Faint of Heart, Part 11
Title: Faint of Heart 11/17
Pairing: House/Cuddy established
Warnings: Some explicit content, some fluff.
Summary: House and Cuddy need a vacation, and they take one, but it isn't that simple. Set in the sharkverse, and will include events from "Recession Proof" and "The Last Temptation.”
Comments welcome.
A/N: Please excuse any spacing or line break problems. The attack of LJ Release 83 has not yet been completely repulsed. Although I am.
“I have to say, Doctor,” the Honorable Margaret Woods said, drumming her fingers against the bench, “That is the most interesting,” - House interpreted her tone to translate “pathetic” -- “diminished capacity defense I’ve ever heard.”
House tried to look contrite and slightly addled. Wilson gave him an apologetic “best I could do with only four hours notice” shrug.
“Sawyer. What are the damages?”
She spoke so harshly that the laconic deputy startled. “Maggie, it was a doctor’s office. He was probably there to get drugs.”
“He’s a doctor. Why in the world would he have to break into another doctor’s office for that?” Hearing the bleary befuddlement in Wilson’s voice, House, who could think of a number of answers to that question, kept them to himself.
“You remember what happened the last time someone burglarized a doctor’s office in town,” Deputy Dawg said ominously. “Stolen drugs were distributed to kids.”
“It was a veterinarian’s office,” Maggie said sourly. “Several of the more idiotic members of the high school senior class managed to thoroughly de-worm themselves. Hardly a tragedy.”
Her warning glare at House stifled his guffaw. “Was anything taken, Sawyer? Disturbed?”
“We caught him in time.”
“Outstanding work,” she said, her voice dry as talcum. “I’ll certainly rest easier knowing that my gynecologist’s building is secure. Doctor House, are you on any medication for this condition of yours?”
Wilson, getting the hang of this courtroom, silently held up his meds: anxiolitic, antidepressants, prevacid, ibuprofin, melatonin for sleep, the muscle relaxant Foreman had him on. She beckoned.
After inspecting the labels, she rattled a bottle, threw two ibuprofin tablets into her throat and dry swallowed. “Four hundred dollar fine,” she announced. “And you’re under court order to keep taking your damned pills for as long as you’re in town. As for you,“ she pointed her gavel at Wilson, “that will be a two hundred dollar fine.”
“For what?”
“Bullshitting the court. I am no psychiatrist, but I am sure that ‘Intellectual hyperexcitability with co-morbid boundary disorder’ is not a legally recognized condition in this state.”
“It ought to be.”
“Thirteen gave me a message from Miss July,” Wilson said, backing the Volvo out of the parking spot. “She said to tell you ‘brown.’”
“Damn,” House muttered. “That complicates things.”
“What things?” Wilson risked a kink in his neck to look over at his friend, who was for some reason slipping into one of his diagnostic, meddling fugues. House was stock-still and quiet, which was never a good sign: he’d stuffed all of his agitation and mania up his neck and into his head again, where it would, in time, force its way through that labyrinthine brain of his and manifest itself in some incomprehensible, and probably expensive, way.
Cuddy, when he’d driven her to pick up the SUV earlier, had only said that House was “broody” and had been “distracted” after the baseball game last night. She seemed concerned about him, and pissed that he’d slipped out of the hotel after she went to sleep, but unsurprised.
“It was a very ugly scene, and you know how he gets,” she said tiredly, and the hell of it was, Wilson did know. “He sees some kind of complex drama or pathological family dynamic, he has to poke at it until it validates his cynicism.”
“Blue would have been definitive,” House said.
“House,” Wilson started. “Cuddy told me what happened. I’m sure it was a bit … unsettling.” He’d almost said that the confrontation that House and Cuddy had witnessed probably “hit close to home,” but he didn’t want to encourage the puns. A deflection was inevitable - this was House he was talking to -- but that didn’t mean he had to invite a ridiculous deflection.
“I need his saliva,” House decided. “You’ll have to ask him to have coffee with you.”
“Who?”
“The Hunk.” House was pleased with this. “Hunh, how about that? The kid has two dad candidates: The Hunk, and The Drunk.”
When Wilson did not remark on this clever observation, House resumed giving strange orders. “Get a cup or a spoon or something he’s spit on, and take it back to Miss July. Have her run a PCR.”
“I am not doing a DNA test on a complete stranger without his knowledge.” Wilson was not as appalled as he sounded.
“I’d do it myself,” House explained, “but I hate him.”
“House, I think you should talk to someone. It’s obvious that, that … scene last night, has upset you.”
“I’m not upset, Wilson,” House answered blankly. “I’m interested. There’s a difference.”
“It doesn’t have to be me, that you talk to,” Wilson said, thinking, no, there actually isn’t. “It could be Cuddy. That’s sort of what people in a relationship do; they talk to each other.”
