Fear Of Fire Leaves You Cold, Chapter 6
Title: Fear of Fire Leaves You Cold, Chapter 6
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy, Wilson, Arlene, Julia, etc.
Author's Note: Since this piece is set post "Moving On," there are spoilers for that episode. Also please note that, while I plan on making this House/Cuddy, it's not going to be a quick thing. Given what House has done, it will take a while to work through all of those issues. If you're looking for an easy happy ending, this isn't the piece for you. Some chapters are split for length. These next few chapters were written for harvesttime88 for the help_lisa auction.
Warning: This fic contains sex. Please be aware that this chapter contains implications of sexual assault. No assault is shown, but there are moments that allude to that possibly happening. There’s nothing graphic, but I can understand that some of this chapter might be triggering, so keep that in mind.
Summary: After House crashes his car through Cuddy's home, both strive to rebuild their lives and deal with the consequences of their broken relationship.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 (Part 1), Chapter 2 (Part 2), Chapter 3, Chapter 4 (Part 1), Chapter 4 (Part 2), Chapter 5
Disclaimer: The show is not mine.
Morning never failed to betray him. With his eyes closed, he half-dreamed, half-believed that he was in bed next to her. He could see it - like a movie he was watching: she’d turned away from him in the middle of the night, the air too warm for her to stay close. But if he rolled over, he would be with her again, face buried in her dark hair, a hand cupping her hip, his erection pressed into her ass. Nearly asleep she would groan and grind against him until one of them would slide her shorts down and guide his dick into her. He would hold her close as he took her slowly, and after they came, he would fall back to sleep, his cock still inside her.
Every single morning, he imagined that being his world… only to be abruptly awoken to the reality of jail. He wasn’t with her. He was alone on a cold metal bed with his dick painfully hard and no remedy for it. However pathetic he’d become, he wasn’t going to jerk himself off in prison. No matter how frequently he dreamed of her, he wouldn’t let himself act on that attraction, not here, not ever.
For the past week though, it didn’t matter either way. He knew that even if he’d wanted to masturbate, there would be no point. He was in too much pain.
Withdrawal was fading into the background, giving the reason for his addiction a chance to bubble to the surface. At first, he had tried to focus his mind on other things, the few meetings he had with his lawyer, the routine he had to learn. He had tried to tell himself that the pain was a result of the Vicodin withdrawal; the pain would get better; the pain would go away. After all, he had gone for so long without the pills. He had at one point managed to live comfortably without the drug. He had told himself he could do it again.
This morning however, he knew all of that was a lie. It was too much for him. He woke up to the familiar fantasy only to have it abruptly cut off by pain so searing he nearly broke his teeth mashing them together to stop himself from screaming.
For several long minutes, he could do nothing more than let the pain consume him. His whole body tensed, breath hitched in his throat. If his heart were to stop beating, it would seem understandable given the stress his system was under. He was caught beneath the weight of it, and all he could do was wait for the discomfort to lessen. Or for this level of pain to become his new normal. Some semblance of that thought passed through him. Whichever solution came first.
Slowly though, thankfully, the roiling pain dissipated into a sharp ache. It would never go away completely, but at least it wasn’t as bad now. His muscles unclenched, and he inhaled deeply, gasping for air. And deep within, a voice whispered for the Vicodin.
It was impossible to ignore the idea once the thought had been conceived. Vicodin would make his problems worse, but it would make this one better. It would make the pain go away. It would allow him to get up and head to the showers with a little less concern as to how he would make it there. He didn’t have to take the entire bottle; he didn’t have to go back to the drug completely, he tried to tell himself.
It was a lie easily spotted, but he wanted to believe it. He really did.
He wanted the drug. He wanted the pain to go away. He wanted it to have never existed.
But it wasn’t an option. Rational thought suddenly cutting through, he knew that getting the Vicodin was no longer a choice he could afford to make. In the past, that would have made no difference. He was an addict after all; negative consequences didn’t have the same effect they would have had on someone who could control their Vicodin intake easily. Things had changed though. He was in jail now, and if he were to take Vicodin here….
The consequences were ones he feared.
So far, he hadn’t had any altercations. The other prisoners must have thought he was pitiful, a cripple limping around jail. No one thought he was a threat, but at the same time, there was nothing to be had in hurting him. Harassing the gimp would lessen your cred… or something like that. He didn’t really know the logic at work here.
If House had Vicodin though? That would all change - dramatically so. No one would care that he wasn’t physically capable of defending himself as well as another man. No one would take pity on him; they would just want the drugs. And given that they were all in jail, it wasn’t hard to believe that someone would give into temptation and hurt him in order to get the pills.
The quickest way to incapacitate him? The source of his pain.
His shaky hands rubbed his thigh, moving over the uneven and scarred flesh. This was all he could do, he told himself. He could ask to go to the correctional medical unit and ask for aspirin, but he knew the danger in that. If he were to make that seemingly long trip, he would not ask for anything other than Vicodin. The desire was too strong for him to resist, and so he couldn’t give himself the opportunity to even give into the feeling. He didn’t want the pain, but it had to be this way.
If Wilson were here, if Wilson still talked or cared about him at all, he would say that House was making this choice to punish himself. Wilson would also probably say that the pain itself was a psychosomatic side effect of his guilt. House hurt more, because he had hurt Cuddy. He allowed himself to suffer, because he knew he had done something unfathomably selfish and cruel.
Was there something to that?
Maybe. Probably. House didn’t like to consider himself a tortured man, a masochistic one. But secretly he realized the logic in his internal Wilson’s beliefs. It would make sense.
Then again, it didn’t matter. He was in pain. He had hurt the people he cared most about, and now they hated him. He might not have been trying to punish himself, but punishment was something he deserved. And whatever his reasoning, he would continue to hurt. That no one needed to feel that way more than him was almost irrelevant, because his leg would never be normal again. But at the same time, it wasn’t unimportant to him, because he knew: he deserved the pain.
As he stood up to go to the showers, House wondered then if he really believed that. If he truly felt that he should suffer, then why not go demand Vicodin? Why was he hesitating to accept the horrors that would come with that? He had no answer for that, so he just kept walking.
Two days later, he was doing the same thing, heading to the showers. Everyone tended to give each other a wide birth at this time of day. Getting naked in front of each other wasn’t exactly something anyone enjoyed. It was awkward, and from House’s experience, the goal was to get through it as quickly as possible without eliciting attention from anyone. Today however, things were different.
Usually men tiredly moved through the hall. They avoided eye contact and conversation, just doing what they needed to get in and out of the shower and back to their cells. But when House left his bed today, three or four cells down, there was a small crowd of people. They were bunched together in a semi-circle, clearly looking into someone’s cell.
House didn’t care what the issue was. He could hear a few men talking, but he didn’t pay any attention. He just wanted to shower and be done with it. Unfortunately, it was impossible to miss what was going on as he passed by.
In the cell were two guards and two prisoners. Just at first glance, it didn’t look like anything interesting was going on. The cellmates were shirtless and sweaty, but people tended to appear mussed when they first woke up. That didn’t mean anything. But the conversation between the four men caught House’s interest.
“You want to tell us what’s going on?” the guard to the left, a burly redhead, asked. The prisoners shook their head, a blond man blushing in embarrassment. “Well, you know we’re gonna have to get to the bottom of this.”
Someone outside of the cell snickered at the word “bottom,” making the guards realized they weren’t handling this privately. The other guard who had remained quiet thus far turned around and barked, “All right, ladies. That’s enough gossip. Hit the showers or you’re gonna be in lockdown for the rest of the day.”
House kept moving. As he showered, he half-heartedly wondered what had gone on to attract that much attention. He had suspicions, of course, but they all seemed like a regurgitation of Lesbian Prison Stories. It was possible that those two cellmates had had sex or worse, statistically likely even. But there was something so stereotypical about it that it almost felt ridiculous to suspect it. And in the end, he would never know the truth either way. Even if he questioned someone about it, no one would ever tell him, and so by the time he finished his shower, he’d completely forgotten about it.
Unfortunately when he returned to his cell, he was forced to remember. On the cot opposite his sat the blonde man from earlier.
Immediately, before House could stop himself, he demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m your new cellmate,” the stranger said with equal dissatisfaction at the situation.
House scowled. “Lucky me.” Unceremoniously he laid down on his slab of a bed. He guessed he should have known this would happen. He couldn’t be alone in his cell forever. At some point, some drunken fool would run his car over a two-year-old child, or a man would rob a bank, and that space would be needed. But somehow House thought it would happen differently. The person he would be stuck with wouldn’t be a young and agile-looking man… who might or might not have sexually assaulted someone earlier today.
House didn’t want to think that was true. If this Chase wannabe had done something like that, surely he would be segregated from every anus in the joint. Whatever had happened, it had to be something else, House thought, closing his eyes to take a nap.
Roomie didn’t pay attention to that. He just kept talking. “Name’s Gene. What’s yours?”
“Greg,” House said coldly.
Gene still didn’t take the hint. “Cool. I got arrested cause I hired a hooker… who was also apparently a heroin addict. Cops busted us, saw all the smack, and assumed some of it was mine. Fucking cunt. Got charged with distribution. Can you believe it? What are you in for?”
“Shooting someone who didn’t keep quiet when I was trying to sleep,” House muttered.
“Seriously?”
“No.”
Gene thought about it for a second and then said, “Oh I get it.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’ll shut up then.”
