Gift of Screws, Chapter 23.2
Title: Gift of Screws, Chapter Twenty Three, Part Two
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy
Author's Note: This piece takes place in the future when Rachel is five; House and Cuddy are in an established relationship.
Warning: This fic also contains sex. If that bothers you, don't read.
Summary: For a price, House agrees to celebrate Purim with Cuddy and Rachel. But although he's getting all the sex he
wants, he's still not sure he'll be able to last the weekend. Established relationship, contains sexual situations.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9 (Part 1), Chapter 9 (Part 2), Chapter 9 (Part 3), Chapter 9 (Part 4), Chapter 10 (Part 1), Chapter 10 (Part 2), Chapter 10 (Part 3), Chapter 11, Chapter 12 (Part 1), Chapter 12 (Part 2), Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18 (Part 1), Chapter 18 (Part 2), Chapter 19 (Part 1), Chapter 19 (Part 2), Chapter 19 (Part 3), Chapter 19 (Part 4), Chapter 20 (Part 1), Chapter 20 (Part 2), Chapter 21 (Part 1), Chapter 21 (Part 2), Chapter 22 (Part 1), Chapter 22 (Part 2), Chapter 23 (Part 1)
Disclaimer: I don't own it.
He wrapped an arm around her waist then, pulled her into a loose embrace, as if to tell her that it was okay. In any other situation, she might have appreciated the support. Right now, she wanted to kill him.
He didn’t even care about Rachel, but she listened to him?
Of course he was going to be sympathetic, Cuddy thought bitterly. He wasn’t the one with a daughter who seemed to intent on being obedient for everyone but her mother.
The idea immediately recognized as a ridiculous one, Cuddy fought the urge to laugh. She must have been exhausted or insane with fear or just insane if she thought Rachel were capable of sustained acquiescence for anyone. Clearly, she must have been crazy to entertain that thought for more than a second without remembering just how stubborn her child was even under the best of circumstances.
House, perhaps understanding the same thing, tried to maximize this rare moment of obedience. Picking up the sandwich he’d made, he ripped off a piece, little bits of ham peaking out of the torn bread.
“Here,” he said holding the bite up to Rachel’s mouth. “Can you eat this?”
Rachel batted the cup out of her face. Sitting up, she eagerly ate the food House offered her.
Again, Cuddy couldn’t help but feel a pang of immature jealousy course through her. But right now, she reminded herself, getting Rachel better was the only thing that mattered. How it made Cuddy feel as a mother was… unimportant by comparison. So she quietly sat back and watched as House fed her daughter.
Every now and then, Cuddy would offer Rachel a few words of encouragement or give her a couple kisses to keep her eating the sandwich. But beyond those few small actions, she could only sit there and jealously watch.
The camaraderie between House and Rachel ended abruptly though, not ten minutes later when Rachel scrambled towards the toilet and, thanks to the glucagon, threw up the sandwich.
Then Cuddy was needed. Rachel was crying and reaching for her and sniffling into her tank top - completely undone by vomiting. As House slipped out of the bathroom to, presumably, make another sandwich, Cuddy understood how her daughter felt.
“Shhh,” she shushed, wiping her daughter’s face with a cool washcloth.
“I throwed up!”
Cuddy grimaced. “I know.” The smell alone was proof enough of that fact. “It just means the medicine is working, Rachel. How about we rinse your mouth out a little bit?”
In the end it did little to calm Rachel down. There was a chance it would have under normal circumstances. If she’d gotten sick and then had nothing to look forward to other than being cradled in her mother’s arms, maybe she would have relaxed. But the fact was: these were not normal circumstances. And even though she’d just vomited, based on her latest glucose reading, her blood sugar was still too low, which meant she had to keep eating.
This time, Rachel wasn’t so interested in listening to House. He did his best, of course, speaking in that voice that suggested she had no choice. But Rachel stubbornly refused.
“One bite.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“No!” she screamed shaking her head.
“Yeah, see, this isn’t really an option.”
“No!”
“Shut up,” he nearly whined. “Just be like your mother: stop bitching, open your mouth, and take -”
Cuddy’s nails violently digging into the skin on his arm prevented him from finishing the sentence. He swallowed back the yelp he clearly wanted to make, instead pulling his flesh away from her claws as quickly as he could.
Instantly he switched tactics, as though that would make things all better. “You know… I think I know where we have some candy.”
“Well you know what I think?” Cuddy asked in a dark tone.
“That I should go find it?”
“Exactly.”
He disappeared again, his absence forcing Cuddy to realize that Rachel’s wide eyes were on her. Immediately Cuddy looked down in embarrassment and forced herself to admit to her daughter, “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s not nice to hurt people, which is why -”
“You scratched him.”
The fact that Rachel could articulate her hypocrisy was a good sign, Cuddy thought. At least it meant she’d received enough of a jolt from the soda and first sandwich to raise her blood sugar a little bit.
“Yes,” she admitted. “And I will apologize to him when he comes back. But if you want candy, you need to eat this,” she said, pointing to the half sandwich sitting on the plate.
Rachel frowned. “I don’t wanna. Don’t wanna be sick.”
“I know. But this is what’s going to make you feel better. The longer you wait to eat the sandwich, the worse you’re going to feel. So you need to eat up.” Rachel hesitated. “If you want candy, you’re going to have to eat the sandwich.”
