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Something Changed
by leiascully
The phone rings and it is too late for it to be anyone else. She doesn't even have to look at the clock to know. Cuddy just sighs and reaches blearily for the phone.
"You're not pregnant," House says abruptly before she can even mumble a hello.
"You're a genius," she says. It still stings a little to hear him say it. She would love to be pregnant. She knows that he knows that. She's got a sore spot on her hip from the months of injections that she's been administering on her own since he got shot: a less effective method, maybe, but better somehow than asking Wilson. She's still on the hormones, still hoping, but every time she goes through a new round of donor files, she thinks of House saying "someone you like" with that rare, rough, almost bashful sincerity, and the files go into a drawer.
"Why aren't you pregnant? You were looking for donors months ago."
"The best laid plans were kind of ruined by someone shooting one of my best doctors," she says, rolling onto her side and tugging the comforter over her breasts. "I had a hospital to run and about fifteen tons of paperwork to fill out."
"So find a guy in a bar and a seedy motel. Takes less time than catheters. Birds do it. Bees do it."
"Overeducated M.D.s do not do it because they know what kinds of diseases those men that frequent bars might have and what kind of genetic problems might run in their families," she sighs. "What do you want from me, House?"
"I want to know why you're not pregnant."
"Haven't found a suitable donor," she says, and lets her eyes close.
"Come on," he says, half scornful and half coaxing, and she can hear the faint sound of the piano: he is pressing the keys gently, one at a time, just thoughtful about it, not really playing. She would bet he has been playing all night to come to these conclusions, putting bits of information into the structure of the tudes until they starts to ring true. "You were ready to go with Mozart guy. Something changed."
"Nothing changed." She bites her lip.
"Lise, I know you," he says. "You don't plan this much and then let things go."
"I don't have time to be pregnant," she says. He only calls her "Lise" these days in the middle of the night when he's serious about something. Remember, it means, remember how it was when we were young and life was easier. She always remembers, but when he says her name that way she softens and he knows it. She has to be his doctor and his boss right now. It is midnight and she wants to yield to the years of memories. He is not easy to be friends with but you can't leave him and it's worthwhile. She marshals her resistance. "And you should be sleeping. Treating your body badly is only going to make the pain worse."
He laughs, a low bitter sound. "Gee, thanks for the advice, Doc. Anything else I should be doing? Maybe if I still had a muscle in my leg there would be something to look forward to with my physical therapy."
"I'm sorry," she says. "You know I'm sorry. How many times can I say it? You are well aware of how guilty I still feel about all that, especially now. I ruined your life and I will always regret that. Okay? Can I go back to sleep now?"
"It's not like you were my proxy," he says. "You just suggested. Stacy's the one who said go ahead. It was good medicine. I don't blame you."
That is something of a revelation, but she doesn't dwell on it or argue the point that of course he blames her, clearly he blames her. Unless maybe he doesn't and it's just been the misery from his leg and Stacy all these years that made him push them all away. Some old tightness in her chest eases. "Why did you call, Greg?" She should call him House. Greg is too intimate, too reminiscent of when they were in school. She is cracking and he will know it.
"You're not pregnant."
"That's a well-established fact by this point. Does this mean you're going to stop talking to my breasts in the hallways? Nurse Previn's been giving me the eye again."
"God, you're evasive tonight, Lise. I think I should come over."
"I think you shouldn't," she says, a stunned moment too late, because the phone has gone dead and she knows he's shrugging on his jacket on his way out the door to his bike. She gets up and puts on a robe and the kettle. It's still the end of summer, but she likes the way the heavy stoneware mugs she bought feel in her hands, and she likes mint tea in the middle of the night when she can't have anything caffeinated, and it's cool enough that the heat will be a comfort. She likes having something to do with her hands when House is around. It helps to have a distraction for him as well, keep those busy fingers occupied so that he doesn't start flipping through her books and her photo albums. He knows what she looked like when she was younger, but it still makes her antsy when he looks at the photos, those critical eyes lingering over the images of her less-polished self.