And he did. But it was impossible to miss from then on that House was living with someone else. The space that constituted a cell was too small for two people. House came to realize that quickly. For the next week, Gene seemed to be everywhere and always irritating, even when he wasn’t saying anything at all. They had plenty of time to be out of their cells and away from one another. Yet it didn’t feel like that. If House went to the library, somehow Gene ended up there too. If House decided to wile the day away sleeping, Gene would come back early from playing basketball to take a nap too.
House couldn’t tell if it was intentional on his part, if Gene was trying to be friends with him or if there were possibly something more sinister in his roommate’s sudden interest. The only way to decipher Gene’s motivation would be to talk to him, get to know him enough to understand what exactly his goals were. But House had no desire for conversation. On the contrary, he wanted to wall himself off completely.
He didn’t want a friend, didn’t deserve one. And certainly if he needed someone to talk to, it would be someone who fundamentally understood that he liked his privacy. It would not be the person who would walk in on him while he was mid-dump and start talking to him as though nothing was happening. The person House confided in wasn’t going to be the fool who seemed intent on following him around like a lost puppy. But Gene didn’t take the hint, no matter how terribly House treated him.
Admittedly there was something about all of this that House found distracting. Although he didn’t like this new problem, at least it made him think of something other than Cuddy and what he’d done for a little bit.
He always remembered though. Always. The rush of the car and the house crumbling around him, Cuddy’s shock and Wilson’s disgust - it all returned eventually. And when it did, he felt the need to throw up.
How could he focus on anything other than that? He wouldn’t even be here if not for that. How could he not think about that?
When he realized his mistake that night, he groaned. Instantly Gene turned his head in House’s direction. “You okay, man?”
“Fine.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
House rolled his eyes in the dark. “I don’t care.”
He could hear Gene rolling over. “Is it your leg? What the hell happened with that thing anyway?”
“Wood chipper accident,” House said dryly.
The humor was lost on Gene. “Seriously?”
For a second, House wondered what he’d done to deserve having someone so irritating in his life. Then the answer was obvious, and he hated it. “No,” he said frustratedly.
“Then what happened? I mean, I know something’s wrong.”
“You’re smart.”
“I seen your leg in the shower. If you tell me what happened, I don’t know, I can run to the med unit for you. They might give me something to bring back if you want.”
House raised an eyebrow. “Well that’s good to know,” he said sarcastically. “I was really hoping someone would stare at me in the shower. What I always wanted.”
“That’s not what I meant. I did - I didn’t do that,” Gene said angrily. “I’m not gay.”
“Yeah… I think somewhere in this conversation, you got the impression that I cared either way, and I don’t.”
“I mean it, Greg.”
There was something about the way it was said that gave House pause - a dangerous edge to the words perhaps. In the darkness, it was impossible to look over and see how serious Gene was being, just how awfully he would react if House took it a little further. But House had no real desire to taunt the man anymore.
He had learned just how far he could go when he vehemently kept a person out of his life or forced them out. What he had done to Cuddy had been a testament to that. Having lost her and Wilson permanently, House wanted to feel as though that moment had had some sort of purpose. It had taught him something or… he didn’t know what he wanted from ramming his car through Cuddy’s home. He just wanted something that made that behavior slightly more forgivable. And he knew that if he allowed himself to be as ruthless with this kid as he had been with people he actually cared about, there was no telling what would happen.
Besides, Gene had been arrested for something. He didn’t seem like a threat, but how could House be sure?
Uncharacteristically backing off, House said, “You know what, Gene? You’re right.”
“Good.”
They fell into uneasy silence, punctuated every now and then by a sneeze or the sound of someone peeing in the distance. In the small cell, the tension was impossible to miss, even harder to escape. House rolled over onto his stomach and closed his eyes and hoped that that would be the end of Gene’s behavior. He hoped it was clear that they weren’t friends, weren’t ever going to be friends.
The next day, it seemed like Gene had realized the state of their relationship, which was to say that they didn’t have one. They ate breakfast without a word to one another. They went about their separate ways as best as they could in their jailed universe. But there was only so much they could do without being near one another. The precarious nature of their dynamic was bound to shift from tentatively quiet co-existence to something else. Not necessarily bad or dangerous, he thought, but things couldn’t continue as they were. They would talk again at some point.
The conversation happened the next day when they were both headed to the library separately. House ended up behind Gene in the hallway, which shouldn’t have been an issue. But it was.
“Stop followin’ me, man,” Gene said loudly abruptly turning around.
House pointed out, equally annoyed, “I wasn’t. I just happen to be going in the same -”
“Are you obsessed or just -”
“I’m not the one staring at my cellmate’s junk in the shower,” House said in a low voice, knowing that that kind of information didn’t need to be spread throughout the prison. No one else had heard besides the person who needed to hear it.
But Gene, red with rage, couldn’t see that. His hand forming into a tight fist, he snarled, “You talk about that again, and I’m gonna hit you.”
“Then do us both a favor and don’t talk to me.”
“Fine.”
Gene spun on his heel and stalked towards the library. But that wouldn’t end matters. House had made it clear that they could never be friends, and that rejection had awoken something in Gene… or made it impossible for him to hide his true self. Gene had been agitated since they’d last talked. That wouldn’t change over night.
When Gene came back from the library, House was lying in bed, and this made him furious. “Don’t you have some place to be, or do you just like to lie on your back all day like a whore?”
House wanted to return the vitriol, but this dynamic had become tedious at best. “I’ll leave for dinner in five minutes,” he said calmly.
“Or you could leave for dinner now.”
He didn’t want to give into the demand. He was in pain, and this crappy cot for a bed had made his sleep uneven since he’d gotten here. He wanted to close his eyes and try to forget where he was for a little bit. But it wasn’t worth the fight. He really would need to head down the hall to dinner in five minutes anyway. So he got up and left without a word, silently regretting having ever said anything to this guy at all.
Regretting that he’d ever done anything to be in the same cell as him to begin with, he corrected. If he hadn’t hurt Cuddy, he wouldn’t be here. If he’d just turned and walked away when he’d seen her with that guy, things could have been… okay.
But then they couldn’t have been, because she would have dated him. And he would be forced to watch her move on, the idea of which made him want to grab her and hold her close.
At the same time, he understood that, because of what he did, she would never let him touch her now. Before there’d been a very, very slim chance that she would some day forgive him. There was no chance of that now.
She hated him.
She hated him, because in that moment outside her home, he had convinced himself that he despised her. And he had punished her for something that he had no right to be mad about. She’d only dumped him because of the Vicodin, because of the choices he made. If she had been with someone else, it had been because he’d practically forced her into another man’s arms.
So now everything was wrong. No one in the world cared where he was.
Except for Gene, he thought bitterly.
****************************
When Julia opened her front door, she clearly hadn’t expected to see Cuddy on the other side. But Cuddy had decided that she’d had enough of the uncertainty in her life.
Well, technically, she’d realized that weeks ago. However, there was nothing to be done while she waited to see if the homeowners accepted her offer. There was even less she could do to make Rachel happier. The situation with House could be resolved, she guessed, but she wasn’t ready to make a choice about him. She needed to proceed carefully with that - or it would be her own ass on the line. But Julia’s silent treatment could be fixed simply enough, and Cuddy had made the choice to drive over and settle the issue in person.
The second her sister opened the door though, Cuddy almost regretted it.
“Lisa,” she said in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Cuddy tried not to sound accusatory. “You’re not answering my calls.”
Julia hesitated. Whether that was to say something or to let her in was unclear. Eventually she said, “The kids are at the movies. Come in.”
As Cuddy stepped through the threshold, she asked, “Where’s -”
“My sweet husband agreed to take the kids and make sure they don’t throw popcorn at other people like they did last time.” There was a slight chill to the way she said it, as though she didn’t quite feel that way. Proving Cuddy right, Julia said, closing the front door, “Actually, he offered to take the kids, and in exchange I promised to consider having another baby. Can I get you some tea?”
The little tidbit was meant to wound, and it did. Julia hadn’t said anything before now about possibly having another child. Perhaps she meant what she said; she’d agreed, possibly after several nos, to consider trying for another one. But telling Cuddy today was not a coincidence. Julia wanted to hurt her, and she could, because she had a husband and decent fertility, which made trying for one more the easy choice Cuddy herself had never had the ability to make.
“That would be great” was all she said aloud though. She would like to fight back, but she knew she couldn’t. The tension between them needed to be resolved, and in order for that to happen, Cuddy understood she would need to be far more forgiving of her sister than her sister had been of her.
Together they walked into the kitchen, and Julia busied herself putting the kettle on the stove. “I know I haven’t called you back,” she said honestly, the stove crackling loudly as she turned on the gas. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to you.”
Cuddy appreciated the honesty, even though part of her wanted to kill her sister for the selfishness of her behavior. “I know that it was scary for you too,” Cuddy tried to say as sympathetically as possible. “You thought we’d have a nice dinner, and… it didn’t turn out that way. But I didn’t think that House would -”
“You forget that I’m your sister, Lis.” Julia reached into the cabinet to get two mugs. “You have been talking about how much you hate that guy for years. How dangerous he is with his patients. I’ve heard you.”
“That’s different.”
“I have lemon tea and chamomile. What would you like?” Cuddy pointed to the chamomile. “You knew he was capable of doing terrible things - maybe not at that level - but you’ve had years to see that he -”
“I didn’t see it,” Cuddy said insistently, quietly. “You think I don’t know that I should have known what he was capable of? I feel like an idiot.”