The softly worded order was unappreciated, but ultimately Rachel did as instructed. Her fingers still shaking lightly, she picked up the sandwich and started to munch on it.
“There we go,” Cuddy said encouragingly, smoothing her daughter’s hair back. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“Here we go,” House announced, victoriously reentering the bathroom. Rachel started to put down the sandwich, but for the first time in his life, Cuddy thought bitterly, he didn’t cave. “No. Eat your sandwich first.”
Rachel did, but her gaze was trained on Cuddy, as though she were waiting for the apology to come. And though Cuddy didn’t really feel like saying she was sorry, she knew that it would come back to haunt her if she didn’t.
Sighing, she forced herself to mutter once House was sitting next to her once more, “I’m sorry. For scratching you. I… shouldn’t have done that.”
He was tempted to make her work for it. Although she hadn’t actually said much to him since this began, he could see the blame in her eyes. He could see the disgust and the frustration and even a little bit of hatred at times. She might have been apologizing for trying to scratch him, but he didn’t care about that. He cared about everything else she’d done, the actions that had screamed he had no place here. But holding onto his own resentment would only make her that much more determined to hold onto hers. So he let it go.
“It’s all right,” he said with a shrug.
They sat with the uncomfortable knowledge that neither really meant any of it.
But they would pretend, for as long as it took to get Rachel through this medical emergency.
Doing that was obviously easier said than done. It was hard to sit next to Cuddy, knowing how she felt, knowing that he’d been correct earlier to think that he hadn’t gotten through to her at all. Part of that was of course his own fault, for allowing himself to be distracted by Arianne’s pregnancy and his boiling frustration from all of it. But afterwards, as he had tried to fall asleep, he had hoped that Cuddy had somehow understood, in some way managed to decipher what he’d meant to say.
Sitting next to her now, he knew all too well that she hadn’t. He couldn’t blame her for that, because he acknowledged that he’d allowed himself to get off track. Yet he wished he hadn’t had to say something. He wished she had known, could see what she was doing, and correct herself.
That she couldn’t made him resentful. She’d been the one to bring all of them together as a family… as something that resembled one from the outside anyway. She’d forced them, begged him to forge a relationship with Rachel.
She’d been the one to get angry when he had the slightest bit of success in that area.
Yes, he thought. He was resentful of that. He had every right to be too. But keeping that from Rachel was of utmost importance at the moment; making sure that she was okay, that she wasn’t secondary to her mother’s crap was what mattered. Again though: it was all easier said than done.
Every now and then, Cuddy would reach for the glucose meter at the same time he did. And their attention suddenly removed from Rachel, they would stare at one another, silently compete and fight for the right to do something as simple as measure Rachel’s blood. They did not speak; even if he’d wanted to, he didn’t trust her, much less himself, to do it without a fight breaking out. So they stayed quiet.
For an hour, they cared for Rachel without so much as a word to one another. Oh sure, every once in a while, she would ask what the meter had said, or he would offer to stick Rachel in the foot while she rocked Rachel back to sleep. But required small talk aside, they were silent. And slowly, they nursed Rachel back to health.
As the night wore on, it became clear that, for now, they would avoid a hospital. The little girl never said whether or not she’d eaten, and House wasn’t convinced she would ever tell the truth. She was dumb, yes, but she wasn’t so stupid as to admit out right that she had intentionally skipped dinner.
In any case, whatever the cause, she was bouncing back well enough. Her blood glucose stabilized eventually, though she complained of nausea and a headache for the remainder of the evening. But then both of those things were to be expected.
“Just close your eyes,” Cuddy said in a low voice, so as not to make Rachel’s headache worse. “You can sleep a little bit.”
Rachel shifted uncomfortably on her mother’s lap. “Don’t wanna.” Yet she tiredly rubbed at her eyes anyway.
“We’ll wake you up if we need you,” he explained, earning him a look from Cuddy suggesting that she didn’t want his help.
“Try to get some sleep,” Cuddy said eventually turning her attention back to her daughter. “It’ll be okay.”
Rachel looked at both of them, her eyes darting back and forth. As though she knew something wasn’t quite right, it was obvious she didn’t believe them. But it was far past her bedtime; her body had been forced to handle more than its fair share of stress tonight, and no matter how hard she tried to fight it, slumber was calling for her. Her eyelids growing heavy, she fell asleep not ten minutes after that.
House didn’t dare say anything in those few moments after Rachel no longer moved. Afraid that she would wake up, he didn’t want to do anything that would destroy the tentative calm in the small bathroom. Cuddy must have felt the same way, because she was similarly silent, even though it felt like they were both brimming with things to say.
For that very reason, after no more than five minutes, he decided to be the first one to speak up. “She’ll be okay,” he offered, knowing that the sentiment was one that spoke to absolutely none of the issues they were facing. He’d gone with the line, in spite of its inherent lameness anyway; thinking that it would at least put some of their crap into perspective, he hoped it would be something they could agree on.
And they did… just not in the way he hoped.
“I know,” she said coldly.
He sighed, twisted the lancing device between his fingers. “You blame me.”
“Yes,” she replied after a second. “And no. We both weren’t paying attention to what was happening.”
