Finally, a meaty, substantial chapter.
This was, obviously, my favorite part to write. Especially Fighting!Huddy, which was done for
pokeitlikejello.
Title: “Better Get Out (While You Can)” Part 3
Pairing: Allusions to House/Stacy, House/Cuddy
Rating: PG-13ish.
Summary: A depiction of the events as I imagine them between the operation on House’s leg and his job at PPTH. Since we don’t know exactly what went down, I’ve taken liberties. Anyway, this is shaping up to be multi-part (fingers crossed the muse doesn't leave me); title pulled from the song “I Don’t Love You,” by My Chemical Romance. Enjoy!
Part 1 is here.
Part 2, here.
“I didn’t expect you to answer.”
Obviously, he thought as he squinted through the static to look at her face. Shock, appall, and tears. Tears that wouldn’t fall but were threatening to, making them all the worse.
Straightening as best he could with the side table his only support, House glowered at her.
“Just confirming that you really had the guts to come here.”
Her mouth opened a fraction, only to shut immediately as the door slammed abruptly in her face with a sharp snap of air.
Taking a concentrated breath and blinking back her tears, she raised her hand again to knock.
No response, except the thudding of him moving around, and then the moan of the couch as he dropped his weight onto it.
“Greg.” She tried, knowing he hadn’t gone far and could hear her.
Still nothing.
“Greg, don’t do this.” She implored, her fist meeting the door rhythmically with each word. “Open the door.”
With that, she heard the unmistakable sound of the theme song to the 10 o’clock News, blaring so loud she heard every syllable of the anchor.
“C’mon, I need to talk to you!” she tried again, only to have the volume of the television climb higher.
She hadn’t wanted to do this. She had stewed for two days before actually getting up enough nerve and resolution to leave her house-still with so much work left to do in it-get in her car, and drive over to the address Stacy had scrawled for her.
And he was actually reacting better than she imagined, but still, she wasn’t making any progress.
Dropping her chin, Cuddy turned on her heel and took a few steps towards her waiting car before she got an idea.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing-it was probably illegal, but all she had to do was imagine his face as she had just seen it to know it was worth it.
So she didn’t really know what to expect, but when she flipped the little knobs that seemed important and the entirety of House’s apartment went black, she figured she had done something right.
She couldn’t help but smile, despite the terrible situation, as she crept back towards the door.
“What the Hell did you do?” he shouted a minute later from behind the door.
“Looks like a fuse blew. How unfortunate.” She informed him with a smug smile.
“Fix it.” He tried, but sounding menacing behind a door is beyond most people.
“I can’t, I don’t have a screwdriver. Let me in to get one.” She suggested easily, crossing her arms in case he was looking through the peephole.
He must have been, because his next three words were rife with defeated frustration. “Go to Hell.”
With a shrug, Cuddy began again away from the door. “Fine, I will. And I’ll leave you to freeze your ass off in the dark.”
She made sure to walk slowly, but he still didn’t open the door until she was halfway down his stoop.
He had his cane, a geriatric looking thing, clutched in one hand bearing all his weight, and Phillips head in the other.
“Fix it.” He commanded, holding out the tool in a dangerous fashion by her face as she returned.
Cuddy took it, but eyed him suspiciously.
Giving her insurance, he hobbled away from the open door and disappeared on the other side of the couch.
Not wanting to give him a chance to change his mind and shut her and his screwdriver out, Cuddy slipped around the side of the apartment building and secured the caps she had unhinged quickly, taking leggy strides back to his unit, only to come up short at the door.
It was a nice apartment…somewhere underneath everything else.
There were boxes everywhere, half-emptied (a loving hand had unpacked them-probably Stacy’s, as a last ditch attempt to assuage her guilt) and now gathering dust. The furniture was all new but, aside from the couch he was sprawled upon and what she imagined had been a chair before some tragic accident, was in disuse.
As she stepped just beyond the threshold to close the door, her heels wobbled and crunched on broken glass and plastic.
She peered over the back of the couch, and tried to make out what else was in the darkened room. A television, now off, and a few more boxes and instrument cases. There must have been a coffee table under all the bottles of booze and garbage that were suspended in front of the couch, but she couldn’t see it.
And then there was House. She was happy for the low lighting in the room, because from what she’d seen of him moments earlier in the slightly higher lighting of the corridor had been enough.
Taking another-and not the last, she imagined-concentrated gulp of air, she attempted to calm herself, but only gave the tears in her eyes a push outward.
She was watching them join the glitter of the glass at her feet when he spoke.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She replied defensively, raising her head to stare at the back of his.
