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Three Dreams Stacy Had That Didn't Come True
by Dana
Notes: A few months ago there was an exercise at The Clinic, which was to write three stories using the same line of dialogue. I've finally finished it, although it ended up dragging a bit longer than the original three stories. I used the prompt: "Trust me." I also took the 'exercise' opportunity to play with POVs, writing the first scene in first person, the second in second person, and the third scene in third. I'll be glad to know what you think.
Note 2: Thank you Laura and Blakmare for suggestions as I was writing this.
Three Dreams Stacy Had That Didn't Come True
1.
Everything's perfect.
I make a last sweep of the room just to make sure. Candles, check; music, check; sheets, check; incense - I close my eyes, take a deep breath - check.
Or maybe it's too much. Yes, definitely too much - there's a limit to how much Greg will accept to indulge me, and this is quite a few miles beyond that limit. With a sigh, I blow the incense stick out, catching a last whiff of jasmine.
I love the smell of jasmine in April. It reminds me of home, of dripping white blossoms that mark the beginning of spring; it makes me want to spin around in giddy circles outside, feeling the wind on my skin and the laughter of nature as it awakens from its frosty slumber. Even if all you can find in a doctor-lawyer apartment in Princeton, New Jersey is the fake Body Shop version.
Greg's reactions to my occasional bursts of spring fever are particularly entertaining - I think it embarrasses him to be reminded that he fell in love with woman who can still occasionally act like a little girl, and I'm sure that sometimes he stops, takes a look around, and wonders how the hell he wandered into this life at all.
Living with a socially retarded misanthropic genius and all-round bastard, I know I do.
I hear the front door opening, and judging by his tone of voice Greg is on the phone with his office. "--did the LP go? Give me the Reader's Digest version."
I go to the kitchen, and he's already at the fridge, uncapping a bottle of water, briefcase thrown on the counter. "From infinity, yeah," he says irritably, taking a long swig.
I walk up to him from behind and lightly place my hands on his shoulders. Too tense. "Hi," I breathe into his ear.
For a brief moment he leans back into me, such an atypical gesture of seeking comfort that it's a sure sign that something's wrong. He puts the bottle back in the fridge. "Okay. Well, let me know if something's wrong."
He turns to me and leans in, one arm snaking around my waist, the other starting to snap his phone shut, when Cameron's static voice comes through the earpiece so loudly I can hear it too: "He was trying to tell us something!"
For a moment Greg hesitates, catching my eyes - before bringing the phone back to his ear. "What did he say?" he sighs.
I squeeze his shoulder once, murmur, "Go do your thing," and slip away to the living room, where I can watch the news and still keep an eye on him. Not that Greg needs watching over - or not that it would ever help, anyway - but I've seen him rub his leg more than usual recently, and there's nothing that scares me more than a repeat of six years ago.
After a while I go into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. Greg has finished his call, but he's not with me - barely in the same existential plane, at this point - he's just sitting at the counter, eyes boring a hole in a legal pad with a few dozen words scribbled across it. One hand is absently stroking his thigh.
"Hey, doctor," I stick the steaming cup in front of him. "You wanna join the living?"
He grunts. "Have to make sure they live to be joined, first." He does take a sip of the tea.
"I was talking about me, you know." I bend down, chin on top of his head, try to make sense of whatever he's looking at. It just seems like a random jumble of words.
He sighs. "Stacy--"
"No distractions, I promise."
He looks tempted, and glances at the big leather couch we bought last year before turning back to his puzzle. "I need some more time on this."
Oh, well. I take back the cup of tea. In barely the minute that we'd spent talking it had almost emptied. "Hey, I made this for me." But he's gone, back to his world of puzzles and medicine. "All right. Take your time, I'll be in the living room."
A few hours later I'm woken up by a gentle hand and the smell of tea. "Made you a cup," he offers, looking exhausted.
"Hey..." I blink a few times, yawn, and groggily focus on his half-smile. "Puzzle solved?"
"Patient lied to his wife."
"I'll take that as a 'yes' with a bonus reaffirmation of cynicism."
"And all is wrong in the world," he says wryly.
"Almost all," I amend.
"Almost." He offers his hand, and I use it to lever myself off the couch. He starts heading down the hallway, and I follow. "You know what's really wrong, for instance?"
I groan inwardly. "Do tell."
"The fact that my bedroom looks and smells like a Charlestonian whorehouse."
I smack his arm lightly. "Nice," I mutter.