The inference of her own guilt made him feel bad for her. He didn’t want to be the one blamed for Rachel’s hypoglycemia, although it was appropriate. But he also didn’t want Cuddy to think that she had done something wrong. As much as she had screwed up, was screwing up this evening, she hadn’t done anything to make things worse for Rachel. Painful though it was for him to admit it, her reluctance was created from a desire to protect her daughter. And that was frustrating for him, but it also left no doubt that Cuddy cared about Rachel.
Sympathetic he reached over to stroke Cuddy’s cheek.
She pulled away.
“This isn’t your fault,” he offered, dropping his hand to his side.
She was unconvinced. “It is.”
“You couldn’t -”
“Have known?” She rolled her eyes in irritation. “If I hadn’t been so focused on that stupid party -”
“You were working.”
She smiled at the reason he offered, but it was devoid of any joy. If anything she appeared then more bitter and weathered than she ever had.
“Of course,” she said bitterly.
“She understands” was his reply, but somehow that was met with even more derision.
“No. She doesn’t.”
House was tempted to say that at some point Rachel would understand - not because he thought that it would make Cuddy feel better (though it might), but because he knew it was true. It would have been foolish to think that Rachel’s tiny brain could understand what it meant to have a working mother, to have a mother exponentially more successful than her peers, both male and female. Rachel measured worth in the amount of time spent with her, things done for her, and at her age, she couldn’t possibly comprehend much less appreciate the example Cuddy was setting. But when they were all older, when Rachel had to start working for herself, she would understand then just what it was her mother had done all of those years. He had no doubt about that.
Right now though, that assurance wasn’t enough.
“Even if she did,” Cuddy said with a shrug. “Does it matter? When we got back from the party…. I should have noticed.”
“She was asleep.”
“And we were fighting.” The judgment in her voice was impossible to miss though it wasn’t aimed solely in his direction.
Thinking that she would never believe him that she wasn’t responsible, House considered that maybe now was the right time to change the subject to that fight. “About that….”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“You don’t think we need to?”
“I don’t want to fight.”
He nodded his head in agreement. “Good, because I don’t want to fight with you either. But -”
“No,” she whined quietly. “No buts. Let’s just agree and -”
“We can do that,” he conceded. “We’ve done that all weekend and before that, for a long time actually. We keep avoiding this conversation or skirting around the issue, but that’s not -”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said through gritted teeth. Her cheeks red with frustration, she was doing her best to keep her voice down.
He knew that if he wanted to come to some sort of resolution, he would have to choose his words with care.
“You’re mad at me. Okay. Fine. But you don’t say what it is that’s bothering you,” she told him, obviously finding it hard to remain calm.
“I know.” He chose to agree with her, even though he didn’t really feel it. In his mind, he had made his feelings quite clear in the past. It was obvious to him. But if Cuddy said she didn’t know, then he decided it was best for him to play it as if she was telling the truth. He didn’t want to fight, but they would definitely if he accused her of lying.
“I’m not trying to play games with you,” he told her honestly. “That’s not… I’m not doing that.”
“You could have fooled me.”
He ignored the cold remark. “I’ve been waiting for you to decide what you want. I haven’t said anything, because Rachel’s your daughter, and I know I haven’t… always appreciated that,” he said in even tones. “I have tried to do what you want. The problem with that is you don’t know what you want.”
Cuddy shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not true.”
“When you found us tonight and Rachel was sleeping on my lap, what did you think?”
She knew what she had thought, which was why she didn’t want to answer the question. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because he had obviously been able to guess what she thought.
“You were upset,” he said knowingly. “Jealous, because she was with me, and we had something going on that didn’t involve you.”
She felt compelled to deny it. Stroking her sleeping daughter’s hair, Cuddy told him, “She was sleeping on you. That’s not exactly -”
“I’m not saying it is. But… you were upset anyway.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Okay,” he said, capitulating. “If that’s true, that’s true. That’s fine.”
“It is true,” she insisted, even though she was lying. The fact that he didn’t seem intent on fighting her just made her feel awful about it. Because if he’d called her a liar, she could focus on the argument. But his bright eyes silently imploring her for honesty… that was something she wasn’t prepared to fight.
“Okay,” he said calmly as though he believed her (she told herself he didn’t). “Then what about when she drank the soda for me and -”
“Oh come on,” she interrupted.
Inwardly she berated herself for behaving this way. He was right. Over and over, she repeated: he was right. He wasn’t guessing this, wasn’t making this up, wasn’t trying to fight with her. He was accurately describing her behavior.
And she was fighting him over it.
For what?
She was the one doing it, but it boggled her mind.
What was she doing?
And yet, even without an answer, she found herself hoping he wouldn’t notice the fact that she was thinking any of this.
Of course, however, he did.
His hand moving to the back of her neck, he lightly stroked her nape with a finger. “You have to stop this,” he said calmly. “I love you. And… her. But if you don’t decide what you want, what place you want me to have in her life, this can’t work.” He reached down and picked up the lancelet he’d dropped. “It just can’t.”