“I can get the kid’s sample,” House went on thoughtfully. “He’s an idiot; he won’t know that a soft tissue head injury doesn’t need a follow-up with a cheek swab.”
“You could call Nolan,” Wilson suggested, without much hope. “He’s paid to listen to you. Probably not enough, but. And he seems to like it.”
House was rubbing his chin. “But his probable sperm donor …”
“I am most especially, not doing a paternity test on a complete stranger without his knowledge.”
“Why not?” House looked confused, and a bit betrayed, by this sudden lack of cooperation.
Easing the car into the space next to Cuddy’s vehicle, Wilson stared straight ahead for a moment and counted to six, trying to remove all evidence of emotion from his expression. He was fairly good at not looking frustrated enough to scream, but he needed more practice at squelching the “what the actual hell is wrong with you?” look that invariably crept onto his face during conversations like this.
“Why don’t you ask April to do it?” he wondered.
“Same reason I need to do it in the first place,” House replied placidly, as if this was obvious and not convoluted in the least. “I’m trying to not be a role model.”
Wilson carefully played the last ten minutes over in his head four times, and when he was absolutely certain that it didn’t make a single iota of sense, grabbed his duffle bag from the back seat and followed House into the hotel.
House, in a particularly imperious and ineloquent mood after his night in jail, had given them only two options: Thrasher’s French Fries and then the beach, or the beach and then Thrasher’s French Fries. Because it was ten o’clock in the morning, and because she wanted time to process her husband’s latest bizarre crisis, Cuddy had overridden Rachel and opted for the beach.
“You are not sending that one to my mother,” House growled.
“Of course not.” She looked at her memory card, savoring once again the image of Rachel’s tiny hand placing a delicate periwinkle shell in House’s large palm, and tucked the camera into the side pocket of her bag with a secretive smile. “I’m going to enlarge it and frame it for my desk. Would you like a print?”
He dug his toes into the sand, his hands resting on his knees, and squinted at the waterline, where Wilson was trailing his way along the shore behind Rachel. Every few minutes she would point to something, a shell or a pebble, and Wilson would bend down and dutifully admire it before adding it to her pink plastic pail.
“I don’t need pictures on my desk; I know what I look like,” House said.
“I don’t think you do,” she said, flopping down on her stomach on the towel beside him. “Sometimes I don’t think you have any idea how unutterably sexy you are.”
“Unutterably?” His eyes sparkled with amusement; he was trying to hold on to his dark, pensive mood, but he fell like a rock for the most obvious forms of flattery.
“Un.utt.er.a.bly.,” She repeated, enunciating very slowly, and kicked her feet up. He watched her mouth form every round syllable.
The corners of his eyes deepened and he favored her with a wry, fond, little smile. “You’re trying to get me to open up to you,” he accused softly.
“How’m I doing?” she challenged.
“Not bad,” he allowed, and leaned forward to cup her face in one hand and deliver one of his brain-melting kisses. “Much better than Wilson.”
“I should hope so. House,” she said, feeling fortified and enlivened. “What Nick’s father said last night -- did your father ever say that to you?”
He shook his head, and for a small sliver of a moment, his brow furrowed. “That my birthday was the worst day of his life? No.”
She closed her eyes as he massaged and caressed her neck absentmindedly, allowing him to give comfort, afraid of asking him to take it.
“It was the worst day of my mom’s life.”
His voice was soft and steady and void of pain, and when she opened her eyes, his eyes were unwavering, clear and wet. “My existence caused her guilt, which he used as leverage against her. She felt empathy for me and was helpless to protect me, and that caused her pain. Story of my life. I spread misery, I make it hurt to care about me … Stacy wished she could hate me. Wilson would choose to not have me as a friend, if he could. You and Wilson have made your own lives worse trying to keep me from collapsing. You wish you didn’t love me, but you can’t help it.”
He picked up a handful of sand and let it pass through his fist, and gave her a long, impenetrable look. She swallowed a thick wedge in her throat, and her eyes stung.
House hobbled clumsily to his feet and held out his hand, palm up.
“Oh, House,” was all she could say. “Oh, Greg. You don’t know how wrong you are.”
“I’m never wrong.” He wiggled his fingers impatiently. “C’mon,” he said roughly, “let’s go rescue Wilson from Rachel.”
He pulled her up and breathed a tender kiss against her forehead. She cradled his face in her hand, and her thumb traced moisture at the round curve of his cheekbone. They stood in the sunshine, and she put her ear against his chest but she could hear nothing over the tenacious, inescapable sound of the waves against the shore: refused, yet returning, again and again, the ocean riotous and rough and inexorably drawn in, always pounding its way back over the shoals.
He dropped his hand to pinch her butt, and she laughed and stepped forward to match his stride.
Hand in hand, leaning on one another, they progressed toward the little girl who was waiting for them at the edge of the sea.
Part 12