"Thanks, I wasn't sure Georgian brothel would cover it--"
"Oh, shut up." We reach the bedroom. The candles aren't lit and the good smell has mostly dissipated, but it still looks more relaxing than usual, if a bit on the cheesy (or, according to Greg, bordello) side. "It would have been very romantic, if anyone were here but you," I point out.
Even when he's tired, Greg's facial expressions are more evocative than those of anyone else I know, as demonstrated by heavily-scrunched forehead he's sporting now. "What would you know about being romantic, Miss My-Love-Is-Like-Indian-Chow?"
"I was actually going for relaxing, not romantic, and I planned it as a surprise, but you're probably too tired now anyway..."
Greg starts to undress, tossing his clothes on a chair. He spares the room a short glance. "Candles, red sheets, new-age crap in the CD player. I was supposed to be surprised that we were going to have sex tonight?"
I lean against the cabinet. "That wasn't the plan."
"Well, if you're trying to win me over on that basis, you'll have to try a little harder." He stretches his arms widely and twists them, cracking his back, then his neck, and his long body gracefully lands on the sheets - ass, back, shoulders, head. But there's a certain rigidness in the way he's laying, his leg folded just a bit too much.
He's not too tired for this. "Roll over," I order.
His eyes are closed, but he raises his eyebrows anyway. "Now that's a significantly better line, but I'm not up for BDSM tonight--"
"Will you please do as you're told?" I find the matches from earlier and go around the room, re-lighting the candles, finally stopping by the door to turn out the light.
"What are you--"
"Please," I sigh, trying to hold back exasperation. "For once, don't argue, just go along with something that's good for you." I click on the remote, and soon the room is filled with the faint, soothing sound of the music, which make me momentarily regret my choice; The Stones would have made him cooperate better.
But surprisingly, Greg actually does roll over, and I climb on the bed so that I'm sitting behind him. "Good. Thank you." I lean down to kiss the back of his neck, and when I speak, it's almost a whisper. "Now please, don't talk, okay?" My fingers graze his hair briefly, stroke the side of his face, rough with a two-day stubble. "I love the sound of your voice as much as you do, but tonight your voice equals headaches."
He grunts in response, and I kiss the back of his neck once more before straightening. "Arms loose," I prompt, and when he relaxes his arms I lift them and roll off his black t-shirt, the only article of clothing he's wearing except for his boxers.
In one long, gentle stroke, I move my hands down the line of his spine, tracing each bone with the tips of my fingers, and slowly spread the motions to the rest of his back, kneading smooth skin and tight muscles with steady hands. Greg does nothing to acknowledge what I'm doing, but after a few minutes he sighs, "Have you been taking lessons?"
I smile to myself. "Shh," I murmur, continuing to massage his back, moving on to his shoulders, which are slowly, slowly starting to unclench. It's important that this works. "Just enjoy this."
After a while, his back really does feel relaxed, and he's breathing deep, steady breaths, though I know he's not asleep. I get up for a moment and he mumbles something into the sheets. "Be right back," I promise, and slip into the bathroom, where a small basin of jasmine oil has been warming up on a tiny candle. I bring the basin into the bedroom and place it on the bed stand, then resume my previous position, and, saying a quick prayer, dip my hands into the oil.
When my hands touch Greg again, he lets out a surprised sound. "What the hell is that?"
"Please, Greg," I almost beg. Don't make me stop now, I'm finally getting somewhere.
"I'm going to smell like a girl," he complains into the pillow, but it's half-hearted, and pleased with myself I continue to work my way down his back, the warm oil making my hands glide across his skin, which is becoming slick, shining in the dim light. I let my fingers skim playfully over the lowest part of his back, bordering on his ass, where I know he's ticklish, and then my hands slip lower, to his thighs, and--
"Stacy," he sighs.
"No," I respond immediately.
"Come on, this is enough." He shifts restlessly, and I can feel his muscles start to tense again.
"No. Let me do this..." I can't very well tell him that I have been taking classes because this is the invincible Greg House, and he's not a cripple, and he doesn't need help from anybody, let alone anything that might resemble, god forbid, professional help, like a simple massage to soothe his leg that acts up once in a while because he's had surgery and what can you do, he's no longer twenty years old. "Please," I repeat again, "let me do this for you. I promise you'll like it."
His shoulders are still taut, but I can sense his reluctance wavering, since he doesn't immediately protest, and I give it a last push. "Hey, I promise you'll like it. Trust me, okay?"