She didn’t say anything as he pricked one of Rachel’s fingers for blood. There was nothing to say. He was right. She was screwing everything up. In all of the scenarios in which their relationship failed, it had always been, in her mind, he who couldn’t adapt. But in the actual moment, Cuddy knew that she was more the problem than he had been. He wasn’t perfect - God, he wasn’t. Yet he somehow managed to be the less screwed up one at the moment. How the hell that had happened she didn’t know. It had though.
No longer trusting herself to make any sense in the situation, she didn’t let herself speak. Somehow she was sure she would only make things worse.
“We’re still on target,” House said, turning off the glucose meter again.
Cuddy nodded her head. Feeling like she could talk about the medicine, she allowed herself to point out, “I’ll still need to check it for the next couple of hours, make sure it doesn’t drop again.”
“I’ll do it,” he offered.
Her lips pursed, she refrained from groaning, as she wanted to. He was just trying to make her feel worse than she already did, right? He’d made his point - she was being awful and indecisive while he tried his best to please her - and now he was driving that point home by showing just how sweet he could be. Right?
“You don’t have to,” she forced herself to say diplomatically.
“I’ll do it.”
And that was all she could take. Once again doing all she could to keep her voice low, she said, “You’ve made your point. All right? I get it. I’m -”
“This isn’t about making a point.”
“Really.”
“I get why you think it is, but this has nothing to do with that. I don’t need prove my point anymore than I already have,” he asserted matter of factly. “Actually, I didn’t ever need to prove my point, because you’ve known just as long as I have that you’ve been -”
“Then why are you offering?” she asked in frustration.
“You have work tomorrow.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I forget something? You don’t have a job to go to?”
“Lucky for me, I have an understanding boss.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“You have this thing with the D.E.A. in the morning… and who knows how long that’s going to take? You’re going to need your rest for that.”
“I made it through med school,” she reminded him. “I’ll be fine.”
“And one of us is going to have to stay home tomorrow with her anyway so -”
“I didn’t think about that.” She really hadn’t. Maybe it was the exhaustion talking, but Cuddy hadn’t considered what they would do with Rachel in the morning. Then again, there’d been such an effort just to get through the now, to get Rachel back to some semblance of healthy, that what they would do hours from now had seemed so far away as to be unimportant.
Now though Cuddy could only think of that, could only believe that House was right. Rachel couldn’t go to school tomorrow. On even the best of days, her teachers were idiotic and inattentive. In her current state, Rachel needed very specific care. The glucagon could easily make her sick for the next day or so, and it would take longer for her body to bounce back from being so gravely off balance. And Cuddy couldn’t trust that school to handle Rachel when she was like that.
“Then I’ll stay home,” Cuddy said, feeling as though that were the best option available.
“No. You have to go to work.”
“I can -”
“The D.E.A.’s going to be there, and they are going to be looking for anything out of place,” he pointed out. “The Dean of Medicine stays home on the -”
“As opposed to the doctor with a well known drug problem?”
House waved the question off. “I like doing drugs. I don’t enjoy selling them or turning them into meth so some fifteen year old the creepy neighbor molested can get high.”
“I’m sure they’ll make that distinction,” she said wearily.
“They don’t care about me. I am… unimportant in this equation. You matter.” She bristled at the idea, but he didn’t give her a chance to deny it. “I stay home? I’m taking care of my girlfriend’s kid in the hopes you’ll feel very thankful and have more sex with me. You stay home? It looks like you have something to hide.”
She wasn’t convinced. “Right. Because I timed my daughter’s illness to -”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re not there; it will be a problem. None of which, by the way, takes into account the fact that you kissed all that ass this evening to prove that you are good at your job.”
“You think if I’m not there, they’ll think I can’t do my job.”
“Am I wrong about that?”
She hesitated, hated admitting the truth. “No. But I don’t care about -”
“You’re going to throw all of that away so that -”
“I can take care of my daughter?”
“You have someone who can take care of your daughter,” he pointed calmly. “I won’t let anything happen to her. And you know I’ll give her the care she needs. So if you throw it away, it’s because you don’t want me to watch her.”
She didn’t accept that argument. Sure, on some level, maybe he was right. But he was ignoring one key fact. “I’m not allowed to want to watch her myself?”
“You can want it, sure. It’s not the smart choice to make.”
“According to you.”
“According to anyone with logic, really.”
“House, in case you’re forgetting, I’ve asked you to watch her several times this weekend.”
“And I did.”
“You complained -”
“But I did it anyway,” he said in a firm though not angry voice. “You asked a couple of times, and I did it. And then at the party, you didn’t ask, but I did it anyway. Now I’m offering, and you’re against it, and you don’t think that means something?”
“Fine.” She capitulated abruptly. “I will go to work tomorrow, and you can watch her.”
She was doing it to prove him wrong, he knew. At least, she thought she was handing his ass to him by letting him take care of Rachel. But he felt that the only thing she was doing was proving him right. The way she could change her mind so quickly, the way she avoided any self-reflection - it was all part of the same problem. She had no clue what she wanted, and any attempt to help her decide made her angry. She was conceding, but nothing had been decided much less changed.
“I will,” he agreed.
“Wonderful.”
Somehow, he thought, even when they agreed, it seemed like they were fighting. Leaning his head back against the bathroom wall, he couldn’t help but think that this would be a long night.
