House/VMars crossover
I don't know if crossovers are allowed in this comm, but it doesn't say they're not, so...
Title: What You Need
Pairing: Gen
Warnings: No sex or anything, but it does have spoilers for season 1 of Veronica Mars.
Summary: After the events of S1 VMars, House finds himself in custody of his cousin Aaron Echolls' extremely disturbed child, Logan.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of it.
Notes: This is just a whimsical little idea I had after seeing both House and VM and deciding that House and Logan had to be related. It goes AU after S1 House and S1 VMars.
What You Need
“Dr. House!”
House sighed, recognizing the sharp voice and the equally sharp click-click of the heels. He sped up, hoping to make it to the door before Cuddy caught up with him, but no luck. “Why, Dr. Cuddy, you’re looking bright and perky today,” he said, staring pointedly at her breasts.
She ignored him, as usual. Smart woman. “You can’t leave yet. You’re still on clinic duty.”
“Am I?” House crinkled his forehead. “Gosh, I’m sorry. You know how I hate to leave the patients high and dry, but I really can’t stay. I have to get home to the kid.”
“The-the what?” House kept walking, but Cuddy’s manhandling prevented him from getting very far. “You don’t have a kid, or did you think I’d forgotten about the part where you’re a lonely bitter bachelor?”
“Ah,” said House grimly, “there’s where you’re wrong. You see, I was a lonely bitter bachelor. Now…well, I’m still a lonely bitter bachelor, but I’ve got a lonely bitter seventeen-year-old camping out at my place, and I have to get back there just to make sure he doesn’t slit his wrists. That kind of thing is so hard on the carpets, don’t you agree?”
Cuddy stood stock-still and gaped, giving House the chance to slip out of her grasp and start hobbling towards the door. Unfortunately she recovered quickly and got a grip on his arm again. “You-what? Where did this seventeen-year-old come from?” House twisted away from her and kept walking. “Relative? Illegitimate child from a youthful indiscretion?” She was shouting now. “Don’t tell me you adopted him!”
And he was out the door and heading towards his car, free at last. Except not really, because the aforementioned brat was probably even now swallowing his whole Vicodin stash.
Goddamn Aaron Echolls. House had been sitting pretty, content in his status as the biggest bastard in the family-and then good old Cousin Aaron, the movie star, the golden boy, had to go and snatch the trophy out of his hands. He hadn’t seen the jackass since they were kids and his mom used to force him to visit her sister’s family in California on holidays. And now he was stuck as legal guardian of Aaron Echolls’ psychotic spawn. Fucking terrific.
What was the kid’s name again? Lawrence? Conan? Whatever it was, the kid couldn’t be emancipated because the courts decided he was too…what was the term? “Emotionally unstable”?” Something like that. Anyway, because the kid-Logan, that was his name-was too “emotionally unstable” to be emancipated, he needed a legal guardian. His sister Trina was a druggie and a slut-or, as the judge had put it, “unfit.” That meant Logan had to go to either House or a foster home, and House figured the kid would probably go on a killing spree if he was chucked into the foster-care system, and then House would probably get annoying reporters coming to his door to get the family’s perspective for their tabloids.
So, little Logan Echolls-well, okay, not so little-was currently caged at House’s place.
House parked outside and went in, eyeing the room warily. The kid was sitting at the piano, looking all hopeless and forlorn, picking at the keys with one finger. “Hey,” said House gruffly. “Are you having fun butchering Mozart?”
The kid turned his head to look at House. A twisted smirk grew on his face, and House fought the urge to backhand him. “Hello, Uncle Greg,” he said in an impossibly cheery tone. “How was your day?”
“I’m not your uncle. I’m your first cousin once removed. And-are you eating at the piano?”
“Don’t worry,” said Logan. “My fingers aren’t sticky.”
“Get the ice cream away from the piano.” House glared at the kid when he didn’t move. “Now.”
“Yes, sir, Uncle Greg, sir,” said the kid, saluting smartly and getting the carton off the piano.
“I told you--” House began, and then checked himself. He sure as hell wasn’t going to waste his time arguing with the hellspawn. “I can see that you haven’t been gnawing on your own arm, so I assume you were okay for lunch.”
“Just fine,” said Logan sweetly. “You should put strawberry Pop-Tarts on your grocery list.”
House grimaced. “Don’t tell me you finished all of them.”
