery wise.
Eventually I settled on a little market about four miles away from House's apartment. I pocketed the cash, parked the car, and made my way into the small store. I noticed a grumbling in my stomach, and something my dad always said popped into my mind: never shop when you're hungry.
It was lucky that the trunk of House's car was fairly large, because I think I had enough food to feed an army. I had bargain shopped, and I made the money House had left me go pretty damn far, with about thirty bucks still left over. Overall, I thought my first trip to the store as a legal adult was a success.
I had bought everything on the list, plus stuff that we definitely needed that House had unsurprisingly overlooked. I also got a decent amount of snack food, something the kitchen cupboards severely lacked. Using my store of obsessive House-fan knowledge, I managed to remember a few chip brands I saw House eating, and other things that I had a feeling the diagnostician wouldn't have any issue snacking on.
I figured as long as I stayed clear of healthy food, pickles, and tea, House would be pleased with the fruits of my labor. I needed to get back home fast, because my appetite was reaching the point where uncooked horse meat would have looked delicious. I had neglected to eat all day, something I frequently did. Don't misunderstand me. I love food, but I was easily distracted and sometimes forgot to eat.
Now that I didn't have my mother hovering over me ringing the dinner bell and making most of my meals for me, I was going to have to start remembering to do things like that...oh, the woes of finally having to grow up.
After the groceries were safely stored in the trunk, I relocated myself to the front seat, turning the key in the ignition and hearing the roar of the engine. I felt a sudden tickle in my nose, and the next moment I let out a heavy sneeze. I scrambled for the latch to the glove box, seeking tissues, but as I did so, I felt something protruding from the bottom of the dashboard.
Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I let my curiosity guide my hand over the mysterious object. I unbuckled my seat belt and crawled over the console to the passenger seat, ducking my head under the dash and trying to get a better look at it.
It was small, black, round, and hidden towards the back. It had a blinking red light on it. My inner conspiracy theorist immediately thought bomb, but then my inner not-idiot decided that was highly unlikely. I experimentally tugged on it, and it came of easily, having been held on only by a thin layer of adhesive. I turned it over in my hand. It was a small black box, and the only thing remarkable about it was the blinking light.
Why would House have this in his car? And more importantly, what is it?
And then it hit me.
So, this is a test.
Although I wasn't a hundred percent sure of its purpose, I had a feeling that this was a tracking device of some variety. That way, if I was really was a con artist of some variety and made off with House's car, he could get a GPS fix on it and get it back. This had been the final thing House needed to prove that I was being entirely truthful. If I returned the car, groceries in tow, he'd finally believe me, one hundred percent.
I threw the device out the window. If House was monitoring the thing, that should give him a scare, or at least confuse him. I wasn't exactly miffed at House for not trusting me - my story wasn't terribly believable, but hadn't I presented him with enough evidence by now?
I shook it off as I began the drive back to House's apartment. I wondered idly where the doctor was on a Sunday afternoon. I highly doubted that Occam's Razor had started yet, since Paternity had only ended on Friday. I could only assume that House was either taking a Sunday ride on his motorcycle, or palling around with Wilson.
Of course, he and Wilson had just spent the entire night together, so I wouldn't think they'd be eager to spend time with each other all day today as well. Or would they? As I had observed before, the show didn't really show the happy-sunshine moments with House and Wilson. If you were going strictly by the show, House and Wilson were almost always at each other's throats.
However, just being around them for the past week had shined a kind of light on their bromance that I previously hadn't seen. The part where they actually liked spending time together. Sure, they argued, but all the arguments between the two of them that I'd observed so far had been really stupid, silly ones, and for the most part friendly.
So, maybe they were completely inseparable in reality. I planned on further examining their man-love as the first season progressed, trying to determine what was like the show and what wasn't. I had to keep reminding myself that in general, House showed the most dramatic and intense moments of everyone's lives, with occasional humor thrown in. I needed to adjust a lot of my opinions according to how people actually acted.