Julia sighed and drummed her fingers along the stove. “That’s not what I mean. I mean - that’s not what I meant to say. Of course that’s how you feel,” she said apologetically. “I just can’t believe you went on a trip after all of that. You saw what he did and left like it was nothing and -”
“That’s not true.”
Julia turned away from her to pour the water from the whistling kettle. Deftly and without response, she plucked tea bags from their boxes and dunked them unceremoniously into the mugs. Her hands noisily crumpled the paper the bags had once been in, and again without a word, she threw the trash away.
Cuddy didn’t like the silence. She knew it meant that Julia was mad, that she didn’t believe her. But Cuddy also knew that if she insisted that Julia was wrong, her words wouldn’t ease the tension between them. It would make Cuddy look as though she were defensive, and Julia would take that as proof of her guilt. Knowing how much harder it would be to seem innocent once convicted, Cuddy kept her mouth shut.
Eventually though, Julia said something while handing Cuddy her tea. “I know Mom gave you the tickets. You don’t have to tell me it was her idea, because she has already done that. And I get it. Okay? I know why you would want to go. I would want to go, and if someone were offering a vacation to me, all expenses paid, I wouldn’t say no either.”
“Then… I don’t understand what the problem is.”
Cuddy hadn’t said it with any particular anger, but it managed to upset Julia.
“How do you not get it?” she practically snarled. Hot tea splashing out of her mug, Julia hissed. “Damn it.” She set the cup down and reached for a tea towel to wipe herself off.
“Did you burn yourself?”
Julia’s answer was abrupt. “I’m fine. But when you left the country, did you think how that would look?” She didn’t give Cuddy a chance to respond. “Of course, you didn’t, because if you thought about it at all, you would realize that it makes you look like you don’t care.”
Cuddy felt her jaw clench. “Really?”
“All I can think about is what will happen when we go to court. You’re gonna get up on the stand and talk about what he did, and they’re going to ask you how you’ve been since then. And you’re going to have to admit at some point that you just….” She shrugged. “I don’t know. You went to the damn beach. That’s what you did. And once that’s out, no one will believe that what he did was that bad, because you don’t.”
“You have no idea what you’re -”
“Damn it. He could have killed me. He could have killed my husband. Our children could have become orphans!” Julia shouted on the verge of tears. “And now you’ve screwed everything up. How could you do that?”
She wanted an explanation. She wasn’t saying those things just to get them off her chest. Julia really wanted her to say something that would explain her behavior, that would justify it, or reveal something that would make all of this okay.
But Cuddy wasn’t sure she had any of that in her. It seemed like the second House had driven through her home, she had been expected to please everyone around her. To give the perfect reaction for all of them would have been impossible, but somehow she had been held to that standard, had it tied around her like a noose, anyway.
Part of her tried to remind herself what she’d come here to do. Her mind mustered up unspoken promises she’d made to her mother and the conversation she would have with her should this not end well. But that wasn’t enough to silence the rage that had built up.
Fighting the urge to throw her tea in Julia’s face, Cuddy set her cup down. Teeth gritted, she said, “My ex-boyfriend thinks so little of me that he drives his car through my home and ruins it. He hates me so much that he’s willing to kill me and everyone around me without a second thought. I take that seriously. I shouldn’t even have to say that I do.”
“Well, your behavior -”
“I am so sick of hearing that,” Cuddy snapped. “I’m sorry I didn’t consult the manual on the proper way to react to the unthinkable.”
Julia’s demeanor didn’t change. “That’s not -”
“No, of course. No one wants to tell me what to do, but everyone seems to have an opinion when I don’t do exactly what they want,” Cuddy said with a sneer. “I have a daughter who wants the man responsible for all of this. I have a board who would hate for me to press charges -”
“What?” Julia screamed in shock.
Cuddy explained quickly, “They don’t want the attention, and I know you haven’t worked in years, but if I don’t do what they say, it’s my career that -”
“That’s crap,” Julia said dismissively. But even before she specified, Cuddy knew that she wasn’t saying it was awful that the board would do that to her. That would require Julia to be supportive, and she wasn’t capable of that. It seemed like no one was. “You run that hospital. Don’t act like someone else is making you -”
“I still have people to answer to,” Cuddy insisted. “And this might be hard for you to understand, but I can’t just do -”
“So what the hell does that mean? You’re what? You’re not going to take the stand? You’re going to let him go like he never did anything to me? To you?”
“It means that I don’t need another person telling me how to behave. It means that I have been through enough without dealing with your anger - because I didn’t want any of this.”
Cuddy shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t understand how the conversation had turned this way. She had had her differences with her sister in the past. They were close, but that proximity often led to fighting. Yet she’d never imagined there’d be a day when something like this would happen - when House destroyed her home and Julia hated for the way she reacted to it.
Dejected and more than a little disgusted, Cuddy cleared her throat. Forcing herself to remain calm, she said, “Look, I came here to make things better. Mom would like that. But if you think I’ve been somehow immune to all of this, I don’t know what to tell you to make any of this all right. I don’t want House to be free. I don’t want to put my job in jeopardy because of him either. I -”
“What are you going to do then?”
Cuddy shrugged. “I don’t know, but I -”
“You want to make things right? You put him in jail, Lisa. He could have killed us all and left our kids - mine and yours - without parents. Make him pay. That’s how you fix this.”
“Then I guess I’m not going to make things right,” Cuddy said simply. “Because I’m not going to do what you want just because you tell me to.”
Julia threw the tea towel into the sink. “So you’re going to let him get away with -”
“I haven’t decided what to do. But whatever I end up doing, it won’t be because someone else demanded it of me.” She gave Julia a second to respond. There was no point in doing that, but Cuddy supposed she hoped, no matter how unreasonable it was to do so, that Julia would see what she was doing. Julia would understand the pressure her sister was under and apologize. Naturally though that didn’t happen and probably wasn’t ever going to do.
Adjusting the purse strap slipping down her shoulder, Cuddy said simply, “I’m gonna go. When you talk to Mom, you can let her know that I don’t care what she has to say about this.”
As she walked down the hallway and out the front door, Cuddy understood that she wasn’t lying. She no longer cared what anyone else wanted of her. She’d venture to say that she had never been eager to respond to House’s behavior based on what others wanted her to do. But right now, in this moment, she really didn’t care. And as she drove back to the hotel, she knew that if she pretended to be concerned for how others felt, she would never get what she wanted from the situation. It would never feel like justice to her.
That meant, she would not do what her sister wanted. She wouldn’t listen to the board. She would go a different way.
Mentally, she began to build a plan, a way to make House pay.
*************************************
Gene’s combativeness had grown worse over the past two days. There had been no disagreements in the halls or at dinner. The few hours they’d been allowed outside their cell, they had pretended like the other didn’t exist. But when they’d been locked in together at night, things had… changed. Gene didn’t do anything House wanted to complain to anyone about; he was subtle in his obnoxiousness, as odd as that sounded. Intentionally waiting to take a crap until House was in the cell was hardly something people would sympathize with and it would be even more difficult to prove.
“You can’t wait until I’m gone?” House had asked the second time it happened.
“Why?” Gene had asked almost excitedly. “Does it bother you?”
House hadn’t answered, because he hadn’t wanted to admit that Gene’s attempts at pissing him off were working. House had just rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. But in not responding, he’d made things worse. How that was even possible House hadn’t understood. And yet last night, Gene had jerked off loudly, something House doubted he would have done if they were friends.
Again, House brushed it off. Now that he knew Gene wanted the reaction, he was determined never to give it to him. Stubbornly House would pretend like nothing was wrong.
He thought that was for the best anyway; if he got into fights, Gemeiner would remind him that it would be that much harder to get out of jail. And his lawyer would probably be right about that.
House knew what he had to do if he wanted to be free ever again. But the longer he was in here, the more he thought… that wouldn’t happen. Maybe part of him held onto this idea that if he behaved long enough, Cuddy or Wilson would somehow know that. If he was good, one of them would come for him and take him back into their lives.
It was so stupid. He knew it was. As an adult, he shouldn’t have needed anyone as badly as he needed them. He shouldn’t have looked to them to fix his problems, to make him happy. But he had, and he did, and he didn’t deserve their forgiveness at all. Yet he found himself trying to behave in a way that would show to them that he’d changed, that he could change.
However, they weren’t looking. They weren’t going to, and he knew that every day he stayed in here, the more likely it was that he would continue to be in prison.
With a man he couldn’t stand.
With a man determined to get the better of him.
Inevitably he would, but House hoped to stave that failure of self-control for as long as he could.
That night, he dreamed of Cuddy again. She was getting ready for work. Her skirt was on but unzipped, and as he opened his eyes, she’d just finished getting her bra on. He groaned in disappointment.
Seated on the edge of her bed, she turned to face him. Her smile made him hard. “Good morning,” she said softly.
He let out a whine, not entirely happy to be awake at this hour. “It’s too early. Come back to bed.”
“I have to go in,” she told him as he scooted down to where she was sitting.
Arm wrapped around his waist, he said in all seriousness, “So do I.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a terrible way to come on to me.”
“I’m sorry.” He kissed her bare back. “I’ll be more creative between your thighs. I promise.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for later.”
House frowned. “Yeah, okay. Or I can -”
“You haven’t even brushed your teeth yet,” she said irritably. “And I don’t want to be late.” Plucking his arm from around her body, she stood up.
He didn’t object as she continued to get ready. That wouldn’t get him what he wanted. If he seemed desperate, she’d just get off on rejecting him. Getting up himself, he headed to the bathroom. If she wanted minty-fresh breath, she would get it. Quickly he brushed his teeth and splashed cool water on his face.