“Let me specify then. What do you want?” he continued, accented with the pop of a prescription top.
Edging forward, and shrugging off her coat, Cuddy tried to think of where to start. “Stacy came to see me-,”
“Not a way to win points,” he interrupted.
“I’m not trying to win points with you.” She said with a sigh, setting her jacket on the hook by the door and moving cautiously over the debris and clutter.
When the tip of her shoe nudged a smashed frame containing a picture of a young, swaggering Greg rock climbing or something similar, she felt bile rise in the back her throat and a new sensation stab so that her chest ached. Guilt. Loads of it.
Now he was looking at her-she could feel it-but she still made a show of picking up the photo and remains of frame and placing them back on the desk before turning to him.
His eyes were cloudy when she had expected hatred, and hers then drifted to the bottle in his hand.
Spotting a similar bottle on the desk, she picked it up.
Vicodin ES. Empty. Filled two days ago.
Eyes sliding back to the bottle in his hand, she tried to sound…not hysterical.
“How much of this did you take?”
With a grunt, he flicked the television back on.
“Not enough apparently, because I can still hear you.”
This just keeps getting better and better. Cuddy thought bitterly, tossing the bottle into the nearby trashcan-which was almost a mockery, being the cleanest thing in the damned place-and stalked into the kitchen.
When she reappeared his eyes were already out of focus, and her hand clenched in growing frustration on the glass.
She moved deliberately in front of him and commanded a little louder than necessary, given his proximity, “Drink it.”
“If I do will you go?” he asked softly, in delayed time thanks to the opium.
She focused all her energy on trying not to be sick with despair.
“Not yet. Drink it. And why did you stop going to therapy?”
Ignoring the latter half of her statement, he rolled his eyes at the glass and let his head fall back against the arm of the couch.
“You really think water will help?”
Shifting her weight, Cuddy persisted.
“Drink it, please, and answer me. What the Hell are you doing to yourself?”
She was getting shrill, which would not work in her favor, but it looked like he was dying in front of her by degrees.
Instead of returning her anger and escalating, like he would have, like he should have, he muttered a “Just leave,” a little louder than a whisper.
As with the fuse box, she didn’t know if her next move was the best thing to do, but she couldn’t take it back now, as the water that was in the glass was now dripping down his face and a little on the couch, where the impact of the splash from her toss had shot it.
“I may be a cripple now, but I can still give you a spanking.” He replied after a shocked moment, a little more venom in his voice.
“Next time it will be a hose.” She returned brazenly, setting the empty glass down. “You smell awful, and you look worse. When did you shower last?”
“August.” He remarked. It was November. “Why, want to give me a sponge bath?”
Kicking off her heels, Cuddy moved towards him and held out her arm.
“C’mon.”
Staring at her curiously, not sure what to do, House sat up slightly.
“Didn’t really expect that one to fly.”
Glaring at him but not saying anything as to change his mind to cooperate, Cuddy slid his arms around her shoulders and using all the weight she could muster with her legs, pressed them both upward.
They made a strange, wobbly pair walking to the bathroom, him deliberately pinching her hair under his arms and leaning heavily upon her, but they made it.
He slumped on the side of the tub while she started the water, and as it warmed up, turned to him expectantly, her eyes on his pants.
“Do you want to do it, or do I have to?” she asked simply, giving him no escape.
Still trying to catch his breath from the walk and gripping his thigh so tightly his knuckles whitened, he could barely raise his head to appropriately glare at her.
“I’m too damned weak, can’t you see that?” he seethed between shallow gasps, lowering his head again and swallowing heavily, probably battling nausea from the booze and pills.
Not going to be swayed, Cuddy straightened.
“You managed to get up to get yourself drunk as Hell, I figure at the very least you can sit in water for five minutes.”
“What gives you the damned right…?” he breathed at her, fire dissolving the clouds in his eyes.
“I’m your doctor. Keep talking, your pants come off and you won’t enjoy it.” She promised, trying to be the best Mother Superior she could while trying not to cry.
He did. Slowly, and refusing her help.
He knew how pathetic he looked, and how much it was killing her.
But she didn’t think about it, after he was in the tub and she left.
She vacuumed, she scrubbed, and she straightened, all like a woman possessed.
She hadn’t even heard him open the bathroom door, because she had been cleaning the last of the unknown stains from his rug with Resolve.
“You going to clean up my vomit, too?” he asked heavily, obviously a little more sober after the bath and in all that much more pain.
She craned her neck over her shoulder to look at him.
