I swore I wasn't going to write a post- Wilson's Heart tag. Except...I kept musing over House's behavior after Chase fries his brain. We don't really see House talking or even reacting much to anything after that and I got to wondering what if it took a while for his circuits to reset?
Unfortunately, this bunny kept wanting to grow bigger and I kept hacking off fluffy bunny bits and the end result may not be any more coherent than House was. But at least I've got it out of my head now ;-)
Too Soon
“It’s too soon,” Cuddy says when House stops at the table and stands over his answering machine. House gives her a hollow-eyed look but she merely carries the small bag of his belongs down the hall to his bedroom without further comment. Certain she’s right, just this once, he still leans forward and a strange sort of bitter triumph washes through him at the blinking red zero.
“House.” She reaches for his arm as she returns but he shakes her off and walks stiffly toward the kitchen.
“When does it stop being too soon?” It’s his first night out of the hospital and his voice is still raspy. He tries to clear his throat as he pulls a bottle of scotch from the dusty depths of a cupboard. “When will it be just soon?”
“Wilson needs time to grieve.” She takes the bottle from his hand and pulls a glass from the dish drainer. She pours for him because his coordination isn’t completely back to what it should be. Apparently it’s too soon for that as well.
“He hates me,” House says as he takes the glass from her and throws back the scant shot she’s poured.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s just...angry at the world right now. And you happen to be part of this world.”
“Barely,” he mutters to himself, thinking of a young do-gooder in love and a bus to nowhere. He reaches for the bottle again and Cuddy moves it out of his reach. Well, she moves it out of what should’ve been his reach. He can see where to put his hand, but his hand had other ideas and his reach is wide of the mark.
“Just one shot, for medicinal purposes as my grandfather would say,” she explains as she places the bottle back in the cupboard.
House looks for one last drop in his glass and doesn’t find it. “If I’d just....”
“Don’t,” she says, her tone weary. “You didn’t do anything wrong. And it’s too late to change things now even if you had.”
“Too soon, too late,” House says, scowling. “I feel like Goldilocks only nothing is ever just right.”
“Goldilocks didn’t crack her skull open, go into cardiac arrest and have a seizure. If she had, she might not have known what was ‘just right’ either.”
“Are you insinuating that I’m brain damaged?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be brain damaged,” he complains. He doesn’t say he isn’t because his lack of coordination would tend to contradict that statement.
“Then you shouldn’t have let Chase stick an electrode in your brain.” Cuddy’s face is calm but there’s more than simple irritation in her voice.
“I needed to know.”
“You thought you already did.”
“Wilson needed to know,” he says quietly. She simply nods her head because there is no argument for that.
~~**~~
Cuddy’s in his face the moment he lurches for the coffee maker the next morning.
“No coffee,” she says. He turns, a look of rumpled disbelief on his face. “Your brains are scrambled. No caffeine until they get unscrambled.”
He looks around the kitchen which seems more foreign now than it did in the dim light of the previous night. He knows it’s his, it just doesn’t feel like it. He looks at Cuddy who also seems more foreign standing in his kitchen in the early morning than she did late at night. “You stayed all night?”
“No,” Cuddy says tartly as she slides two slices of bread in the toaster. He considers telling her it doesn’t work as she repeatedly pushes the lever down but doesn’t. After all, he’s the one with brain damage. He shouldn’t be the first one to get hit by the clue bus. Other buses, yes, apparently. But not the clue bus.
“I went home, slept, got up, put on the same clothes I wore yesterday, drove back over here and let myself in before you woke up.” Cuddy continues her stubborn attempt to cook bread and he wonders how she is at boiling water.
His eyes do a thorough sweep of her body, then he nods. “You’re wearing a different blouse.” Her expression is surprised and he wonders why. He’s known for noticing small details. At least he was until he cracked his skull open. “You didn’t think I’d notice?”
“Your brain’s had a little too much electricity.” She frowns at the non-cooperative toaster. “Unlike your appliances.”
“It’s....” House frowns, too, because he suddenly remembers the toaster works fine. “You have to plug it in the other outlet.”
Suspicious, Cuddy moves the toaster down the counter and plugs it into a different outlet. The bread drops down when she depresses the lever and he can see the faint red glow coming from the slots. Huh. It really does work. How can he remember what Cuddy wore yesterday but not that his toaster works as long as it has a live outlet?
“Have you called an electrician about that?” she asks, nodding at the bum outlet.
“Different blouse?” he says because he seems to have gotten that right on the first try. Of course, he’s always paid much more attention to Cuddy’s chest than he has to his toaster.
“I keep a spare in my office. I grabbed it while you were signing your discharge papers yesterday.” She points stubbornly at the outlet, though. “Electrician.”
“Why are you doing this? You didn’t think I was brain damaged last night.”
“Actually, I specifically pointed out the brain damage last night.”
Frustrated, House turns clumsily and she reaches out for his arm. He pulls it away and steadies himself by bracing his other hand against the refrigerator.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
He looks down at himself and, even brain damaged, he knows he can’t go to work in his pajamas. “I’m going to take a shower, put on some clothes, and go to work.”