Continue on to the next chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: NC-17 for sex
Characters: House, Cuddy, Rachel Cuddy
Author's Note: This piece takes place in the future when Rachel is five; House and Cuddy are in an established relationship.
Warning: This fic also contains sex. If that bothers you, don't read.
Summary: For a price, House agrees to celebrate Purim with Cuddy and Rachel. But although he's getting all the sex he
wants, he's still not sure he'll be able to last the weekend. Established relationship, contains sexual situations.
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9 (Part 1), Chapter 9 (Part 2), Chapter 9 (Part 3), Chapter 9 (Part 4), Chapter 10 (Part 1), Chapter 10 (Part 2), Chapter 10 (Part 3), Chapter 11, Chapter 12 (Part 1), Chapter 12 (Part 2), Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18 (Part 1), Chapter 18 (Part 2), Chapter 19 (Part 1), Chapter 19 (Part 2), Chapter 19 (Part 3), Chapter 19 (Part 4), Chapter 20 (Part 1), Chapter 20 (Part 2), Chapter 21 (Part 1), Chapter 21 (Part 2), Chapter 22 (Part 1), Chapter 22 (Part 2), Chapter 23 (Part 1)
Disclaimer: I don't own it.
He wrapped an arm around her waist then, pulled her into a loose embrace, as if to tell her that it was okay. In any other situation, she might have appreciated the support. Right now, she wanted to kill him.
He didn’t even care about Rachel, but she listened to him?
Of course he was going to be sympathetic, Cuddy thought bitterly. He wasn’t the one with a daughter who seemed to intent on being obedient for everyone but her mother.
The idea immediately recognized as a ridiculous one, Cuddy fought the urge to laugh. She must have been exhausted or insane with fear or just insane if she thought Rachel were capable of sustained acquiescence for anyone. Clearly, she must have been crazy to entertain that thought for more than a second without remembering just how stubborn her child was even under the best of circumstances.
House, perhaps understanding the same thing, tried to maximize this rare moment of obedience. Picking up the sandwich he’d made, he ripped off a piece, little bits of ham peaking out of the torn bread.
“Here,” he said holding the bite up to Rachel’s mouth. “Can you eat this?”
Rachel batted the cup out of her face. Sitting up, she eagerly ate the food House offered her.
Again, Cuddy couldn’t help but feel a pang of immature jealousy course through her. But right now, she reminded herself, getting Rachel better was the only thing that mattered. How it made Cuddy feel as a mother was… unimportant by comparison. So she quietly sat back and watched as House fed her daughter.
Every now and then, Cuddy would offer Rachel a few words of encouragement or give her a couple kisses to keep her eating the sandwich. But beyond those few small actions, she could only sit there and jealously watch.
The camaraderie between House and Rachel ended abruptly though, not ten minutes later when Rachel scrambled towards the toilet and, thanks to the glucagon, threw up the sandwich.
Then Cuddy was needed. Rachel was crying and reaching for her and sniffling into her tank top - completely undone by vomiting. As House slipped out of the bathroom to, presumably, make another sandwich, Cuddy understood how her daughter felt.
“Shhh,” she shushed, wiping her daughter’s face with a cool washcloth.
“I throwed up!”
Cuddy grimaced. “I know.” The smell alone was proof enough of that fact. “It just means the medicine is working, Rachel. How about we rinse your mouth out a little bit?”
In the end it did little to calm Rachel down. There was a chance it would have under normal circumstances. If she’d gotten sick and then had nothing to look forward to other than being cradled in her mother’s arms, maybe she would have relaxed. But the fact was: these were not normal circumstances. And even though she’d just vomited, based on her latest glucose reading, her blood sugar was still too low, which meant she had to keep eating.
This time, Rachel wasn’t so interested in listening to House. He did his best, of course, speaking in that voice that suggested she had no choice. But Rachel stubbornly refused.
“One bite.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“No!” she screamed shaking her head.
“Yeah, see, this isn’t really an option.”
“No!”
“Shut up,” he nearly whined. “Just be like your mother: stop bitching, open your mouth, and take -”
Cuddy’s nails violently digging into the skin on his arm prevented him from finishing the sentence. He swallowed back the yelp he clearly wanted to make, instead pulling his flesh away from her claws as quickly as he could.
Instantly he switched tactics, as though that would make things all better. “You know… I think I know where we have some candy.”
“Well you know what I think?” Cuddy asked in a dark tone.
“That I should go find it?”
“Exactly.”
He disappeared again, his absence forcing Cuddy to realize that Rachel’s wide eyes were on her. Immediately Cuddy looked down in embarrassment and forced herself to admit to her daughter, “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s not nice to hurt people, which is why -”
“You scratched him.”
The fact that Rachel could articulate her hypocrisy was a good sign, Cuddy thought. At least it meant she’d received enough of a jolt from the soda and first sandwich to raise her blood sugar a little bit.
“Yes,” she admitted. “And I will apologize to him when he comes back. But if you want candy, you need to eat this,” she said, pointing to the half sandwich sitting on the plate.
Rachel frowned. “I don’t wanna. Don’t wanna be sick.”
“I know. But this is what’s going to make you feel better. The longer you wait to eat the sandwich, the worse you’re going to feel. So you need to eat up.” Rachel hesitated. “If you want candy, you’re going to have to eat the sandwich.”