“You already have your shirt on,” he complained loudly when he left the bathroom.
Buttoning her top, she said, “I knew what you were going to do. I hurried.”
“I can be quick too,” he offered.
“That’s not a turn on.”
“I give up.”
“That’s too bad; I was ready to change my mind.”
He shook his head knowingly. “No, you weren’t.”
“No, I wasn’t, but I like it when you try.”
“I always try,” he insisted for a reason he didn’t understand. Maybe it felt like she was saying he didn’t put effort into their relationship. He didn’t know where the sudden need to reiterate that point came from.
“I know,” she said soothingly. “Go back to sleep. You’re tired.”
It was too tempting to refuse. If he wasn’t going to have sex, he wasn’t going to move. Without a word he crawled back onto the bed and laid his head down on her pillow. He expected to fall asleep to the sounds of her leaving. Instead he felt her sit down next to him and the back of her hand stroking his cheek.
“I thought you were leaving,” he muttered into the pillow.
“I like seeing you in my bed.”
“I think you’d like seeing me in other places too.”
“I can guarantee you that’s true.”
“Just not right now,” he offered.
“Later,” she promised.
But then the landscape of the dream changed. They were no longer in her bed, but she was there, with him. It took a moment for the scene to settle, but once it did, he could tell that they were in his apartment. At first they were on his couch, but then there was a shift in the dream, and they were on his bed. Or he was anyway.
She was on top of him.
Riding him.
Even unconscious, he could feel the intense wave of arousal overcome him. Whatever vestiges of awareness that were in him told his dreaming self to not give into the images around him - her breasts bouncing with each of her strokes, the part of her mouth as she breathed heavily….
He shouldn’t give in. He didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to come so that she would stay exactly where she was.
“Relax, Greg,” she said, smiling, the words somehow hers but not, but that didn’t make sense. “This is the best part.”
“You think I don’t -”
“Stop talking.” She ground her hips against his, his cock sliding deep into her. “Let me do this for you.”
He was helpless to deny her what she wanted, and he came both in the dream and in real life, so hard that his eyes strained and his throat burned.
Then he was awake, sweating, cold, confused, and covered in his own semen.
And above him stood Gene with a smile that made House cower. It was the grin of an animal, a monster. Gene too was sweating, his cheeks pink, and House no longer knew if this was a nightmare or reality.
His body was unable to move, lips clumsily shifting to start to ask, “Wh-what? What’s going -”
“Relax, Greg. Go back to sleep.”
House tried to piece together what was going on, but he couldn’t. Was he still dreaming? He felt numb and unsure what had happened. Though the bile in his throat seemed real enough, he didn’t know what was going on. His mind was too foggy to decipher the state of things, and he thought if that were the case, none of this could possibly be real. Because if this were happening, he would be able to focus, understand.
He blinked as a last ditch effort to comprehend. But when he opened his eyes, Gene was gone - well, lying in bed and asleep anyway. He couldn’t leave at this hour; it was too early. And more generally, it was jail, so there was no way he could just go away. Nevertheless, Gene looked like he hadn’t moved for hours. So House thought… he must have been dreaming, or he’d woken up and hallucinated something that clearly hadn’t happened.
Or something.
He didn’t know. All he could think - not that he could really think - was that he needed more sleep. Reluctantly he closed his eyes and immediately fell back to sleep.
When he woke up in the morning, Gene wasn’t there. Uneasy House rubbed his thigh. He figured he must have gotten up late. The cellblock he was in was unusually quiet, which meant everyone had probably already started toward the shower. House knew he needed to join them, but he didn’t feel like moving. Last night had been… odd, and the disjointed sleep he’d had had obviously not been enough, because he longed to stay in bed.
He couldn’t though. He was gross, and he smelled. Sighing, he slowly trudged down the hallway to the showers.
As always, he aimed for speed when bathing. He wouldn’t linger where he was most vulnerable, and though he had come to see that most people didn’t want trouble, he was still quick. He didn’t take past experience as any indication for the future.
Here there was little predictability. A schedule existed, an attempt made at keeping everyone in line. Nevertheless there was always the threat lurking in the darkness. The possibility of danger seemed more like probability, and the weeks that House had spent in jail had him slowly realizing that he couldn’t avoid that danger his entire time here.
His mind pushed him towards last night’s dream, but he didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about Cuddy, what she’d done to him in his subconscious. Reality was bad enough without him remembering in detail the desires that had led him here.
Going through the motions, House quickly washed himself, dried off, and got dressed again. Heading back to his cell, he decided to take a nap. But when he got there, Gene was waiting for him.
“Sleep good last night?” Gene asked, almost leering.
House paused, unsure or unwilling to understand what he meant. Yet he found himself saying, “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. I’m not talking about anything at all.” Gene started to laugh.
It was the final straw for House. Although he was convinced Gene had no idea what he was talking about, the irritation, the stupidity, the constant presence of someone he couldn’t stand roiled within House, creating a molten core of hatred for the man he lived with.
Without even thinking, he balled his hand into a fist. He pulled back, ready to strike, all the while understanding what this would cost him. He didn’t care about that though. All he wanted was blood, to give into the violence that had put him here, the rage that existed within him.
It didn’t matter that this would be another crime. It didn’t matter how this would look, that he would seem every bit the dangerous animal he knew in that moment he was.
He just wanted to hurt Gene.
But just when he was about to strike, he felt a strong grip on his wrist, heard the words: “Watch it there, son. You know that’s against the rules,” one of the guards told him.
Gene piped in, “That’s right, Greg. Don’t do anything stupid or -”
“You, shut your mouth,” the guard interrupted. To House, he added, “And you come with me.”
House didn’t have the option as he was forcefully yanked from the cell. His thigh burned from the sudden jerking, but he didn’t falter in his steps. He would not show weakness in front of Gene, not when they would still have to live together or at least pass each other in the hallways. House wouldn’t let him see just how badly his leg hurt him.
Instead he asked the guard, “Where are you taking me?”
“Reception,” the guard said with a sneer. “Someone’s going to inspect your cell. You have any library books out still?”
House didn’t understand. He just knew that he was being taken into a hallway he hadn’t seen before. “One.”
“Is it in your cell?” House nodded his head. “Good. We’ll get it returned.” They met another guard standing outside a door, which he then proceeded to unlock. “Have any other personal items besides underwear in your possession currently?”
“No.”
“This is Darrell, your release officer. You’re going to go inside with him. You’ll find that the clothes you were brought in are on a table in the room. Strip off and put them on. Then Darrell will have you sign a few papers while I check your cell out. Librarian’ll need to sign off that you’ve returned all items. That’ll take a little time, which you can spend verifying that we have returned all possessions to you.”
House listened carefully, but he didn’t understand what was going on. The way this man was talking, it sounded like House was being sent home. But that couldn’t possibly be the case. He hadn’t been acquitted or convicted. He hadn’t served his time.
Sensing his confusion, Darrell asked, “You understand what we’re telling you?”
“I….” House blinked a little. “I know what you want me to do. I don’t understand why.”
What he thought they would tell him, he didn’t know. All he knew was that it wasn’t anywhere close to what was said - “Charges were dropped.”
“Guys, can you go inside so I can start -”
“Sure, Buck. No problem,” the man named Darrell said before leading House into the sterile, white room. As promised, there were his belongings on a table in the room - his cell phone, his watch, his cane.
The prescription of Vicodin he’d had with him on the airplane.
House wanted it but hesitated. He wouldn’t take it if he were going to be thrown back into his cell. He needed to know that this was really happening. As Darrell closed the door behind them, House asked, “You said the charges were dropped. Why?”
“I don’t know. I just process who they tell me to. You were on the list. You’ll have to ask someone else about that. You should get started. I don’t think you want to spend any more time in here than necessary.”
“No.” Quietly House headed to the table and began to change, his eyes on the Vicodin.
He’d just managed to slide his pants on when Darrell offered, “I think your girlfriend’s here to pick you up though. You -”
“What?” House didn’t dare hope that he meant Cuddy. It was confusing enough that the charges had been dropped, unbelievable even. Part of him must have believed that this was a cruel joke, that this was a dream. Because he felt no relief, no happiness.
“I don’t know,” Darrell said with a shrug. “I could be wrong, but there was someone out there demanding that you be pushed to the top of the list for release, so to speak. Let’s just say if she’s not your girlfriend, you’d want her to be.”
It sounded like Cuddy, but House couldn’t believe that she would be the one begging for him to be let out. As much as he wanted to think she might have forgiven him, that she might want him, he knew what such thinking would do to him when it turned out not to be true. Not willing to be destroyed again, he silently got dressed and did the things Buck had instructed.
“You have everything?” Darrell asked after what felt like only a few quick minutes.
House nodded his head and plucked a Vicodin from the plastic vial in his hands. Swallowing a chalky pill, he relished the bitter taste in his mouth. For a brief second, he allowed himself the pleasure of release, the freedom suddenly at his fingertips once more.
“Yes,” he said confidently before being led out of the room.
Walking down the hallway as a free man, House felt his stomach turn sour. He knew it wasn’t the Vicodin. Nervousness building inside, he suddenly thought he didn’t know what to expect.
Would Cuddy be there?
Was it someone else?
Was anyone there?
With each step he took, the questions became that much harder to ignore. But as much as he wanted an answer, he didn’t. For the first time in a long time, truth terrified him. He didn’t know what he would face outside the jail. All he knew was that if Cuddy wasn’t waiting for him, it didn’t matter.