A few minutes later, I was pulling up in front of House's apartment, and judging by the absence of House's motorcycle out front, he still wasn't home. I proceeded to unload the back, and carrying the groceries inside was a slow and arduous process. Once I had everything sitting on the counter of table inside, I began delegating where certain items should go. From what I could see of most of House's kitchen, there was no rhyme or reason to where anything went. It was time to play organizer and get things tidied up.
By the time five o'clock rolled around, I had designated an area for every type of food under the sun, minus vegetables, and the kitchen was now tidy and well-organized. I'd probably have House bitching at me for the next week because he didn't know where things were, but overall it would make everything easier. I knew that he didn't really like change, or people moving his stuff, but I figured since this was just food, he'd be okay with it.
My stomach growled rather loudly, having been mercilessly deprived of food all day, so I decided I might as well make dinner while I was here. I didn't know when House was coming back, but even if he didn't show up until much later, I could just save the leftovers of whatever I decided to make.
I began mentally perusing what I had just bought, and decided that I was capable of making some hamburgers. I was okay in the cooking department. I couldn't exactly make a five star meal, but I could make pretty tasty comfort food when I wanted to. So, I set about making dinner, enjoying the smell of cooking food spreading through the warm apartment. I turned on one of the music channels on the TV, then put the volume on loud enough for me to hear it over the sizzling burgers in the kitchen.
With the lights all turned on, the savory scent of meat, and the music in the background, I felt almost...comfortable? This was one of the first times I'd felt even vaguely at home in House's apartment. The whole week I had felt sort of like I did when I stayed the night at a friend's house. It wasn't until now that my whole mind was catching up with the fact that I lived here.
I lived with Greg House.
Yep. Still not used to it.
I was interrupted from my domestic tasks by the sound of the front door opening. The burgers were almost done, and I had two buns sitting on the counter, waiting for the patties. I peeked my head around the wall, catching a glimpse of House's back as he took off his leather jacket. "Hey!" I called over the music.
House turned his head slightly, and nodded to me by way of greeting before smelling the air, not unlike a dog. "I detect...meat."
"Well, that would make sense, since I'm cooking meat," I commented, returning to my task. I turned off the stove top and slid a spatula under both burgers, gingerly placing them on the open buns. "I'm actually done here. I didn't know what kind of toppings you'd want, so I didn't put anything on it."
House moved slowly into the kitchen, hand absent-mindedly massaging his thigh. I caught the almost unnoticeable furrow of his brows, and I had to suppress a smirk. House was probably very confused as to why I was here, and not sitting in some parking lot downtown. I had chucked the tracker-thing far enough into the nearby bushes that he would have had one hell of a time finding it, if he had endeavored to do so.
"Surprised to see me here?" I asked as I placed the pan and spatula into the sink. I cracked open the fridge and grabbed a slice of cheese, placing it on my burger and folding over the top. House scooted around me and grabbed a slice for himself, along with a bottle of beer.
House didn't respond, but instead headed into the living room, seating himself on the couch and throwing his feet up on the coffee table, resting his plate on his lap. He glanced at me when I sat down on the other end of the couch.
"Should I be?" he asked, countering my question with a question. I just leveled a withering look at him as I bit into my burger. "You claim to have watched every juicy moment of my life, and you think I'd just trust you implicitly?"
"No," I said. "I was definitely suspicious when you just left me the car keys. The money, for you, that's not a big deal. The car on the other hand, is. I figured it must have been a test or something, but I was still stuck on the fact that you would risk your car. Sure, you could report it stolen, but there's still no guarantee you could get it back."
"How'd you find the bug?" he asked before taking an experimental bite of his burger.
"I'd wow you with my Sherlockian deduction skills, but it's actually nothing spectacular. I bumped into it when I was trying to find a tissue. I unstuck it from the bottom, hedged a guess at what it was." I paused as I began chewing on my own burger. "Tossed it out the window."
House didn't respond for a moment, focused on his dinner, which apparently he approved of judging by how quickly it was disappearing.
"So...did I pass the test? Are we done with the games?" I asked.
He looked at me for a second, an almost-smirk on his face. "And here I thought you knew me."