The softly worded order was unappreciated, but ultimately Rachel did as instructed. Her fingers still shaking lightly, she picked up the sandwich and started to munch on it.
“There we go,” Cuddy said encouragingly, smoothing her daughter’s hair back. “That’s not so bad, is it?”
“Here we go,” House announced, victoriously reentering the bathroom. Rachel started to put down the sandwich, but for the first time in his life, Cuddy thought bitterly, he didn’t cave. “No. Eat your sandwich first.”
Rachel did, but her gaze was trained on Cuddy, as though she were waiting for the apology to come. And though Cuddy didn’t really feel like saying she was sorry, she knew that it would come back to haunt her if she didn’t.
Sighing, she forced herself to mutter once House was sitting next to her once more, “I’m sorry. For scratching you. I… shouldn’t have done that.”
He was tempted to make her work for it. Although she hadn’t actually said much to him since this began, he could see the blame in her eyes. He could see the disgust and the frustration and even a little bit of hatred at times. She might have been apologizing for trying to scratch him, but he didn’t care about that. He cared about everything else she’d done, the actions that had screamed he had no place here. But holding onto his own resentment would only make her that much more determined to hold onto hers. So he let it go.
“It’s all right,” he said with a shrug.
They sat with the uncomfortable knowledge that neither really meant any of it.
But they would pretend, for as long as it took to get Rachel through this medical emergency.
Doing that was obviously easier said than done. It was hard to sit next to Cuddy, knowing how she felt, knowing that he’d been correct earlier to think that he hadn’t gotten through to her at all. Part of that was of course his own fault, for allowing himself to be distracted by Arianne’s pregnancy and his boiling frustration from all of it. But afterwards, as he had tried to fall asleep, he had hoped that Cuddy had somehow understood, in some way managed to decipher what he’d meant to say.
Sitting next to her now, he knew all too well that she hadn’t. He couldn’t blame her for that, because he acknowledged that he’d allowed himself to get off track. Yet he wished he hadn’t had to say something. He wished she had known, could see what she was doing, and correct herself.
That she couldn’t made him resentful. She’d been the one to bring all of them together as a family… as something that resembled one from the outside anyway. She’d forced them, begged him to forge a relationship with Rachel.
She’d been the one to get angry when he had the slightest bit of success in that area.
Yes, he thought. He was resentful of that. He had every right to be too. But keeping that from Rachel was of utmost importance at the moment; making sure that she was okay, that she wasn’t secondary to her mother’s crap was what mattered. Again though: it was all easier said than done.
Every now and then, Cuddy would reach for the glucose meter at the same time he did. And their attention suddenly removed from Rachel, they would stare at one another, silently compete and fight for the right to do something as simple as measure Rachel’s blood. They did not speak; even if he’d wanted to, he didn’t trust her, much less himself, to do it without a fight breaking out. So they stayed quiet.
For an hour, they cared for Rachel without so much as a word to one another. Oh sure, every once in a while, she would ask what the meter had said, or he would offer to stick Rachel in the foot while she rocked Rachel back to sleep. But required small talk aside, they were silent. And slowly, they nursed Rachel back to health.
As the night wore on, it became clear that, for now, they would avoid a hospital. The little girl never said whether or not she’d eaten, and House wasn’t convinced she would ever tell the truth. She was dumb, yes, but she wasn’t so stupid as to admit out right that she had intentionally skipped dinner.
In any case, whatever the cause, she was bouncing back well enough. Her blood glucose stabilized eventually, though she complained of nausea and a headache for the remainder of the evening. But then both of those things were to be expected.
“Just close your eyes,” Cuddy said in a low voice, so as not to make Rachel’s headache worse. “You can sleep a little bit.”
Rachel shifted uncomfortably on her mother’s lap. “Don’t wanna.” Yet she tiredly rubbed at her eyes anyway.
“We’ll wake you up if we need you,” he explained, earning him a look from Cuddy suggesting that she didn’t want his help.
“Try to get some sleep,” Cuddy said eventually turning her attention back to her daughter. “It’ll be okay.”
Rachel looked at both of them, her eyes darting back and forth. As though she knew something wasn’t quite right, it was obvious she didn’t believe them. But it was far past her bedtime; her body had been forced to handle more than its fair share of stress tonight, and no matter how hard she tried to fight it, slumber was calling for her. Her eyelids growing heavy, she fell asleep not ten minutes after that.
House didn’t dare say anything in those few moments after Rachel no longer moved. Afraid that she would wake up, he didn’t want to do anything that would destroy the tentative calm in the small bathroom. Cuddy must have felt the same way, because she was similarly silent, even though it felt like they were both brimming with things to say.
For that very reason, after no more than five minutes, he decided to be the first one to speak up. “She’ll be okay,” he offered, knowing that the sentiment was one that spoke to absolutely none of the issues they were facing. He’d gone with the line, in spite of its inherent lameness anyway; thinking that it would at least put some of their crap into perspective, he hoped it would be something they could agree on.
And they did… just not in the way he hoped.
“I know,” she said coldly.
He sighed, twisted the lancing device between his fingers. “You blame me.”
“Yes,” she replied after a second. “And no. We both weren’t paying attention to what was happening.”