“Hey, I’m a growing boy,” said the kid.
“No, you’re not. You probably won’t grow any more, unless you mean from side to side, and Pop-Tarts will rot your teeth, and you’re on my dental plan now, so stop. Also, I’m not putting anything on my grocery list, because guess what? It’s not my grocery list. It’s yours. You’re going to be doing the grocery shopping.”
“What?” Terrific. Now the kid was going to get whiny.
“It’s called earning your keep. It can be found in the dictionary right next to building character and moral improvement. Look it up.”
“Okay,” said Logan slowly. “So if I have to go grocery shopping, I guess it means I get to use your car.”
“No. It means you get to take the lovely five-minute walk around the corner. Stay away from my car.”
“Oh, Uncle Greg,” said the kid with an affected sigh. “You’re such a hard-ass. Your stern yet caring ways will inspire me to change my behavior and become a model all-American Eagle Scout.” He got up and stomped off to his bedroom.
House gulped down a couple of Vicodin and called after him, “Caring? What the hell makes you think I care?”
***
“I think he’ll be good for you,” said Wilson thoughtfully. “I think you’ll be good for him, too.”
“Good for me?” House stared at him. “Even as pathetic an optimist as you can’t say that a mentally disturbed teenager is going to be good for a--”
“A mentally disturbed middle-aged man?”
“Not what I was going to say,” said House.
“Not wrong, either,” said Wilson.
***
“You’ve got a kid?” Foreman was incredulous. As well he should be. House popped a Vicodin into his mouth and swallowed.
“Yep,” he said, and turned back to the board. “Now. Differential diagnosis, people. Looking at the symptoms-”
“Is he-yours?” Cameron was all wide-eyed, like she was shocked at the idea of bastard children.
“No,” snapped House. “A friend lent him to me, just for the weekend. The patient has a cough, a rash on his side, and-”
“You have a son?” Chase looked like he was going to start rolling on the floor with laughter any moment.
House sighed impatiently. “I do not have a son,” he said. “My cousin-Aaron Echolls, movie star and murderer-has a son. I ended up stuck with the kid, since there was no one else to take custody of him.”
“Aaron Echolls is your cousin?” Cameron went wide-eyed again. “Oh, my God. That’s right-he killed that girl, didn’t he?”
“What girl?” Foreman looked confused and annoyed.
“His son’s girlfriend,” said Chase. “Don’t you read People magazine, Foreman?”
“And you do?” Foreman stared. “Oh, shit, you all read People, don’t you? I work with a bunch of lowbrow morons.”
“Hey,” protested House. “I may be lowbrow, but I object to ‘moron.’”
The four of them had just settled on what to do about their current patient-well, okay, House had settled on what to do and bulldozed over the others’ objections-when the kid walked into the office.
Logan looked…strange. Shaky, like he’d narrowly avoided getting hit by a truck.
“How’d you get in here?” asked House. “Okay, never mind. Cameron, Chase-go do the MRI. Foreman, you go to the clinic and pick up a copy of People magazine. It’ll be good for your soul.” Foreman gave him a killer glare before marching off. “Now, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at home? I thought I told you where the porn tapes were.”
“I think you’ve been holding out on me,” said Logan. “I mean, it looks like I can be better entertained here.” He cast an eye after Cameron, who was just exiting after Chase.
House rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. She’s too old for you. Look, this is a hospital, not a daycare center. So, here--” House dug into his pocket, pulled out a wallet and thrust a few bills into the kid’s hand. “Go-do whatever brats your age do, okay? Just stay away from here.”
“There’s nothing to do around here,” said Logan snottily. “This is New Jersey.”
“There’s plenty to do in New Jersey,” retorted House. “There are malls, where you can go be a mall-rat and flirt with girls with too much make-up on. There are…uh....okay. I’m drawing a blank.” He looked at his watch. “I don’t care what you do, so long as you’re quiet about it. It’s just about time for General Hospital.”
House parked himself at his desk and began to watch, staring intently at the tiny screen.
Logan sat down in front of him.
The commercial break came.
Logan continued to sit there.
The show came back, and fifteen minutes later it was back to the commercials.
“I found out where you hide your Vicodin,” said Logan.
House swiveled his head toward the kid. “I locked it up,” he said.
“I smashed the lock,” said Logan.
The kid’s breathing was slow, and he looked incredibly tired.
Oh, fuck. “You idiot,” said House. “How much did you take?”