“You can take a bath,” she says, pointing at the stitches in his head as the reason for banning showers. “Put on fresh pajamas and sit yourself down in front of the TV to watch your soaps.”
“Soaps aren’t on this early in the day,” he says, scandalized by her lack of TV scheduling knowledge. Cuddy ignores him as the toast pops up. She gets butter and jelly from his fridge and smears it on the cooling toast. “I don’t like jelly.”
“Who says this is for you?” Her disdain is perfectly expressed so he grabs one slice of toast and shoves half of it in his mouth. She sighs but pours him a glass of milk.
“Can I at least watch porn?” he asks through a mouthful of soggy, sticky toast. He knows she’s serious about not working and since his last case is dead and he doesn’t have a new one yet, he’s not actually opposed to not working.
“No,” she says crisply. She runs the dishrag over the counter, sweeping away the toast crumbs trapped in their own condensation.
“Prude.”
“It has nothing to do with being a prude. The last thing you need with a cracked skull is to raise your blood pressure.”
He follows her into the living room and watches, feeling suddenly adrift. “I suppose that means a hooker is out, too.” Her look as she hefts her briefcase from the floor next to the couch is all the answer he needs. Truthfully, he didn’t even need an actual response from her. He knew the answer already, though he’s not above giving it one more try. “What if I let her do all the work?”
“You’re not allowed to have anything more stimulating than an Agatha Christie mystery.” Cuddy grabs her coat, slings it over her arm. “I’ll be back this evening and trust me, I’ll know if you followed the rules.”
He’s oddly reassured by that threat.
~~**~~
House paces around his bed for fifteen minutes before he goes out the door and hooks a louie into the bathroom. He turns on the light and tries to avoid seeing himself in the mirror. He thinks avoidance might be easier if he’d draped it in black cloth. He thinks maybe there’s more to that funerary ritual than a simple prohibition against vanity, and it bothers him that he suddenly can’t remember who practices that ritual.
“Cuddy.”
She shifts on the lounge in his living room, her body instantly tense at his intrusion into what he hopes are pornographic dreams of him. Or Thirteen.
“Do you cover your mirrors?”
She blinks slowly, dumbly, at the question. Even though the only illumination is the light seeping down the hall from the bathroom, she squints up at him as she settles on her back. “My mirrors...?”
“When’s the funeral?” he asks and he sits on the edge of the lounge.
“Next week,” she says once she deciphers his question. “Amber was cremated. There’ll be a memorial service in her hometown.”
“Wilson wanted...?”
“Her parents made the arrangements.” Cuddy slides herself into a more upright position and the afghan slips from her shoulders. House is momentarily distracted by the skinny tank top she’s using as sleepwear, then he shakes his head and tries to focus on his original concern.
“Should I go?”
She seems disconcerted by his question. By his genuine desire to do the right thing. By his fear that nothing he does will be right in Wilson’s eyes.
“Are you asking my opinion as your doctor? Or as your friend?” His hand is braced on the lounger, right next to her thigh. She reaches for it, holds it, weaves her long, thin fingers through his. “As your doctor, the answer is no. It’s too soon. You need time to recover from your injuries, including the self-inflicted ones. As your friend....” She shakes her head. “I think...Wilson would appreciate the gesture.”
“You’ll take me.” In his damaged mind that’s a fact, not a question.
“No. “
“You’re going to be my doctor instead of my friend?”
“I hope I’m being both.”
He reaches out, distracted by the shadowed skin under her jaw and along her collarbone. She turns away and shrugs the blanket back up over her shoulders.
“I already told you it’s too soon for that.”
~~**~~
“You should’ve known you’d give in.” House is almost cheerful. It’s a bitter, angry sort of cheer but it’s the only kind of cheer he really knows right now. “I always get my way.”
“Do you want me to turn around? Because I can do that.” Cuddy’s hands are clenched tight on the steering wheel, but not as tightly clenched as her jaw.
“Then you’d have to miss the funeral, too.”
“I didn’t even like Amber,” Cuddy mutters.
House nods, because he didn’t either. He’d developed a grudging respect for her, but he didn’t like her. Then again, he didn’t like most people so that wasn’t exactly a stinging criticism. “But you like Wilson.” Which was the only reason for either of them to be driving through this pastoral scene on the way to a funeral for a woman they didn’t really like and barely trusted. They like Wilson, and Wilson liked Amber. A + B = a suit and tie for House and a migraine for Cuddy.
House glances out the window at the gently rolling countryside. “Why didn’t we just fly? It would be faster.”
“You weren’t even supposed to be on this road trip,” Cuddy snaps. House smiles almost angelically. Pointing out that she wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him unless he joined her on this little road trip was one of the cleverest and yet simplest manipulations he’s performed in a while. It gives him hope the brain damage isn’t permanent.
“Flying. Faster,” he repeats.
“It’s too soon. It...could be dangerous.”
House lets out an exasperated grunt. “Life is dangerous, Cuddy. How long are you going to protect me from it?”
“As long as you let me.”