The inference of her own guilt made him feel bad for her. He didn’t want to be the one blamed for Rachel’s hypoglycemia, although it was appropriate. But he also didn’t want Cuddy to think that she had done something wrong. As much as she had screwed up, was screwing up this evening, she hadn’t done anything to make things worse for Rachel. Painful though it was for him to admit it, her reluctance was created from a desire to protect her daughter. And that was frustrating for him, but it also left no doubt that Cuddy cared about Rachel.
Sympathetic he reached over to stroke Cuddy’s cheek.
She pulled away.
“This isn’t your fault,” he offered, dropping his hand to his side.
She was unconvinced. “It is.”
“You couldn’t -”
“Have known?” She rolled her eyes in irritation. “If I hadn’t been so focused on that stupid party -”
“You were working.”
She smiled at the reason he offered, but it was devoid of any joy. If anything she appeared then more bitter and weathered than she ever had.
“Of course,” she said bitterly.
“She understands” was his reply, but somehow that was met with even more derision.
“No. She doesn’t.”
House was tempted to say that at some point Rachel would understand - not because he thought that it would make Cuddy feel better (though it might), but because he knew it was true. It would have been foolish to think that Rachel’s tiny brain could understand what it meant to have a working mother, to have a mother exponentially more successful than her peers, both male and female. Rachel measured worth in the amount of time spent with her, things done for her, and at her age, she couldn’t possibly comprehend much less appreciate the example Cuddy was setting. But when they were all older, when Rachel had to start working for herself, she would understand then just what it was her mother had done all of those years. He had no doubt about that.
Right now though, that assurance wasn’t enough.
“Even if she did,” Cuddy said with a shrug. “Does it matter? When we got back from the party…. I should have noticed.”
“She was asleep.”
“And we were fighting.” The judgment in her voice was impossible to miss though it wasn’t aimed solely in his direction.
Thinking that she would never believe him that she wasn’t responsible, House considered that maybe now was the right time to change the subject to that fight. “About that….”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“You don’t think we need to?”
“I don’t want to fight.”
He nodded his head in agreement. “Good, because I don’t want to fight with you either. But -”
“No,” she whined quietly. “No buts. Let’s just agree and -”
“We can do that,” he conceded. “We’ve done that all weekend and before that, for a long time actually. We keep avoiding this conversation or skirting around the issue, but that’s not -”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said through gritted teeth. Her cheeks red with frustration, she was doing her best to keep her voice down.
He knew that if he wanted to come to some sort of resolution, he would have to choose his words with care.
“You’re mad at me. Okay. Fine. But you don’t say what it is that’s bothering you,” she told him, obviously finding it hard to remain calm.
“I know.” He chose to agree with her, even though he didn’t really feel it. In his mind, he had made his feelings quite clear in the past. It was obvious to him. But if Cuddy said she didn’t know, then he decided it was best for him to play it as if she was telling the truth. He didn’t want to fight, but they would definitely if he accused her of lying.
“I’m not trying to play games with you,” he told her honestly. “That’s not… I’m not doing that.”
“You could have fooled me.”
He ignored the cold remark. “I’ve been waiting for you to decide what you want. I haven’t said anything, because Rachel’s your daughter, and I know I haven’t… always appreciated that,” he said in even tones. “I have tried to do what you want. The problem with that is you don’t know what you want.”
Cuddy shook her head in disbelief. “That’s not true.”
“When you found us tonight and Rachel was sleeping on my lap, what did you think?”
She knew what she had thought, which was why she didn’t want to answer the question. But in the end, it didn’t matter, because he had obviously been able to guess what she thought.
“You were upset,” he said knowingly. “Jealous, because she was with me, and we had something going on that didn’t involve you.”
She felt compelled to deny it. Stroking her sleeping daughter’s hair, Cuddy told him, “She was sleeping on you. That’s not exactly -”
“I’m not saying it is. But… you were upset anyway.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Okay,” he said, capitulating. “If that’s true, that’s true. That’s fine.”
“It is true,” she insisted, even though she was lying. The fact that he didn’t seem intent on fighting her just made her feel awful about it. Because if he’d called her a liar, she could focus on the argument. But his bright eyes silently imploring her for honesty… that was something she wasn’t prepared to fight.
“Okay,” he said calmly as though he believed her (she told herself he didn’t). “Then what about when she drank the soda for me and -”
“Oh come on,” she interrupted.
Inwardly she berated herself for behaving this way. He was right. Over and over, she repeated: he was right. He wasn’t guessing this, wasn’t making this up, wasn’t trying to fight with her. He was accurately describing her behavior.
And she was fighting him over it.
For what?
She was the one doing it, but it boggled her mind.
What was she doing?
And yet, even without an answer, she found herself hoping he wouldn’t notice the fact that she was thinking any of this.
Of course, however, he did.
His hand moving to the back of her neck, he lightly stroked her nape with a finger. “You have to stop this,” he said calmly. “I love you. And… her. But if you don’t decide what you want, what place you want me to have in her life, this can’t work.” He reached down and picked up the lancelet he’d dropped. “It just can’t.”