“Just two,” said Logan. No danger of an overdose, then. House was relieved. He didn’t need a criminal negligence charge on top of everything else.
“Who’s that girl?” asked Logan.
“Susie,” said House. The kid was staring hard at the TV, wide-eyed. “She’s too old for you, too.”
The kid just scowled at him. “She looks…like my girlfriend.”
“Your-the dead one, or the one that thought you killed the dead one?”
“The dead one,” said the kid softly. “Lilly.”
Oh, man. Lovesick teenagers were so not his area of expertise. House briefly flirted with the idea of paging Cameron.
“My father slept with her, before he killed her,” the kid said. “She-she slept with him. She wanted to.”
“People are screwed up,” said House uncomfortably. Triteness was usually Wilson’s thing.
Logan just snorted in response.
“My ex-girlfriend is responsible for my leg being like this,” said House. Okay, so it wasn’t fair to…Stacey…and yeah, it did still hurt to think her name even now, and when the hell was that going to get better? But even if it wasn’t fair, it might help the kid. Maybe. Might get him to shut up, at the very least. “Some people’s girlfriends kill them. You could have it worse.” House considered that statement. “No, actually, you couldn’t. That was a lie. It doesn’t get much more painful than your father fucking your girlfriend and then killing her. Definitely doesn’t get more sordid than that, anyway.”
“I bet you just charm everyone with that bedside manner.” The kid was staring pensively at the floor.
“No. But I treat them. I get them better.” Most of the time, anyway.
“Oh, really? So how do you treat a case of mydadkilledmygirlfriend-itis?”
House gave Logan a long, contemplative look. “Same way you treat everything else that’s painful as hell and makes no sense at all,” he said. “You get through the days. Minute by minute. Distracting yourself till one day you find out it hurts a little less.”
The commercial break finished, and General Hospital came back on. House and Logan sat there and watched.
When the show was over, House reached for his Vicodin again, and swatted Logan’s hand away when the kid tried to take some. “Mine,” said House. “You can’t have any.”
The kid scowled and rolled his eyes. “You know, since you’re setting me such a good example about drug usage, it’s only natural that I’m going to want some of that.”
“You can’t always get what you want,” said House sagely, and swallowed another pill.
-fin-
Title: What You Need
Pairing: Gen
Warnings: No sex or anything, but it does have spoilers for season 1 of Veronica Mars.
Summary: After the events of S1 VMars, House finds himself in custody of his cousin Aaron Echolls' extremely disturbed child, Logan.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of it.
Notes: This is just a whimsical little idea I had after seeing both House and VM and deciding that House and Logan had to be related. It goes AU after S1 House and S1 VMars.
What You Need
“Dr. House!”
House sighed, recognizing the sharp voice and the equally sharp click-click of the heels. He sped up, hoping to make it to the door before Cuddy caught up with him, but no luck. “Why, Dr. Cuddy, you’re looking bright and perky today,” he said, staring pointedly at her breasts.
She ignored him, as usual. Smart woman. “You can’t leave yet. You’re still on clinic duty.”
“Am I?” House crinkled his forehead. “Gosh, I’m sorry. You know how I hate to leave the patients high and dry, but I really can’t stay. I have to get home to the kid.”
“The-the what?” House kept walking, but Cuddy’s manhandling prevented him from getting very far. “You don’t have a kid, or did you think I’d forgotten about the part where you’re a lonely bitter bachelor?”
“Ah,” said House grimly, “there’s where you’re wrong. You see, I was a lonely bitter bachelor. Now…well, I’m still a lonely bitter bachelor, but I’ve got a lonely bitter seventeen-year-old camping out at my place, and I have to get back there just to make sure he doesn’t slit his wrists. That kind of thing is so hard on the carpets, don’t you agree?”
Cuddy stood stock-still and gaped, giving House the chance to slip out of her grasp and start hobbling towards the door. Unfortunately she recovered quickly and got a grip on his arm again. “You-what? Where did this seventeen-year-old come from?” House twisted away from her and kept walking. “Relative? Illegitimate child from a youthful indiscretion?” She was shouting now. “Don’t tell me you adopted him!”
And he was out the door and heading towards his car, free at last. Except not really, because the aforementioned brat was probably even now swallowing his whole Vicodin stash.