It takes another moment of hesitation, but he finally relents, allowing me to continue, and I breathe a sigh of relief. Thank you, Greg. My hands resume their activity, almost automatically now - rubbing and kneading in circular motions, at first eliciting soft, suppressed grunts until finally Greg's body slackens completely and he draws out a content moan. "God, Stace," he murmurs sleepily into the bed, and I know he's going to sleep peacefully tonight.
Everything's perfect.
2.
You never come here on the anniversary.
You come on his birthday, and on the first day of spring, when the roads are finally clear enough for driving the barren way to New Jersey, and, just occasionally, when a smell, sound or a comment make you miss him so badly you're afraid you'll get a panic attack in the office.
But you never come on the day he died. You can't stand the thought of seeing his parents - his mother who broke down at the funeral and his father who never said a word, of making peace with them when he never did, of pretending to be their daughter-in-law when you never were. You hate seeing his colleagues coming to pay their respects in some hospital-organized service when it's all just for show - they come because he was smarter than them, and more famous then them, and better than them... and he certainly left his mark on you because you look at them and all you see is a puddle of mediocrity. You burned your bridges with the hospital when you sued for malpractice anyway.
Today isn't even cloudy. It rained last night; the huge oaks are still dripping leisurely on the paved brown trails of the graveyard, and the grass is wet and a little muddy, but when you look at the sky all you can notice is its clear, startling shade of blue, so familiar it aches.
When you reach the headstone, you brush a hand across his name and set a small bouquet of flowers on the ground. You don't know what they're called, but they're blue and gorgeous and smell like spring, and though he'd hate them, this is one of those times he can't argue.
Your purse feels too heavy, and you shift it to your other shoulder. One hand fidgets with the crucifix around your neck.
Hi, Greg. I've got some big news.
There's no easy way to say this, and you play with the wording in your mind for minutes until you remember this isn't a real conversation, and you don't have to worry about any real reactions they will induce.
I'm getting married next month. He works with high school kids. Guidance counselor. His name is Mark.
Silence fills the air. No whistle of wind, no hint of rustling from the trees.
I think I'll be happy with him. I... hope I'll be happy. He's a very good man.
There's a faint smudge of dirt in the loop of the 'G', and you brush it off lightly, feeling the texture of the carved letters under your fingers.
You'd probably snort if you were here. You'd be pissy, and you'd dig up information on him using god knows what unethical methods to prove that he's a sexual offender or a former televangelist, or you'd look at his face and his fingernails and decide that he's terminally ill and wouldn't last the honeymoon.
You've always felt stupid talking to the dead, but this time-- this is something you need to do. You haven't entirely figured yourself out yet, but talking about it helps.
"It takes a hell of a long time for a girl to get over you, you know." Aloud, your voice comes out near tears instead of in the partly amused tone you'd intended. "I moved away. I could barely go to the doctor's. I stopped watching medical shows, especially your stupid soap. I compared every man I met with you, and nobody was smart enough, or witty enough, or knew me, like..." You wipe your eyes, and have to swallow before you speak again.
"And I stopped listening to the piano, and I stopped listening to classical music because it hurt so much, but Greg," your voice breaks, "I can't stop living with music altogether."
Your right hand goes to the ring on the fourth finger of your left hand. It's small and tasteful, and it feels...
You're not a real widow. On the days after the funeral you hated him for that. Hated him for the explanations you had to make, for the looks you got, and most of all for the fact that now, nobody would ever be able to know that you were his and he was yours and now he was gone. It sounds like the kind of bullshit kitsch you hate, but in those days it felt anything but pointless and god how you wished you had that outward mark. You even tried wearing a ring on your ring-finger once, but he wasn't the one who gave it to you and after a moment you felt disgusted with yourself and wrenched it off.
The ring that Mark gave you is small, and tasteful, and it feels like enough.
"It's not going to be like it would have been," you remind the air. "Like it... should have been. But I've been bitter about you for a long time..."
"Trust me," you said, "I love you, trust me," and I did, and I put you in that coma, and your brilliant mind decided that your system could defeat an overdose of potassium just like it conquered everything else, and I buried you at thirty-nine with your two fucking perfect dead legs...
You stand up, fix your suit, and reach out a hand one last time to tenderly touch the grave - as if by touching it you can give some sort of comfort, placate a stormy spirit. Just another thing he doesn't need now, and certainly wouldn't have accepted were he here.