Without her forgiveness, nothing mattered at all.
Continue on to the next chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy, Wilson, Arlene, Julia, etc.
Author's Note: Since this piece is set post "Moving On," there are spoilers for that episode. Also please note that, while I plan on making this House/Cuddy, it's not going to be a quick thing. Given what House has done, it will take a while to work through all of those issues. If you're looking for an easy happy ending, this isn't the piece for you. Some chapters are split for length. These next few chapters were written for harvesttime88 for the help_lisa auction.
Warning: This fic contains sex. Please be aware that this chapter contains implications of sexual assault. No assault is shown, but there are moments that allude to that possibly happening. There’s nothing graphic, but I can understand that some of this chapter might be triggering, so keep that in mind.
Summary: After House crashes his car through Cuddy's home, both strive to rebuild their lives and deal with the consequences of their broken relationship.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 (Part 1), Chapter 2 (Part 2), Chapter 3, Chapter 4 (Part 1), Chapter 4 (Part 2), Chapter 5
Disclaimer: The show is not mine.
Morning never failed to betray him. With his eyes closed, he half-dreamed, half-believed that he was in bed next to her. He could see it - like a movie he was watching: she’d turned away from him in the middle of the night, the air too warm for her to stay close. But if he rolled over, he would be with her again, face buried in her dark hair, a hand cupping her hip, his erection pressed into her ass. Nearly asleep she would groan and grind against him until one of them would slide her shorts down and guide his dick into her. He would hold her close as he took her slowly, and after they came, he would fall back to sleep, his cock still inside her.
Every single morning, he imagined that being his world… only to be abruptly awoken to the reality of jail. He wasn’t with her. He was alone on a cold metal bed with his dick painfully hard and no remedy for it. However pathetic he’d become, he wasn’t going to jerk himself off in prison. No matter how frequently he dreamed of her, he wouldn’t let himself act on that attraction, not here, not ever.
For the past week though, it didn’t matter either way. He knew that even if he’d wanted to masturbate, there would be no point. He was in too much pain.
Withdrawal was fading into the background, giving the reason for his addiction a chance to bubble to the surface. At first, he had tried to focus his mind on other things, the few meetings he had with his lawyer, the routine he had to learn. He had tried to tell himself that the pain was a result of the Vicodin withdrawal; the pain would get better; the pain would go away. After all, he had gone for so long without the pills. He had at one point managed to live comfortably without the drug. He had told himself he could do it again.
This morning however, he knew all of that was a lie. It was too much for him. He woke up to the familiar fantasy only to have it abruptly cut off by pain so searing he nearly broke his teeth mashing them together to stop himself from screaming.
For several long minutes, he could do nothing more than let the pain consume him. His whole body tensed, breath hitched in his throat. If his heart were to stop beating, it would seem understandable given the stress his system was under. He was caught beneath the weight of it, and all he could do was wait for the discomfort to lessen. Or for this level of pain to become his new normal. Some semblance of that thought passed through him. Whichever solution came first.
Slowly though, thankfully, the roiling pain dissipated into a sharp ache. It would never go away completely, but at least it wasn’t as bad now. His muscles unclenched, and he inhaled deeply, gasping for air. And deep within, a voice whispered for the Vicodin.
It was impossible to ignore the idea once the thought had been conceived. Vicodin would make his problems worse, but it would make this one better. It would make the pain go away. It would allow him to get up and head to the showers with a little less concern as to how he would make it there. He didn’t have to take the entire bottle; he didn’t have to go back to the drug completely, he tried to tell himself.
It was a lie easily spotted, but he wanted to believe it. He really did.
He wanted the drug. He wanted the pain to go away. He wanted it to have never existed.
But it wasn’t an option. Rational thought suddenly cutting through, he knew that getting the Vicodin was no longer a choice he could afford to make. In the past, that would have made no difference. He was an addict after all; negative consequences didn’t have the same effect they would have had on someone who could control their Vicodin intake easily. Things had changed though. He was in jail now, and if he were to take Vicodin here….
The consequences were ones he feared.
So far, he hadn’t had any altercations. The other prisoners must have thought he was pitiful, a cripple limping around jail. No one thought he was a threat, but at the same time, there was nothing to be had in hurting him. Harassing the gimp would lessen your cred… or something like that. He didn’t really know the logic at work here.
If House had Vicodin though? That would all change - dramatically so. No one would care that he wasn’t physically capable of defending himself as well as another man. No one would take pity on him; they would just want the drugs. And given that they were all in jail, it wasn’t hard to believe that someone would give into temptation and hurt him in order to get the pills.
The quickest way to incapacitate him? The source of his pain.
His shaky hands rubbed his thigh, moving over the uneven and scarred flesh. This was all he could do, he told himself. He could ask to go to the correctional medical unit and ask for aspirin, but he knew the danger in that. If he were to make that seemingly long trip, he would not ask for anything other than Vicodin. The desire was too strong for him to resist, and so he couldn’t give himself the opportunity to even give into the feeling. He didn’t want the pain, but it had to be this way.
If Wilson were here, if Wilson still talked or cared about him at all, he would say that House was making this choice to punish himself. Wilson would also probably say that the pain itself was a psychosomatic side effect of his guilt. House hurt more, because he had hurt Cuddy. He allowed himself to suffer, because he knew he had done something unfathomably selfish and cruel.
Was there something to that?
Maybe. Probably. House didn’t like to consider himself a tortured man, a masochistic one. But secretly he realized the logic in his internal Wilson’s beliefs. It would make sense.
Then again, it didn’t matter. He was in pain. He had hurt the people he cared most about, and now they hated him. He might not have been trying to punish himself, but punishment was something he deserved. And whatever his reasoning, he would continue to hurt. That no one needed to feel that way more than him was almost irrelevant, because his leg would never be normal again. But at the same time, it wasn’t unimportant to him, because he knew: he deserved the pain.
As he stood up to go to the showers, House wondered then if he really believed that. If he truly felt that he should suffer, then why not go demand Vicodin? Why was he hesitating to accept the horrors that would come with that? He had no answer for that, so he just kept walking.
Two days later, he was doing the same thing, heading to the showers. Everyone tended to give each other a wide birth at this time of day. Getting naked in front of each other wasn’t exactly something anyone enjoyed. It was awkward, and from House’s experience, the goal was to get through it as quickly as possible without eliciting attention from anyone. Today however, things were different.
Usually men tiredly moved through the hall. They avoided eye contact and conversation, just doing what they needed to get in and out of the shower and back to their cells. But when House left his bed today, three or four cells down, there was a small crowd of people. They were bunched together in a semi-circle, clearly looking into someone’s cell.
House didn’t care what the issue was. He could hear a few men talking, but he didn’t pay any attention. He just wanted to shower and be done with it. Unfortunately, it was impossible to miss what was going on as he passed by.
In the cell were two guards and two prisoners. Just at first glance, it didn’t look like anything interesting was going on. The cellmates were shirtless and sweaty, but people tended to appear mussed when they first woke up. That didn’t mean anything. But the conversation between the four men caught House’s interest.
“You want to tell us what’s going on?” the guard to the left, a burly redhead, asked. The prisoners shook their head, a blond man blushing in embarrassment. “Well, you know we’re gonna have to get to the bottom of this.”
Someone outside of the cell snickered at the word “bottom,” making the guards realized they weren’t handling this privately. The other guard who had remained quiet thus far turned around and barked, “All right, ladies. That’s enough gossip. Hit the showers or you’re gonna be in lockdown for the rest of the day.”
House kept moving. As he showered, he half-heartedly wondered what had gone on to attract that much attention. He had suspicions, of course, but they all seemed like a regurgitation of Lesbian Prison Stories. It was possible that those two cellmates had had sex or worse, statistically likely even. But there was something so stereotypical about it that it almost felt ridiculous to suspect it. And in the end, he would never know the truth either way. Even if he questioned someone about it, no one would ever tell him, and so by the time he finished his shower, he’d completely forgotten about it.
Unfortunately when he returned to his cell, he was forced to remember. On the cot opposite his sat the blonde man from earlier.
Immediately, before House could stop himself, he demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m your new cellmate,” the stranger said with equal dissatisfaction at the situation.
House scowled. “Lucky me.” Unceremoniously he laid down on his slab of a bed. He guessed he should have known this would happen. He couldn’t be alone in his cell forever. At some point, some drunken fool would run his car over a two-year-old child, or a man would rob a bank, and that space would be needed. But somehow House thought it would happen differently. The person he would be stuck with wouldn’t be a young and agile-looking man… who might or might not have sexually assaulted someone earlier today.
House didn’t want to think that was true. If this Chase wannabe had done something like that, surely he would be segregated from every anus in the joint. Whatever had happened, it had to be something else, House thought, closing his eyes to take a nap.
Roomie didn’t pay attention to that. He just kept talking. “Name’s Gene. What’s yours?”
“Greg,” House said coldly.
Gene still didn’t take the hint. “Cool. I got arrested cause I hired a hooker… who was also apparently a heroin addict. Cops busted us, saw all the smack, and assumed some of it was mine. Fucking cunt. Got charged with distribution. Can you believe it? What are you in for?”
“Shooting someone who didn’t keep quiet when I was trying to sleep,” House muttered.
“Seriously?”
“No.”
Gene thought about it for a second and then said, “Oh I get it.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’ll shut up then.”