Cleaned-but not shaven-and dressed in the pair of pajama pants and tee shirt she’d tossed in. His skin was pinker, his hair was lighter, and he seemed a little better for the wear, but she could tell even if he felt that way, he’d never tell her.
Returning his attitude and setting back on her heels, she crossed her arms.
“Only if it gets on me. I’m not your mother, or your maid.”
A smile, or the shadow of one, slipped across his face when he asked, “What else do you call crawling around on all fours in my apartment?”
Knowing his implication, she glared. “I’m not your hooker, either.”
If the expression had been a shadow of a smile, the sound he made as she crossed the room to him was the hologram of a chuckle.
Instead of physically moving him, she only handed out the cane, which ended the chuckle and made his eyes hard again.
“Why are you trying to save me?” He was not at all grateful in his inquiry.
“I’m not.” She snapped, setting the cane with a thump and putting a hand on her hip. “I just don’t think you stepping on all this damned glass and then getting in the undoubtedly enormous amount of bacteria in here and contracting a staph infection is going to help you recover.”
“Does this look like healing?” he inquired darkly, motioning simultaneously to his leg and his apartment.
“This stops today.” Cuddy snapped, her eyes fierce. “I didn’t save your damned life so you could kill yourself a year later.”
He moved so quickly and his reaction was so unexpected, when her back hit the wall, the breath was literally kicked from her chest.
“What makes you think I wanted to be saved? What gives you the right to make that decision?” he seethed, his palms pressed on either side of her head on the wall that he had just shoved her against. Meeting his aggression as best she could, she tried not to scream at him.
“I was your doc-,”
He didn’t quite give her the chance, cutting her off with a slam of his hand right next to her ear and grabbing her shoulder with the other to give her a hard shake.
“Don’t even say, don’t even say it. You knew damned well what you were doing when you put me down, when you handed Stacy that form, when you picked up the scalpel, when you stood there for eight hours carving away my life-,”
This time it was she who surprised him, heaving her weight into his chest and sending him teetering and crashing backwards into the wall behind him.
A moment of fury and shock passed between them as they stared each other down across the hall, him not believing she had done that and her not believing this was House.
She was the first to speak, once she was sure she could maintain a calm tone.
“Your leg, House. It was your leg, not your life.”
She took two steps aside him, holding his stare.
“And don’t ever touch me like that again.”
When she left, he didn’t expect her to come back.
Next part...
pokeitlikejello.
Title: “Better Get Out (While You Can)” Part 3
Pairing: Allusions to House/Stacy, House/Cuddy
Rating: PG-13ish.
Summary: A depiction of the events as I imagine them between the operation on House’s leg and his job at PPTH. Since we don’t know exactly what went down, I’ve taken liberties. Anyway, this is shaping up to be multi-part (fingers crossed the muse doesn't leave me); title pulled from the song “I Don’t Love You,” by My Chemical Romance. Enjoy!
Part 1 is here.
Part 2, here.
“I didn’t expect you to answer.”
Obviously, he thought as he squinted through the static to look at her face. Shock, appall, and tears. Tears that wouldn’t fall but were threatening to, making them all the worse.
Straightening as best he could with the side table his only support, House glowered at her.
“Just confirming that you really had the guts to come here.”
Her mouth opened a fraction, only to shut immediately as the door slammed abruptly in her face with a sharp snap of air.
Taking a concentrated breath and blinking back her tears, she raised her hand again to knock.
No response, except the thudding of him moving around, and then the moan of the couch as he dropped his weight onto it.
“Greg.” She tried, knowing he hadn’t gone far and could hear her.
Still nothing.
“Greg, don’t do this.” She implored, her fist meeting the door rhythmically with each word. “Open the door.”
With that, she heard the unmistakable sound of the theme song to the 10 o’clock News, blaring so loud she heard every syllable of the anchor.
“C’mon, I need to talk to you!” she tried again, only to have the volume of the television climb higher.
She hadn’t wanted to do this. She had stewed for two days before actually getting up enough nerve and resolution to leave her house-still with so much work left to do in it-get in her car, and drive over to the address Stacy had scrawled for her.
And he was actually reacting better than she imagined, but still, she wasn’t making any progress.
Dropping her chin, Cuddy turned on her heel and took a few steps towards her waiting car before she got an idea.
She wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing-it was probably illegal, but all she had to do was imagine his face as she had just seen it to know it was worth it.
So she didn’t really know what to expect, but when she flipped the little knobs that seemed important and the entirety of House’s apartment went black, she figured she had done something right.
She couldn’t help but smile, despite the terrible situation, as she crept back towards the door.