She hears the whine of the motorcycle over the whistle of the kettle and pours the water onto the teabags with a steady hand. He will let himself in. He likes doing that, pretending he's got run of her house, which she supposes he does, but more by omission of explicit rejection than by her permission. If she hid the keys, he'd either find them or play Gregory House, Cat Burgler Extraordinaire, and jimmy open a window. She thinks that if he ever actually managed to actually break into her house, he would lord it over everyone until the end of human history. The ghost of Gregory House would haunt the writers of history books until something about the Conquering of the Fortifications of Cuddy was put in and no one would have a damn clue what it meant.
"It isn't chamomile, is it?" he says behind her and she jumps. "You know I hate chamomile."
"I know you hate chamomile," she agrees. "That's why it's mint. You're the one who makes my life miserable, remember? I'm the one who tries to make your life easier. I just don't do a good job of it," she adds under her breath.
"Don't be dense, Lise, the fact that I have someone to look forward to tormenting who isn't under my employ makes my life much easier. Recreational sadism. It's my new thing. You're my most entertaining victim after Wilson."
Stop listening to me when I talk, she wants to say, but that's ridiculous. "High praise," she says instead in as mild a tone as she can manage.
"I'm aiming for just complimentary enough to get into your bed," he says. "What do you think? Should I praise your shoes next? Talk about how fetching you look in terrycloth? What's going to put me over the edge here? Feeling guilty?"
She hands him a mug. He whistles quietly as he accepts it. "You really are evasive tonight. What happened?"
"Nothing," she says, and sits down at the table. Her bare feet are a little cold. He stays standing, lounging against her counter. He seems ridiculously masculine in her house full of feminine things. It is a shock to see him there.
"Good thing there aren't any diagnosticians around to peel back the layers of lies on that word," he says.
"God, tell me you're not about to start writing on my refrigerator until you riddle me out," she says, and sips her tea even though it's too hot and she burns her tongue.
"Depends on what colors of lipstick you've got," he says, watching her a little too intently. She looks away. He limps over to the chair next to her and sits down, near enough that the rhythm of his breathing starts to regulate hers and she tries to breathe off his inhale, irritated by her body's response to him. "Patient," he says after a long moment. "Single white female, closer to forty than she'd like. Presenting with an anal-retentive need to plan things and a new hesitation to follow through, a sudden tendency to evade all personal questions, and," he prods her hip and she flinches away, frowning, "tenderness in the right hip. At a possible site of ventrogluteal injection. Which means you haven't given up on the IVF. You've just stopped looking for donors. Which means you've found someone you want to ask, because if you had already asked, you wouldn't be so edgy."
"Or I ran into my desk," she counters.
"If we're going with obviously false explanations, I prefer to think that you and Cameron got into a catfight and she tried to stab you with her high heel. But we could fabricate those kinds of stories in the daytime. I'm looking for the truth."
"Why would I lie?" she says, exasperated, and takes a gulp of her tea and scalds her tongue again.
"Why does anybody lie? You've got something you don't want me to know. I'm guessing you did decide on a donor, and since you haven't asked me to look at any files in the last few months, that you took my advice and it's someone you know and trust. Presuming that you didn't find any promising young doctors on J-Date lately, at this point in your life that basically means Wilson or me, and Wilson failed his audition, which means that you were waiting for the right moment to ask me before I went and got myself shot. God, life is complicated when you're Dean of Medicine."
She takes a mouthful of tea again, trying to nullify the prickling of tears in her eyes with the painful heat of the liquid. He looks half extremely self-satisfied and half almost tender, which is an unsettling combination, because if she looks past the default victorious smirk, she can almost believe he's human and that he's here because he cares about her instead of the puzzle. "You make my life seem so small. I have other friends."
"You don't have time for other friends that you might want to create children with," he points out. "You barely have time to squeeze in a quick game of doubles. It's only easy to get knocked up these days if you're an idiot, and you're not an idiot."
She bites her lip and wishes, not for the first time, that he would stop watching her the way he'd watch a patient, but that's the way his idea of friendship works and she can't convince him that it feels more like surveillance most days. Flattering in a way, but irritating. "Thank you for that gem of wisdom. Are we done?"
"You're not denying it," he muses. "You were going to ask me."