And he did. But it was impossible to miss from then on that House was living with someone else. The space that constituted a cell was too small for two people. House came to realize that quickly. For the next week, Gene seemed to be everywhere and always irritating, even when he wasn’t saying anything at all. They had plenty of time to be out of their cells and away from one another. Yet it didn’t feel like that. If House went to the library, somehow Gene ended up there too. If House decided to wile the day away sleeping, Gene would come back early from playing basketball to take a nap too.
House couldn’t tell if it was intentional on his part, if Gene was trying to be friends with him or if there were possibly something more sinister in his roommate’s sudden interest. The only way to decipher Gene’s motivation would be to talk to him, get to know him enough to understand what exactly his goals were. But House had no desire for conversation. On the contrary, he wanted to wall himself off completely.
He didn’t want a friend, didn’t deserve one. And certainly if he needed someone to talk to, it would be someone who fundamentally understood that he liked his privacy. It would not be the person who would walk in on him while he was mid-dump and start talking to him as though nothing was happening. The person House confided in wasn’t going to be the fool who seemed intent on following him around like a lost puppy. But Gene didn’t take the hint, no matter how terribly House treated him.
Admittedly there was something about all of this that House found distracting. Although he didn’t like this new problem, at least it made him think of something other than Cuddy and what he’d done for a little bit.
He always remembered though. Always. The rush of the car and the house crumbling around him, Cuddy’s shock and Wilson’s disgust - it all returned eventually. And when it did, he felt the need to throw up.
How could he focus on anything other than that? He wouldn’t even be here if not for that. How could he not think about that?
When he realized his mistake that night, he groaned. Instantly Gene turned his head in House’s direction. “You okay, man?”
“Fine.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
House rolled his eyes in the dark. “I don’t care.”
He could hear Gene rolling over. “Is it your leg? What the hell happened with that thing anyway?”
“Wood chipper accident,” House said dryly.
The humor was lost on Gene. “Seriously?”
For a second, House wondered what he’d done to deserve having someone so irritating in his life. Then the answer was obvious, and he hated it. “No,” he said frustratedly.
“Then what happened? I mean, I know something’s wrong.”
“You’re smart.”
“I seen your leg in the shower. If you tell me what happened, I don’t know, I can run to the med unit for you. They might give me something to bring back if you want.”
House raised an eyebrow. “Well that’s good to know,” he said sarcastically. “I was really hoping someone would stare at me in the shower. What I always wanted.”
“That’s not what I meant. I did - I didn’t do that,” Gene said angrily. “I’m not gay.”
“Yeah… I think somewhere in this conversation, you got the impression that I cared either way, and I don’t.”
“I mean it, Greg.”
There was something about the way it was said that gave House pause - a dangerous edge to the words perhaps. In the darkness, it was impossible to look over and see how serious Gene was being, just how awfully he would react if House took it a little further. But House had no real desire to taunt the man anymore.
He had learned just how far he could go when he vehemently kept a person out of his life or forced them out. What he had done to Cuddy had been a testament to that. Having lost her and Wilson permanently, House wanted to feel as though that moment had had some sort of purpose. It had taught him something or… he didn’t know what he wanted from ramming his car through Cuddy’s home. He just wanted something that made that behavior slightly more forgivable. And he knew that if he allowed himself to be as ruthless with this kid as he had been with people he actually cared about, there was no telling what would happen.
Besides, Gene had been arrested for something. He didn’t seem like a threat, but how could House be sure?
Uncharacteristically backing off, House said, “You know what, Gene? You’re right.”
“Good.”
They fell into uneasy silence, punctuated every now and then by a sneeze or the sound of someone peeing in the distance. In the small cell, the tension was impossible to miss, even harder to escape. House rolled over onto his stomach and closed his eyes and hoped that that would be the end of Gene’s behavior. He hoped it was clear that they weren’t friends, weren’t ever going to be friends.
The next day, it seemed like Gene had realized the state of their relationship, which was to say that they didn’t have one. They ate breakfast without a word to one another. They went about their separate ways as best as they could in their jailed universe. But there was only so much they could do without being near one another. The precarious nature of their dynamic was bound to shift from tentatively quiet co-existence to something else. Not necessarily bad or dangerous, he thought, but things couldn’t continue as they were. They would talk again at some point.
The conversation happened the next day when they were both headed to the library separately. House ended up behind Gene in the hallway, which shouldn’t have been an issue. But it was.
“Stop followin’ me, man,” Gene said loudly abruptly turning around.
House pointed out, equally annoyed, “I wasn’t. I just happen to be going in the same -”
“Are you obsessed or just -”
“I’m not the one staring at my cellmate’s junk in the shower,” House said in a low voice, knowing that that kind of information didn’t need to be spread throughout the prison. No one else had heard besides the person who needed to hear it.
But Gene, red with rage, couldn’t see that. His hand forming into a tight fist, he snarled, “You talk about that again, and I’m gonna hit you.”
“Then do us both a favor and don’t talk to me.”
“Fine.”
Gene spun on his heel and stalked towards the library. But that wouldn’t end matters. House had made it clear that they could never be friends, and that rejection had awoken something in Gene… or made it impossible for him to hide his true self. Gene had been agitated since they’d last talked. That wouldn’t change over night.
When Gene came back from the library, House was lying in bed, and this made him furious. “Don’t you have some place to be, or do you just like to lie on your back all day like a whore?”
House wanted to return the vitriol, but this dynamic had become tedious at best. “I’ll leave for dinner in five minutes,” he said calmly.
“Or you could leave for dinner now.”
He didn’t want to give into the demand. He was in pain, and this crappy cot for a bed had made his sleep uneven since he’d gotten here. He wanted to close his eyes and try to forget where he was for a little bit. But it wasn’t worth the fight. He really would need to head down the hall to dinner in five minutes anyway. So he got up and left without a word, silently regretting having ever said anything to this guy at all.
Regretting that he’d ever done anything to be in the same cell as him to begin with, he corrected. If he hadn’t hurt Cuddy, he wouldn’t be here. If he’d just turned and walked away when he’d seen her with that guy, things could have been… okay.
But then they couldn’t have been, because she would have dated him. And he would be forced to watch her move on, the idea of which made him want to grab her and hold her close.
At the same time, he understood that, because of what he did, she would never let him touch her now. Before there’d been a very, very slim chance that she would some day forgive him. There was no chance of that now.
She hated him.
She hated him, because in that moment outside her home, he had convinced himself that he despised her. And he had punished her for something that he had no right to be mad about. She’d only dumped him because of the Vicodin, because of the choices he made. If she had been with someone else, it had been because he’d practically forced her into another man’s arms.
So now everything was wrong. No one in the world cared where he was.
Except for Gene, he thought bitterly.
****************************
When Julia opened her front door, she clearly hadn’t expected to see Cuddy on the other side. But Cuddy had decided that she’d had enough of the uncertainty in her life.
Well, technically, she’d realized that weeks ago. However, there was nothing to be done while she waited to see if the homeowners accepted her offer. There was even less she could do to make Rachel happier. The situation with House could be resolved, she guessed, but she wasn’t ready to make a choice about him. She needed to proceed carefully with that - or it would be her own ass on the line. But Julia’s silent treatment could be fixed simply enough, and Cuddy had made the choice to drive over and settle the issue in person.
The second her sister opened the door though, Cuddy almost regretted it.
“Lisa,” she said in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Cuddy tried not to sound accusatory. “You’re not answering my calls.”
Julia hesitated. Whether that was to say something or to let her in was unclear. Eventually she said, “The kids are at the movies. Come in.”
As Cuddy stepped through the threshold, she asked, “Where’s -”
“My sweet husband agreed to take the kids and make sure they don’t throw popcorn at other people like they did last time.” There was a slight chill to the way she said it, as though she didn’t quite feel that way. Proving Cuddy right, Julia said, closing the front door, “Actually, he offered to take the kids, and in exchange I promised to consider having another baby. Can I get you some tea?”
The little tidbit was meant to wound, and it did. Julia hadn’t said anything before now about possibly having another child. Perhaps she meant what she said; she’d agreed, possibly after several nos, to consider trying for another one. But telling Cuddy today was not a coincidence. Julia wanted to hurt her, and she could, because she had a husband and decent fertility, which made trying for one more the easy choice Cuddy herself had never had the ability to make.
“That would be great” was all she said aloud though. She would like to fight back, but she knew she couldn’t. The tension between them needed to be resolved, and in order for that to happen, Cuddy understood she would need to be far more forgiving of her sister than her sister had been of her.
Together they walked into the kitchen, and Julia busied herself putting the kettle on the stove. “I know I haven’t called you back,” she said honestly, the stove crackling loudly as she turned on the gas. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to you.”
Cuddy appreciated the honesty, even though part of her wanted to kill her sister for the selfishness of her behavior. “I know that it was scary for you too,” Cuddy tried to say as sympathetically as possible. “You thought we’d have a nice dinner, and… it didn’t turn out that way. But I didn’t think that House would -”
“You forget that I’m your sister, Lis.” Julia reached into the cabinet to get two mugs. “You have been talking about how much you hate that guy for years. How dangerous he is with his patients. I’ve heard you.”
“That’s different.”
“I have lemon tea and chamomile. What would you like?” Cuddy pointed to the chamomile. “You knew he was capable of doing terrible things - maybe not at that level - but you’ve had years to see that he -”
“I didn’t see it,” Cuddy said insistently, quietly. “You think I don’t know that I should have known what he was capable of? I feel like an idiot.”
Julia sighed and drummed her fingers along the stove. “That’s not what I mean. I mean - that’s not what I meant to say. Of course that’s how you feel,” she said apologetically. “I just can’t believe you went on a trip after all of that. You saw what he did and left like it was nothing and -”
“That’s not true.”