“What the Hell did you do?” he shouted a minute later from behind the door.
“Looks like a fuse blew. How unfortunate.” She informed him with a smug smile.
“Fix it.” He tried, but sounding menacing behind a door is beyond most people.
“I can’t, I don’t have a screwdriver. Let me in to get one.” She suggested easily, crossing her arms in case he was looking through the peephole.
He must have been, because his next three words were rife with defeated frustration. “Go to Hell.”
With a shrug, Cuddy began again away from the door. “Fine, I will. And I’ll leave you to freeze your ass off in the dark.”
She made sure to walk slowly, but he still didn’t open the door until she was halfway down his stoop.
He had his cane, a geriatric looking thing, clutched in one hand bearing all his weight, and Phillips head in the other.
“Fix it.” He commanded, holding out the tool in a dangerous fashion by her face as she returned.
Cuddy took it, but eyed him suspiciously.
Giving her insurance, he hobbled away from the open door and disappeared on the other side of the couch.
Not wanting to give him a chance to change his mind and shut her and his screwdriver out, Cuddy slipped around the side of the apartment building and secured the caps she had unhinged quickly, taking leggy strides back to his unit, only to come up short at the door.
It was a nice apartment…somewhere underneath everything else.
There were boxes everywhere, half-emptied (a loving hand had unpacked them-probably Stacy’s, as a last ditch attempt to assuage her guilt) and now gathering dust. The furniture was all new but, aside from the couch he was sprawled upon and what she imagined had been a chair before some tragic accident, was in disuse.
As she stepped just beyond the threshold to close the door, her heels wobbled and crunched on broken glass and plastic.
She peered over the back of the couch, and tried to make out what else was in the darkened room. A television, now off, and a few more boxes and instrument cases. There must have been a coffee table under all the bottles of booze and garbage that were suspended in front of the couch, but she couldn’t see it.
And then there was House. She was happy for the low lighting in the room, because from what she’d seen of him moments earlier in the slightly higher lighting of the corridor had been enough.
Taking another-and not the last, she imagined-concentrated gulp of air, she attempted to calm herself, but only gave the tears in her eyes a push outward.
She was watching them join the glitter of the glass at her feet when he spoke.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She replied defensively, raising her head to stare at the back of his.
“Let me specify then. What do you want?” he continued, accented with the pop of a prescription top.
Edging forward, and shrugging off her coat, Cuddy tried to think of where to start. “Stacy came to see me-,”
“Not a way to win points,” he interrupted.
“I’m not trying to win points with you.” She said with a sigh, setting her jacket on the hook by the door and moving cautiously over the debris and clutter.
When the tip of her shoe nudged a smashed frame containing a picture of a young, swaggering Greg rock climbing or something similar, she felt bile rise in the back her throat and a new sensation stab so that her chest ached. Guilt. Loads of it.
Now he was looking at her-she could feel it-but she still made a show of picking up the photo and remains of frame and placing them back on the desk before turning to him.
His eyes were cloudy when she had expected hatred, and hers then drifted to the bottle in his hand.
Spotting a similar bottle on the desk, she picked it up.
Vicodin ES. Empty. Filled two days ago.
Eyes sliding back to the bottle in his hand, she tried to sound…not hysterical.
“How much of this did you take?”
With a grunt, he flicked the television back on.
“Not enough apparently, because I can still hear you.”
This just keeps getting better and better. Cuddy thought bitterly, tossing the bottle into the nearby trashcan-which was almost a mockery, being the cleanest thing in the damned place-and stalked into the kitchen.
When she reappeared his eyes were already out of focus, and her hand clenched in growing frustration on the glass.
She moved deliberately in front of him and commanded a little louder than necessary, given his proximity, “Drink it.”
“If I do will you go?” he asked softly, in delayed time thanks to the opium.
She focused all her energy on trying not to be sick with despair.
“Not yet. Drink it. And why did you stop going to therapy?”
Ignoring the latter half of her statement, he rolled his eyes at the glass and let his head fall back against the arm of the couch.
“You really think water will help?”
Shifting her weight, Cuddy persisted.
“Drink it, please, and answer me. What the Hell are you doing to yourself?”
She was getting shrill, which would not work in her favor, but it looked like he was dying in front of her by degrees.
Instead of returning her anger and escalating, like he would have, like he should have, he muttered a “Just leave,” a little louder than a whisper.
As with the fuse box, she didn’t know if her next move was the best thing to do, but she couldn’t take it back now, as the water that was in the glass was now dripping down his face and a little on the couch, where the impact of the splash from her toss had shot it.