He stares at her profile, disconcerted, and he wants to argue. He wants to tell her that he’s never let her protect him, not like this. Except...he has been. It’s no wonder she thinks he’s brain damaged because he’s been letting her protect him from himself in a way he never has before. He’s allowed her to take control of what he does and when he does it. The realization makes him wonder seriously if maybe he isn’t brain damaged.
~~**~~
“You’re an ass.”
“I don’t think that fact has ever been in dispute.” House gives Wilson a puzzled look as he pulls the door wider and lets him into the apartment.
“Yeah, well...some days it helps to reaffirm the few certainties of life.” Wilson enters, a little stiff, a little ill at ease, but he’s there.
“You mean one of the certainties other than death, taxes, and your own overblown sense of guilt?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Wilson’s reaction is instant and expected. And House is sure it’s guilt. Need is Wilson’s carrot and guilt his stick. C.B. wasn’t around long enough to change that.
“Neither did I,” House says quietly. “She made a bad decision. She did it for you because you would’ve done it for me but it was a bad decision. And even at that, it was only a bad decision because some idiot drove his truck into the side of our bus.”
“She shouldn’t have been there,” Wilson says, rubbing fretfully at his forehead. “She should’ve told you to go to hell.”
“She should’ve,” House agrees. “I wish she had.”
“Me, too.” Wilson let out a long, heavy breath. Then he looked House over. “How’s your head?”
“According to Cuddy, there’s something wrong with it.”
“So...back to normal then.”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“She’s been taking care of you.” Wilson isn’t asking, he’s making an observation and House begins to wonder if this hasn’t all been another plan by the two of them to save House from himself. It would be just like Wilson to plot to save House even while flagellating himself over his inability to save Amber.
“She thinks that’s what she’s doing.” He glances over his shoulder at Wilson as he heads into the kitchen. “Let’s put it this way--I’d offer you a drink but thanks to Cuddy the only drinks I can offer are tea, milk, or orange juice.”
“She slept in the chair by your bed.” Wilson hesitates in the kitchen doorway. “She’s never done that before.”
“Yeah, yeah,” House mutters. He doesn’t really want to think about that because he’s not sure his damaged brain can make sense of it. He’s not sure his undamaged brain could make sense of it.
His expression brightens slightly when he remembers that Cuddy has lifted his caffeine ban. He grabs the filters and coffee from the cupboard and fills the pot with water.
“Wait. Where’s the beer?” Wilson asks.
“Told you,” House says as he starts the coffee maker. “Cuddy won’t let me have any.”
“And you actually listened to her?” Wilson looks bemused. “You’ve never done that before.”
House shoves a coffee mug at him. “Shut up.”
~~**~~
“It’s not ‘too soon’ anymore,” House announces as he bursts into Cuddy’s office. She glances up at him from her desk, wary. “It’s not too soon to talk to Wilson or go back to work or watch porn.”
“Fine,” Cuddy says with a shrug. “If you want to watch porn, watch porn.”
“That’s not....” House gives a frustrated thump of his cane. “I don’t want to watch porn. I’m just saying it’s not too soon if I did. I’m all better now. I’m not even brain damaged.”
“Great.” Cuddy sets down her pen, resigned. “Then you can go back to finding new and
inventive ways to kill yourself.”
“Or you could give me a reason to not kill myself.”
Cuddy stares at him, a perplexed expression on her face. “What...?”
House ignores the question because he doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know why, either. If pushed, he knows the who but that’s as far as his understanding goes. For the moment he blames it on small flickers of lingering brain damage.
“I’m ready to go back to work.”
“You talked to Wilson?” Cuddy isn’t fighting him on the work issue...which is unfortunate because he’d developed several clever and convincing arguments and apparently he’d wasted his precious brain power.
“We exchanged words.”
“And you’re okay, the two of you?”
“Yes. I think so.” House shrugs. Okay-ness between guys is something completely different than okay-ness involving a woman. He’s not sure he can explain it, though, and besides, even if he’s wrong about Wilson, it’s not something he wants her to worry about anymore. He gives her a casual shrug. “He didn’t throw me under the wheels of a bus. I think that’s a good sign.”
Cuddy merely sighs and gives a resigned wave of her hand as she leans over her work again. She seems to accept that he’s back to normal, or at least close to it. She seems to be dismissing him as her personal project, but he wants to be sure.
“So we’re clear--I’m not brain damaged, I’m free to once again to terrorize my patients and my employees, and porn is back on the menu.” House gives a mild thump of his cane to emphasize each point. “I can take showers, fly in an airplane, have a beer, have sex....”
“No booze. It lowers the seizure threshold.” Cuddy’s interruption is short and to the point. “Otherwise...yeah. Sure. Whatever makes you happy.”
House’s exit from Cuddy’s office should be a victory march. He’s gotten everything he wanted. He is once again the captain of his own ship, the master of his own fate. He’s got his life back, just the way it used to be. But he feels like maybe the way it used to be isn't the way he wants it to be now and something deep in what has to be a still damaged part of his brain is telling him he's walking away from what his life could be.
"Cuddy." He half turns and she raises her head to look at him. In the end, though, he simply shakes his head. "Never mind. It's too soon."
And he keeps walking.