She didn’t say anything as he pricked one of Rachel’s fingers for blood. There was nothing to say. He was right. She was screwing everything up. In all of the scenarios in which their relationship failed, it had always been, in her mind, he who couldn’t adapt. But in the actual moment, Cuddy knew that she was more the problem than he had been. He wasn’t perfect - God, he wasn’t. Yet he somehow managed to be the less screwed up one at the moment. How the hell that had happened she didn’t know. It had though.
No longer trusting herself to make any sense in the situation, she didn’t let herself speak. Somehow she was sure she would only make things worse.
“We’re still on target,” House said, turning off the glucose meter again.
Cuddy nodded her head. Feeling like she could talk about the medicine, she allowed herself to point out, “I’ll still need to check it for the next couple of hours, make sure it doesn’t drop again.”
“I’ll do it,” he offered.
Her lips pursed, she refrained from groaning, as she wanted to. He was just trying to make her feel worse than she already did, right? He’d made his point - she was being awful and indecisive while he tried his best to please her - and now he was driving that point home by showing just how sweet he could be. Right?
“You don’t have to,” she forced herself to say diplomatically.
“I’ll do it.”
And that was all she could take. Once again doing all she could to keep her voice low, she said, “You’ve made your point. All right? I get it. I’m -”
“This isn’t about making a point.”
“Really.”
“I get why you think it is, but this has nothing to do with that. I don’t need prove my point anymore than I already have,” he asserted matter of factly. “Actually, I didn’t ever need to prove my point, because you’ve known just as long as I have that you’ve been -”
“Then why are you offering?” she asked in frustration.
“You have work tomorrow.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I forget something? You don’t have a job to go to?”
“Lucky for me, I have an understanding boss.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
“You have this thing with the D.E.A. in the morning… and who knows how long that’s going to take? You’re going to need your rest for that.”
“I made it through med school,” she reminded him. “I’ll be fine.”
“And one of us is going to have to stay home tomorrow with her anyway so -”
“I didn’t think about that.” She really hadn’t. Maybe it was the exhaustion talking, but Cuddy hadn’t considered what they would do with Rachel in the morning. Then again, there’d been such an effort just to get through the now, to get Rachel back to some semblance of healthy, that what they would do hours from now had seemed so far away as to be unimportant.
Now though Cuddy could only think of that, could only believe that House was right. Rachel couldn’t go to school tomorrow. On even the best of days, her teachers were idiotic and inattentive. In her current state, Rachel needed very specific care. The glucagon could easily make her sick for the next day or so, and it would take longer for her body to bounce back from being so gravely off balance. And Cuddy couldn’t trust that school to handle Rachel when she was like that.
“Then I’ll stay home,” Cuddy said, feeling as though that were the best option available.
“No. You have to go to work.”
“I can -”
“The D.E.A.’s going to be there, and they are going to be looking for anything out of place,” he pointed out. “The Dean of Medicine stays home on the -”
“As opposed to the doctor with a well known drug problem?”
House waved the question off. “I like doing drugs. I don’t enjoy selling them or turning them into meth so some fifteen year old the creepy neighbor molested can get high.”
“I’m sure they’ll make that distinction,” she said wearily.
“They don’t care about me. I am… unimportant in this equation. You matter.” She bristled at the idea, but he didn’t give her a chance to deny it. “I stay home? I’m taking care of my girlfriend’s kid in the hopes you’ll feel very thankful and have more sex with me. You stay home? It looks like you have something to hide.”
She wasn’t convinced. “Right. Because I timed my daughter’s illness to -”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re not there; it will be a problem. None of which, by the way, takes into account the fact that you kissed all that ass this evening to prove that you are good at your job.”
“You think if I’m not there, they’ll think I can’t do my job.”
“Am I wrong about that?”
She hesitated, hated admitting the truth. “No. But I don’t care about -”
“You’re going to throw all of that away so that -”
“I can take care of my daughter?”
“You have someone who can take care of your daughter,” he pointed calmly. “I won’t let anything happen to her. And you know I’ll give her the care she needs. So if you throw it away, it’s because you don’t want me to watch her.”
She didn’t accept that argument. Sure, on some level, maybe he was right. But he was ignoring one key fact. “I’m not allowed to want to watch her myself?”
“You can want it, sure. It’s not the smart choice to make.”
“According to you.”
“According to anyone with logic, really.”
“House, in case you’re forgetting, I’ve asked you to watch her several times this weekend.”
“And I did.”
“You complained -”
“But I did it anyway,” he said in a firm though not angry voice. “You asked a couple of times, and I did it. And then at the party, you didn’t ask, but I did it anyway. Now I’m offering, and you’re against it, and you don’t think that means something?”
“Fine.” She capitulated abruptly. “I will go to work tomorrow, and you can watch her.”
She was doing it to prove him wrong, he knew. At least, she thought she was handing his ass to him by letting him take care of Rachel. But he felt that the only thing she was doing was proving him right. The way she could change her mind so quickly, the way she avoided any self-reflection - it was all part of the same problem. She had no clue what she wanted, and any attempt to help her decide made her angry. She was conceding, but nothing had been decided much less changed.
“I will,” he agreed.
“Wonderful.”
Somehow, he thought, even when they agreed, it seemed like they were fighting. Leaning his head back against the bathroom wall, he couldn’t help but think that this would be a long night.
Continue on to the next chapter