“I may be a cripple now, but I can still give you a spanking.” He replied after a shocked moment, a little more venom in his voice.
“Next time it will be a hose.” She returned brazenly, setting the empty glass down. “You smell awful, and you look worse. When did you shower last?”
“August.” He remarked. It was November. “Why, want to give me a sponge bath?”
Kicking off her heels, Cuddy moved towards him and held out her arm.
“C’mon.”
Staring at her curiously, not sure what to do, House sat up slightly.
“Didn’t really expect that one to fly.”
Glaring at him but not saying anything as to change his mind to cooperate, Cuddy slid his arms around her shoulders and using all the weight she could muster with her legs, pressed them both upward.
They made a strange, wobbly pair walking to the bathroom, him deliberately pinching her hair under his arms and leaning heavily upon her, but they made it.
He slumped on the side of the tub while she started the water, and as it warmed up, turned to him expectantly, her eyes on his pants.
“Do you want to do it, or do I have to?” she asked simply, giving him no escape.
Still trying to catch his breath from the walk and gripping his thigh so tightly his knuckles whitened, he could barely raise his head to appropriately glare at her.
“I’m too damned weak, can’t you see that?” he seethed between shallow gasps, lowering his head again and swallowing heavily, probably battling nausea from the booze and pills.
Not going to be swayed, Cuddy straightened.
“You managed to get up to get yourself drunk as Hell, I figure at the very least you can sit in water for five minutes.”
“What gives you the damned right…?” he breathed at her, fire dissolving the clouds in his eyes.
“I’m your doctor. Keep talking, your pants come off and you won’t enjoy it.” She promised, trying to be the best Mother Superior she could while trying not to cry.
He did. Slowly, and refusing her help.
He knew how pathetic he looked, and how much it was killing her.
But she didn’t think about it, after he was in the tub and she left.
She vacuumed, she scrubbed, and she straightened, all like a woman possessed.
She hadn’t even heard him open the bathroom door, because she had been cleaning the last of the unknown stains from his rug with Resolve.
“You going to clean up my vomit, too?” he asked heavily, obviously a little more sober after the bath and in all that much more pain.
She craned her neck over her shoulder to look at him.
Cleaned-but not shaven-and dressed in the pair of pajama pants and tee shirt she’d tossed in. His skin was pinker, his hair was lighter, and he seemed a little better for the wear, but she could tell even if he felt that way, he’d never tell her.
Returning his attitude and setting back on her heels, she crossed her arms.
“Only if it gets on me. I’m not your mother, or your maid.”
A smile, or the shadow of one, slipped across his face when he asked, “What else do you call crawling around on all fours in my apartment?”
Knowing his implication, she glared. “I’m not your hooker, either.”
If the expression had been a shadow of a smile, the sound he made as she crossed the room to him was the hologram of a chuckle.
Instead of physically moving him, she only handed out the cane, which ended the chuckle and made his eyes hard again.
“Why are you trying to save me?” He was not at all grateful in his inquiry.
“I’m not.” She snapped, setting the cane with a thump and putting a hand on her hip. “I just don’t think you stepping on all this damned glass and then getting in the undoubtedly enormous amount of bacteria in here and contracting a staph infection is going to help you recover.”
“Does this look like healing?” he inquired darkly, motioning simultaneously to his leg and his apartment.
“This stops today.” Cuddy snapped, her eyes fierce. “I didn’t save your damned life so you could kill yourself a year later.”
He moved so quickly and his reaction was so unexpected, when her back hit the wall, the breath was literally kicked from her chest.
“What makes you think I wanted to be saved? What gives you the right to make that decision?” he seethed, his palms pressed on either side of her head on the wall that he had just shoved her against. Meeting his aggression as best she could, she tried not to scream at him.
“I was your doc-,”
He didn’t quite give her the chance, cutting her off with a slam of his hand right next to her ear and grabbing her shoulder with the other to give her a hard shake.
“Don’t even say, don’t even say it. You knew damned well what you were doing when you put me down, when you handed Stacy that form, when you picked up the scalpel, when you stood there for eight hours carving away my life-,”
This time it was she who surprised him, heaving her weight into his chest and sending him teetering and crashing backwards into the wall behind him.
A moment of fury and shock passed between them as they stared each other down across the hall, him not believing she had done that and her not believing this was House.
She was the first to speak, once she was sure she could maintain a calm tone.
“Your leg, House. It was your leg, not your life.”
She took two steps aside him, holding his stare.
“And don’t ever touch me like that again.”
When she left, he didn’t expect her to come back.
Next part...