Julia turned away from her to pour the water from the whistling kettle. Deftly and without response, she plucked tea bags from their boxes and dunked them unceremoniously into the mugs. Her hands noisily crumpled the paper the bags had once been in, and again without a word, she threw the trash away.
Cuddy didn’t like the silence. She knew it meant that Julia was mad, that she didn’t believe her. But Cuddy also knew that if she insisted that Julia was wrong, her words wouldn’t ease the tension between them. It would make Cuddy look as though she were defensive, and Julia would take that as proof of her guilt. Knowing how much harder it would be to seem innocent once convicted, Cuddy kept her mouth shut.
Eventually though, Julia said something while handing Cuddy her tea. “I know Mom gave you the tickets. You don’t have to tell me it was her idea, because she has already done that. And I get it. Okay? I know why you would want to go. I would want to go, and if someone were offering a vacation to me, all expenses paid, I wouldn’t say no either.”
“Then… I don’t understand what the problem is.”
Cuddy hadn’t said it with any particular anger, but it managed to upset Julia.
“How do you not get it?” she practically snarled. Hot tea splashing out of her mug, Julia hissed. “Damn it.” She set the cup down and reached for a tea towel to wipe herself off.
“Did you burn yourself?”
Julia’s answer was abrupt. “I’m fine. But when you left the country, did you think how that would look?” She didn’t give Cuddy a chance to respond. “Of course, you didn’t, because if you thought about it at all, you would realize that it makes you look like you don’t care.”
Cuddy felt her jaw clench. “Really?”
“All I can think about is what will happen when we go to court. You’re gonna get up on the stand and talk about what he did, and they’re going to ask you how you’ve been since then. And you’re going to have to admit at some point that you just….” She shrugged. “I don’t know. You went to the damn beach. That’s what you did. And once that’s out, no one will believe that what he did was that bad, because you don’t.”
“You have no idea what you’re -”
“Damn it. He could have killed me. He could have killed my husband. Our children could have become orphans!” Julia shouted on the verge of tears. “And now you’ve screwed everything up. How could you do that?”
She wanted an explanation. She wasn’t saying those things just to get them off her chest. Julia really wanted her to say something that would explain her behavior, that would justify it, or reveal something that would make all of this okay.
But Cuddy wasn’t sure she had any of that in her. It seemed like the second House had driven through her home, she had been expected to please everyone around her. To give the perfect reaction for all of them would have been impossible, but somehow she had been held to that standard, had it tied around her like a noose, anyway.
Part of her tried to remind herself what she’d come here to do. Her mind mustered up unspoken promises she’d made to her mother and the conversation she would have with her should this not end well. But that wasn’t enough to silence the rage that had built up.
Fighting the urge to throw her tea in Julia’s face, Cuddy set her cup down. Teeth gritted, she said, “My ex-boyfriend thinks so little of me that he drives his car through my home and ruins it. He hates me so much that he’s willing to kill me and everyone around me without a second thought. I take that seriously. I shouldn’t even have to say that I do.”
“Well, your behavior -”
“I am so sick of hearing that,” Cuddy snapped. “I’m sorry I didn’t consult the manual on the proper way to react to the unthinkable.”
Julia’s demeanor didn’t change. “That’s not -”
“No, of course. No one wants to tell me what to do, but everyone seems to have an opinion when I don’t do exactly what they want,” Cuddy said with a sneer. “I have a daughter who wants the man responsible for all of this. I have a board who would hate for me to press charges -”
“What?” Julia screamed in shock.
Cuddy explained quickly, “They don’t want the attention, and I know you haven’t worked in years, but if I don’t do what they say, it’s my career that -”
“That’s crap,” Julia said dismissively. But even before she specified, Cuddy knew that she wasn’t saying it was awful that the board would do that to her. That would require Julia to be supportive, and she wasn’t capable of that. It seemed like no one was. “You run that hospital. Don’t act like someone else is making you -”
“I still have people to answer to,” Cuddy insisted. “And this might be hard for you to understand, but I can’t just do -”
“So what the hell does that mean? You’re what? You’re not going to take the stand? You’re going to let him go like he never did anything to me? To you?”
“It means that I don’t need another person telling me how to behave. It means that I have been through enough without dealing with your anger - because I didn’t want any of this.”
Cuddy shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t understand how the conversation had turned this way. She had had her differences with her sister in the past. They were close, but that proximity often led to fighting. Yet she’d never imagined there’d be a day when something like this would happen - when House destroyed her home and Julia hated for the way she reacted to it.
Dejected and more than a little disgusted, Cuddy cleared her throat. Forcing herself to remain calm, she said, “Look, I came here to make things better. Mom would like that. But if you think I’ve been somehow immune to all of this, I don’t know what to tell you to make any of this all right. I don’t want House to be free. I don’t want to put my job in jeopardy because of him either. I -”
“What are you going to do then?”
Cuddy shrugged. “I don’t know, but I -”
“You want to make things right? You put him in jail, Lisa. He could have killed us all and left our kids - mine and yours - without parents. Make him pay. That’s how you fix this.”
“Then I guess I’m not going to make things right,” Cuddy said simply. “Because I’m not going to do what you want just because you tell me to.”
Julia threw the tea towel into the sink. “So you’re going to let him get away with -”
“I haven’t decided what to do. But whatever I end up doing, it won’t be because someone else demanded it of me.” She gave Julia a second to respond. There was no point in doing that, but Cuddy supposed she hoped, no matter how unreasonable it was to do so, that Julia would see what she was doing. Julia would understand the pressure her sister was under and apologize. Naturally though that didn’t happen and probably wasn’t ever going to do.
Adjusting the purse strap slipping down her shoulder, Cuddy said simply, “I’m gonna go. When you talk to Mom, you can let her know that I don’t care what she has to say about this.”
As she walked down the hallway and out the front door, Cuddy understood that she wasn’t lying. She no longer cared what anyone else wanted of her. She’d venture to say that she had never been eager to respond to House’s behavior based on what others wanted her to do. But right now, in this moment, she really didn’t care. And as she drove back to the hotel, she knew that if she pretended to be concerned for how others felt, she would never get what she wanted from the situation. It would never feel like justice to her.
That meant, she would not do what her sister wanted. She wouldn’t listen to the board. She would go a different way.
Mentally, she began to build a plan, a way to make House pay.
*************************************
Gene’s combativeness had grown worse over the past two days. There had been no disagreements in the halls or at dinner. The few hours they’d been allowed outside their cell, they had pretended like the other didn’t exist. But when they’d been locked in together at night, things had… changed. Gene didn’t do anything House wanted to complain to anyone about; he was subtle in his obnoxiousness, as odd as that sounded. Intentionally waiting to take a crap until House was in the cell was hardly something people would sympathize with and it would be even more difficult to prove.
“You can’t wait until I’m gone?” House had asked the second time it happened.
“Why?” Gene had asked almost excitedly. “Does it bother you?”
House hadn’t answered, because he hadn’t wanted to admit that Gene’s attempts at pissing him off were working. House had just rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. But in not responding, he’d made things worse. How that was even possible House hadn’t understood. And yet last night, Gene had jerked off loudly, something House doubted he would have done if they were friends.
Again, House brushed it off. Now that he knew Gene wanted the reaction, he was determined never to give it to him. Stubbornly House would pretend like nothing was wrong.
He thought that was for the best anyway; if he got into fights, Gemeiner would remind him that it would be that much harder to get out of jail. And his lawyer would probably be right about that.
House knew what he had to do if he wanted to be free ever again. But the longer he was in here, the more he thought… that wouldn’t happen. Maybe part of him held onto this idea that if he behaved long enough, Cuddy or Wilson would somehow know that. If he was good, one of them would come for him and take him back into their lives.
It was so stupid. He knew it was. As an adult, he shouldn’t have needed anyone as badly as he needed them. He shouldn’t have looked to them to fix his problems, to make him happy. But he had, and he did, and he didn’t deserve their forgiveness at all. Yet he found himself trying to behave in a way that would show to them that he’d changed, that he could change.
However, they weren’t looking. They weren’t going to, and he knew that every day he stayed in here, the more likely it was that he would continue to be in prison.
With a man he couldn’t stand.
With a man determined to get the better of him.
Inevitably he would, but House hoped to stave that failure of self-control for as long as he could.
That night, he dreamed of Cuddy again. She was getting ready for work. Her skirt was on but unzipped, and as he opened his eyes, she’d just finished getting her bra on. He groaned in disappointment.
Seated on the edge of her bed, she turned to face him. Her smile made him hard. “Good morning,” she said softly.
He let out a whine, not entirely happy to be awake at this hour. “It’s too early. Come back to bed.”
“I have to go in,” she told him as he scooted down to where she was sitting.
Arm wrapped around his waist, he said in all seriousness, “So do I.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a terrible way to come on to me.”
“I’m sorry.” He kissed her bare back. “I’ll be more creative between your thighs. I promise.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for later.”
House frowned. “Yeah, okay. Or I can -”
“You haven’t even brushed your teeth yet,” she said irritably. “And I don’t want to be late.” Plucking his arm from around her body, she stood up.
He didn’t object as she continued to get ready. That wouldn’t get him what he wanted. If he seemed desperate, she’d just get off on rejecting him. Getting up himself, he headed to the bathroom. If she wanted minty-fresh breath, she would get it. Quickly he brushed his teeth and splashed cool water on his face.
“You already have your shirt on,” he complained loudly when he left the bathroom.