Goddamn Aaron Echolls. House had been sitting pretty, content in his status as the biggest bastard in the family-and then good old Cousin Aaron, the movie star, the golden boy, had to go and snatch the trophy out of his hands. He hadn’t seen the jackass since they were kids and his mom used to force him to visit her sister’s family in California on holidays. And now he was stuck as legal guardian of Aaron Echolls’ psychotic spawn. Fucking terrific.
What was the kid’s name again? Lawrence? Conan? Whatever it was, the kid couldn’t be emancipated because the courts decided he was too…what was the term? “Emotionally unstable”?” Something like that. Anyway, because the kid-Logan, that was his name-was too “emotionally unstable” to be emancipated, he needed a legal guardian. His sister Trina was a druggie and a slut-or, as the judge had put it, “unfit.” That meant Logan had to go to either House or a foster home, and House figured the kid would probably go on a killing spree if he was chucked into the foster-care system, and then House would probably get annoying reporters coming to his door to get the family’s perspective for their tabloids.
So, little Logan Echolls-well, okay, not so little-was currently caged at House’s place.
House parked outside and went in, eyeing the room warily. The kid was sitting at the piano, looking all hopeless and forlorn, picking at the keys with one finger. “Hey,” said House gruffly. “Are you having fun butchering Mozart?”
The kid turned his head to look at House. A twisted smirk grew on his face, and House fought the urge to backhand him. “Hello, Uncle Greg,” he said in an impossibly cheery tone. “How was your day?”
“I’m not your uncle. I’m your first cousin once removed. And-are you eating at the piano?”
“Don’t worry,” said Logan. “My fingers aren’t sticky.”
“Get the ice cream away from the piano.” House glared at the kid when he didn’t move. “Now.”
“Yes, sir, Uncle Greg, sir,” said the kid, saluting smartly and getting the carton off the piano.
“I told you--” House began, and then checked himself. He sure as hell wasn’t going to waste his time arguing with the hellspawn. “I can see that you haven’t been gnawing on your own arm, so I assume you were okay for lunch.”
“Just fine,” said Logan sweetly. “You should put strawberry Pop-Tarts on your grocery list.”
House grimaced. “Don’t tell me you finished all of them.”
“Hey, I’m a growing boy,” said the kid.
“No, you’re not. You probably won’t grow any more, unless you mean from side to side, and Pop-Tarts will rot your teeth, and you’re on my dental plan now, so stop. Also, I’m not putting anything on my grocery list, because guess what? It’s not my grocery list. It’s yours. You’re going to be doing the grocery shopping.”
“What?” Terrific. Now the kid was going to get whiny.
“It’s called earning your keep. It can be found in the dictionary right next to building character and moral improvement. Look it up.”
“Okay,” said Logan slowly. “So if I have to go grocery shopping, I guess it means I get to use your car.”
“No. It means you get to take the lovely five-minute walk around the corner. Stay away from my car.”
“Oh, Uncle Greg,” said the kid with an affected sigh. “You’re such a hard-ass. Your stern yet caring ways will inspire me to change my behavior and become a model all-American Eagle Scout.” He got up and stomped off to his bedroom.
House gulped down a couple of Vicodin and called after him, “Caring? What the hell makes you think I care?”
***
“I think he’ll be good for you,” said Wilson thoughtfully. “I think you’ll be good for him, too.”
“Good for me?” House stared at him. “Even as pathetic an optimist as you can’t say that a mentally disturbed teenager is going to be good for a--”
“A mentally disturbed middle-aged man?”
“Not what I was going to say,” said House.
“Not wrong, either,” said Wilson.
***
“You’ve got a kid?” Foreman was incredulous. As well he should be. House popped a Vicodin into his mouth and swallowed.
“Yep,” he said, and turned back to the board. “Now. Differential diagnosis, people. Looking at the symptoms-”
“Is he-yours?” Cameron was all wide-eyed, like she was shocked at the idea of bastard children.
“No,” snapped House. “A friend lent him to me, just for the weekend. The patient has a cough, a rash on his side, and-”
“You have a son?” Chase looked like he was going to start rolling on the floor with laughter any moment.
House sighed impatiently. “I do not have a son,” he said. “My cousin-Aaron Echolls, movie star and murderer-has a son. I ended up stuck with the kid, since there was no one else to take custody of him.”
“Aaron Echolls is your cousin?” Cameron went wide-eyed again. “Oh, my God. That’s right-he killed that girl, didn’t he?”