"If I deny it, it's back to 'everybody lies', so there's no point. Anyway, everyone has their moments of insanity." She gets up and take his cup, setting it beside the sink even though he hasn't touched his tea yet. "It's late, Greg."
"Why didn't you ask? Why don't you ask now?"
"There was never a good moment," she says, looking into the sink, wishing it were dirty so that she'd have something useful to do.
"We make our own moments," he says, getting up and limping over. "You thought I'd refuse."
"It was a whim," she says, refusing to turn around even though she can feel him behind her, his energy. "An insane whim."
"Good thing I got shot. Gave you time to get over it." He puts a hand on her shoulder. "Lisa. I'm sorry that I'm your good option."
"Me too," she says, hoping to wound him enough that he'll leave and let her do her crying in peace. The hormone treatments have made her moodier and she hates tearing up in front of him.
"Ask me," he says. "I have no reason not to do it. If you're willing to do IVF in the first place, you're clearly willing to raise the kid by yourself, which means it doesn't matter if I'm not particularly paternal or responsible or generally kind. I don't have any risks. It is, in fact, an extremely flattering and convenient proposition for both parties."
"You wouldn't really do it," she mutters.
"Why wouldn't I? I incur no additional responsibilities unless the sight of you with a little person inside of you incites one of those bizarre parental epiphanies, because all you want is my sperm, otherwise you would have tackled me years ago. And if I do have an epiphany, I'm still not losing anything that wasn't my choice to give up. Otherwise I have a great bargaining chip for getting out of clinic hours, because what's better than the gift of life? I'll never have to pretend to remember your birthday again. Everybody wins."
"Please just go," she says, gripping the edge of the sink hard against the pain of hoping. He is not usually cruel but she can't discount the possibility that he's toying with her.
"Ask me, Lise." He uses the hand on her shoulder to turn her and she resists for a moment, but he's insistent and she's tired.
"Be my donor," she mumbles, and lifts her chin defensively, staring into his eyes, which are less full of laughter than she would have expected.
"I have a couple of conditions," he says. "First, if you do get pregnant, I reserve the right to refer to myself as your 'baby daddy'. Second, no catheters. I do my best knocking up in person. All that clinical, by proxy donation crap creeps me out. My way's cheaper and more fun."
"Baby daddy?"
"That part's just to piss you off," he grins. "Look, Lise. I'm not an ideal parent by any standards, which you know probably better than anyone. I suck at warm and fuzzy. Whether you tell the kid I'm its father or not will be up to you, and if you do, I'll make sure Cameron buys it a present every year, but I can't promise more. If you can live with that, I'll be your donor."
"Why are you doing this?" she asks, tempted to hug him, but he has always been physical on his own terms and the last thing she could stand right now is him flinching away.
He shrugs. "First of all, I owe you for saving my life a couple of times. Second, if a gullible idiot like Dylan Crandall can be a parent, so can I."
"Only you would turn a serious decision like this into a stupid competition," she mutters.
"Wilson's never going to have any kids I can observe," he points out. "I've done most of the things grownups are supposed to do. This way I get to experience all of the dubious joys of parenthood with none of the risks. Plus, it'll make you happy. Given the rate at which my leg is deteriorating, I'm probably going to be making you and the rest of the hospital miserable again pretty soon. Think of it as insurance." His fingers tighten briefly on her shoulder. "I also wanted to do this," he says, and kisses her.
His mouth is softer than she expected. She always knew he was gifted with his tongue, given how many impossible things he's argued her into over the years, but it's nice to experience the upside of his talents this time. Resistance would be futile. She lets herself surrender to his inescapable gravity and the warmth of his lips. There is mint in the kiss and her mouth still hurts from being scalded, but it's worth it. He destroys things, he is cynical and bitter, but he is a healer too, and something about the way he holds her gives her hope again.
"Let's go make a moment," he says against her cheek, quiet and gentle but recognizable as snarky Gregory House with his elaborate explanations to justify a simple display of affection toward someone he's known twenty years. "And a baby."
Something changed and some things stayed the same. She is glad of both as she leads him slowly into her bedroom.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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