Buttoning her top, she said, “I knew what you were going to do. I hurried.”
“I can be quick too,” he offered.
“That’s not a turn on.”
“I give up.”
“That’s too bad; I was ready to change my mind.”
He shook his head knowingly. “No, you weren’t.”
“No, I wasn’t, but I like it when you try.”
“I always try,” he insisted for a reason he didn’t understand. Maybe it felt like she was saying he didn’t put effort into their relationship. He didn’t know where the sudden need to reiterate that point came from.
“I know,” she said soothingly. “Go back to sleep. You’re tired.”
It was too tempting to refuse. If he wasn’t going to have sex, he wasn’t going to move. Without a word he crawled back onto the bed and laid his head down on her pillow. He expected to fall asleep to the sounds of her leaving. Instead he felt her sit down next to him and the back of her hand stroking his cheek.
“I thought you were leaving,” he muttered into the pillow.
“I like seeing you in my bed.”
“I think you’d like seeing me in other places too.”
“I can guarantee you that’s true.”
“Just not right now,” he offered.
“Later,” she promised.
But then the landscape of the dream changed. They were no longer in her bed, but she was there, with him. It took a moment for the scene to settle, but once it did, he could tell that they were in his apartment. At first they were on his couch, but then there was a shift in the dream, and they were on his bed. Or he was anyway.
She was on top of him.
Riding him.
Even unconscious, he could feel the intense wave of arousal overcome him. Whatever vestiges of awareness that were in him told his dreaming self to not give into the images around him - her breasts bouncing with each of her strokes, the part of her mouth as she breathed heavily….
He shouldn’t give in. He didn’t want to give in, didn’t want to come so that she would stay exactly where she was.
“Relax, Greg,” she said, smiling, the words somehow hers but not, but that didn’t make sense. “This is the best part.”
“You think I don’t -”
“Stop talking.” She ground her hips against his, his cock sliding deep into her. “Let me do this for you.”
He was helpless to deny her what she wanted, and he came both in the dream and in real life, so hard that his eyes strained and his throat burned.
Then he was awake, sweating, cold, confused, and covered in his own semen.
And above him stood Gene with a smile that made House cower. It was the grin of an animal, a monster. Gene too was sweating, his cheeks pink, and House no longer knew if this was a nightmare or reality.
His body was unable to move, lips clumsily shifting to start to ask, “Wh-what? What’s going -”
“Relax, Greg. Go back to sleep.”
House tried to piece together what was going on, but he couldn’t. Was he still dreaming? He felt numb and unsure what had happened. Though the bile in his throat seemed real enough, he didn’t know what was going on. His mind was too foggy to decipher the state of things, and he thought if that were the case, none of this could possibly be real. Because if this were happening, he would be able to focus, understand.
He blinked as a last ditch effort to comprehend. But when he opened his eyes, Gene was gone - well, lying in bed and asleep anyway. He couldn’t leave at this hour; it was too early. And more generally, it was jail, so there was no way he could just go away. Nevertheless, Gene looked like he hadn’t moved for hours. So House thought… he must have been dreaming, or he’d woken up and hallucinated something that clearly hadn’t happened.
Or something.
He didn’t know. All he could think - not that he could really think - was that he needed more sleep. Reluctantly he closed his eyes and immediately fell back to sleep.
When he woke up in the morning, Gene wasn’t there. Uneasy House rubbed his thigh. He figured he must have gotten up late. The cellblock he was in was unusually quiet, which meant everyone had probably already started toward the shower. House knew he needed to join them, but he didn’t feel like moving. Last night had been… odd, and the disjointed sleep he’d had had obviously not been enough, because he longed to stay in bed.
He couldn’t though. He was gross, and he smelled. Sighing, he slowly trudged down the hallway to the showers.
As always, he aimed for speed when bathing. He wouldn’t linger where he was most vulnerable, and though he had come to see that most people didn’t want trouble, he was still quick. He didn’t take past experience as any indication for the future.
Here there was little predictability. A schedule existed, an attempt made at keeping everyone in line. Nevertheless there was always the threat lurking in the darkness. The possibility of danger seemed more like probability, and the weeks that House had spent in jail had him slowly realizing that he couldn’t avoid that danger his entire time here.
His mind pushed him towards last night’s dream, but he didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about Cuddy, what she’d done to him in his subconscious. Reality was bad enough without him remembering in detail the desires that had led him here.
Going through the motions, House quickly washed himself, dried off, and got dressed again. Heading back to his cell, he decided to take a nap. But when he got there, Gene was waiting for him.
“Sleep good last night?” Gene asked, almost leering.
House paused, unsure or unwilling to understand what he meant. Yet he found himself saying, “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. I’m not talking about anything at all.” Gene started to laugh.
It was the final straw for House. Although he was convinced Gene had no idea what he was talking about, the irritation, the stupidity, the constant presence of someone he couldn’t stand roiled within House, creating a molten core of hatred for the man he lived with.
Without even thinking, he balled his hand into a fist. He pulled back, ready to strike, all the while understanding what this would cost him. He didn’t care about that though. All he wanted was blood, to give into the violence that had put him here, the rage that existed within him.
It didn’t matter that this would be another crime. It didn’t matter how this would look, that he would seem every bit the dangerous animal he knew in that moment he was.
He just wanted to hurt Gene.
But just when he was about to strike, he felt a strong grip on his wrist, heard the words: “Watch it there, son. You know that’s against the rules,” one of the guards told him.
Gene piped in, “That’s right, Greg. Don’t do anything stupid or -”
“You, shut your mouth,” the guard interrupted. To House, he added, “And you come with me.”
House didn’t have the option as he was forcefully yanked from the cell. His thigh burned from the sudden jerking, but he didn’t falter in his steps. He would not show weakness in front of Gene, not when they would still have to live together or at least pass each other in the hallways. House wouldn’t let him see just how badly his leg hurt him.
Instead he asked the guard, “Where are you taking me?”
“Reception,” the guard said with a sneer. “Someone’s going to inspect your cell. You have any library books out still?”
House didn’t understand. He just knew that he was being taken into a hallway he hadn’t seen before. “One.”
“Is it in your cell?” House nodded his head. “Good. We’ll get it returned.” They met another guard standing outside a door, which he then proceeded to unlock. “Have any other personal items besides underwear in your possession currently?”
“No.”
“This is Darrell, your release officer. You’re going to go inside with him. You’ll find that the clothes you were brought in are on a table in the room. Strip off and put them on. Then Darrell will have you sign a few papers while I check your cell out. Librarian’ll need to sign off that you’ve returned all items. That’ll take a little time, which you can spend verifying that we have returned all possessions to you.”
House listened carefully, but he didn’t understand what was going on. The way this man was talking, it sounded like House was being sent home. But that couldn’t possibly be the case. He hadn’t been acquitted or convicted. He hadn’t served his time.
Sensing his confusion, Darrell asked, “You understand what we’re telling you?”
“I….” House blinked a little. “I know what you want me to do. I don’t understand why.”
What he thought they would tell him, he didn’t know. All he knew was that it wasn’t anywhere close to what was said - “Charges were dropped.”
“Guys, can you go inside so I can start -”
“Sure, Buck. No problem,” the man named Darrell said before leading House into the sterile, white room. As promised, there were his belongings on a table in the room - his cell phone, his watch, his cane.
The prescription of Vicodin he’d had with him on the airplane.
House wanted it but hesitated. He wouldn’t take it if he were going to be thrown back into his cell. He needed to know that this was really happening. As Darrell closed the door behind them, House asked, “You said the charges were dropped. Why?”
“I don’t know. I just process who they tell me to. You were on the list. You’ll have to ask someone else about that. You should get started. I don’t think you want to spend any more time in here than necessary.”
“No.” Quietly House headed to the table and began to change, his eyes on the Vicodin.
He’d just managed to slide his pants on when Darrell offered, “I think your girlfriend’s here to pick you up though. You -”
“What?” House didn’t dare hope that he meant Cuddy. It was confusing enough that the charges had been dropped, unbelievable even. Part of him must have believed that this was a cruel joke, that this was a dream. Because he felt no relief, no happiness.
“I don’t know,” Darrell said with a shrug. “I could be wrong, but there was someone out there demanding that you be pushed to the top of the list for release, so to speak. Let’s just say if she’s not your girlfriend, you’d want her to be.”
It sounded like Cuddy, but House couldn’t believe that she would be the one begging for him to be let out. As much as he wanted to think she might have forgiven him, that she might want him, he knew what such thinking would do to him when it turned out not to be true. Not willing to be destroyed again, he silently got dressed and did the things Buck had instructed.
“You have everything?” Darrell asked after what felt like only a few quick minutes.
House nodded his head and plucked a Vicodin from the plastic vial in his hands. Swallowing a chalky pill, he relished the bitter taste in his mouth. For a brief second, he allowed himself the pleasure of release, the freedom suddenly at his fingertips once more.
“Yes,” he said confidently before being led out of the room.
Walking down the hallway as a free man, House felt his stomach turn sour. He knew it wasn’t the Vicodin. Nervousness building inside, he suddenly thought he didn’t know what to expect.
Would Cuddy be there?
Was it someone else?
Was anyone there?
With each step he took, the questions became that much harder to ignore. But as much as he wanted an answer, he didn’t. For the first time in a long time, truth terrified him. He didn’t know what he would face outside the jail. All he knew was that if Cuddy wasn’t waiting for him, it didn’t matter.
Without her forgiveness, nothing mattered at all.
Continue on to the next chapter