“What girl?” Foreman looked confused and annoyed.
“His son’s girlfriend,” said Chase. “Don’t you read People magazine, Foreman?”
“And you do?” Foreman stared. “Oh, shit, you all read People, don’t you? I work with a bunch of lowbrow morons.”
“Hey,” protested House. “I may be lowbrow, but I object to ‘moron.’”
The four of them had just settled on what to do about their current patient-well, okay, House had settled on what to do and bulldozed over the others’ objections-when the kid walked into the office.
Logan looked…strange. Shaky, like he’d narrowly avoided getting hit by a truck.
“How’d you get in here?” asked House. “Okay, never mind. Cameron, Chase-go do the MRI. Foreman, you go to the clinic and pick up a copy of People magazine. It’ll be good for your soul.” Foreman gave him a killer glare before marching off. “Now, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at home? I thought I told you where the porn tapes were.”
“I think you’ve been holding out on me,” said Logan. “I mean, it looks like I can be better entertained here.” He cast an eye after Cameron, who was just exiting after Chase.
House rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. She’s too old for you. Look, this is a hospital, not a daycare center. So, here--” House dug into his pocket, pulled out a wallet and thrust a few bills into the kid’s hand. “Go-do whatever brats your age do, okay? Just stay away from here.”
“There’s nothing to do around here,” said Logan snottily. “This is New Jersey.”
“There’s plenty to do in New Jersey,” retorted House. “There are malls, where you can go be a mall-rat and flirt with girls with too much make-up on. There are…uh....okay. I’m drawing a blank.” He looked at his watch. “I don’t care what you do, so long as you’re quiet about it. It’s just about time for General Hospital.”
House parked himself at his desk and began to watch, staring intently at the tiny screen.
Logan sat down in front of him.
The commercial break came.
Logan continued to sit there.
The show came back, and fifteen minutes later it was back to the commercials.
“I found out where you hide your Vicodin,” said Logan.
House swiveled his head toward the kid. “I locked it up,” he said.
“I smashed the lock,” said Logan.
The kid’s breathing was slow, and he looked incredibly tired.
Oh, fuck. “You idiot,” said House. “How much did you take?”
“Just two,” said Logan. No danger of an overdose, then. House was relieved. He didn’t need a criminal negligence charge on top of everything else.
“Who’s that girl?” asked Logan.
“Susie,” said House. The kid was staring hard at the TV, wide-eyed. “She’s too old for you, too.”
The kid just scowled at him. “She looks…like my girlfriend.”
“Your-the dead one, or the one that thought you killed the dead one?”
“The dead one,” said the kid softly. “Lilly.”
Oh, man. Lovesick teenagers were so not his area of expertise. House briefly flirted with the idea of paging Cameron.
“My father slept with her, before he killed her,” the kid said. “She-she slept with him. She wanted to.”
“People are screwed up,” said House uncomfortably. Triteness was usually Wilson’s thing.
Logan just snorted in response.
“My ex-girlfriend is responsible for my leg being like this,” said House. Okay, so it wasn’t fair to…Stacey…and yeah, it did still hurt to think her name even now, and when the hell was that going to get better? But even if it wasn’t fair, it might help the kid. Maybe. Might get him to shut up, at the very least. “Some people’s girlfriends kill them. You could have it worse.” House considered that statement. “No, actually, you couldn’t. That was a lie. It doesn’t get much more painful than your father fucking your girlfriend and then killing her. Definitely doesn’t get more sordid than that, anyway.”
“I bet you just charm everyone with that bedside manner.” The kid was staring pensively at the floor.
“No. But I treat them. I get them better.” Most of the time, anyway.
“Oh, really? So how do you treat a case of mydadkilledmygirlfriend-itis?”
House gave Logan a long, contemplative look. “Same way you treat everything else that’s painful as hell and makes no sense at all,” he said. “You get through the days. Minute by minute. Distracting yourself till one day you find out it hurts a little less.”
The commercial break finished, and General Hospital came back on. House and Logan sat there and watched.
When the show was over, House reached for his Vicodin again, and swatted Logan’s hand away when the kid tried to take some. “Mine,” said House. “You can’t have any.”
The kid scowled and rolled his eyes. “You know, since you’re setting me such a good example about drug usage, it’s only natural that I’m going to want some of that.”
“You can’t always get what you want,” said House sagely, and swallowed another pill.
-fin-