"I think I can be happy, Greg."
But you know you never will be happy if you don't leave the past behind. So for the very last time you allow yourself a moment of selfish grief, of being completely overwhelmed by the desire to curl up into a ball and scream at the unfairness of life and how someone viciously tore out the last chapter of the fairy tale and glued on a different ending.
Fuck it, Greg, it should have been you.
3.
Things get progressively worse, but this isn't the first time she's had to deal with someone who won't admit he has a problem.
"Greg can fix this," she tells him, pleads with him, begs, but all Mark does is make up excuses again and again until she can't take it any more. "You're acting like a little boy!" she explodes finally. "You do not have to work next week! Not if the alternative is that you're sick and you don't--" She has to take a shuddering breath. "Just come to Princeton with me, please. What are you so afraid of? He'll fix you. If anyone can figure out what's wrong, it's him. Trust me."
Mark won't look her in the eye, just sits on the bed, shoulders slumped forward, and she can't tell what he's thinking about. He's been so off lately, and she knows it's not her imagination.
She walks over to him and gets down on her knees, leaning forward to place one hand in his lap and lifting the other to cup his cheek, forcing him to look at her. "Honey..."
He meets her eyes and she knows, has known all along, the real reason he doesn't want to go.
"What would he have had to do for you to stay?" Mark asks softly.
Want me around, she wants to answer, but instead says, "Tell me when he was in pain. When he needed help." She brushes her fingers through his hair. "Buy me flowers, just once, on my birthday. Not be a constant jackass would probably have helped too..."
"I..." Mark trails off helplessly, and she knows why he doesn't want to go but she doesn't care. Nothing matters except that he be okay.
And then.
Then...
It takes time for her to get used to being around him again. Years have gone by, after all, and it's so easy to forget the ugliness that came at the end, so easy to fall back into their rhythm, snapping comebacks and exchanging ideas and it's just as thrilling as it used to be. Years have gone by, and she's moved on with her life, gotten married, bought a house, and he's still Greg. Still brilliant. Still ruthlessly passionate. Still long and elegant, even with the cane, and insecure and self-loathing and manipulative. Still smells the same, and she knows that if he moved his arms just so and she rested her head right there, she would still fit.
The moment she agrees to take the job, she knows she has either made a huge mistake or a very smart decision, and she waits with a certain detached curiosity to see how it will turn out.
But detached doesn't work for long; 'detached' isn't possible with Greg House, so she at least struggles towards professional - which doesn't last long either. As much as she might try to force her heart and her body to believe otherwise, he's not a doctor and he's not a client. He's Greg, and his taunting and provoking and odd behavior confuse the hell out of her for weeks until that sudden, crystal clear moment of realization that takes her breath away: he actually wants her back.
And if she thought being around him was dangerous before, it's like standing on the roof of a skyscraper during a hurricane, now. A part of her is so furious at him for his nerve and his ego and his impossibly rotten timing that she feels she could punch him in the fucking thigh without a second thought.
The other part of her needs to mentally sit down with a glass of water in order to try and comprehend that this is really happening; she can hardly wrap her mind around the concept that after all this time Greg might be willing to forgive her, to want her again, and it's even more unbelievable that he's actually pursuing her in his twisted, endearing way, full of torturous little insights that remind her that he still knows her better than Mark, probably better than anyone ever will.
It's the small moments that take her dangerously close to slipping. Catching him watching her, for a split second fumbling over his words before focusing on his diagnosis again; seeing him in his office at the end of the day, eyes closed as he play an imaginary instrument, completely absorbed in the music coming from his earphones which she can almost hear; lying in front of a ridiculous empty cage trying to make small talk while the only thing she can focus on is the warmth of his shoulder pressing into hers, so infuriatingly casual and yet not, wondering how many people he's touched so carelessly since her, if there have been any at all.
Discovering that he had read her file is, more than anything, an opportunity to disengage again - if she backs out now, she thinks, she might still stand a chance. But of course it's Greg, and the day he'll be able to go two months without a lawsuit - well, she'd put her money on peace in the Middle East first. In what's beginning to feel like a cycle he keeps persisting, she tries cutting him off, while the back of her mind knows full well that in the end Greg can get what he wants, and it's so tempting to just give in - to throw all caution and common sense in the wind and see if he really does mean it, see how far he's willing to go.
She invites him to her hotel room in Baltimore, and if she wasn't entirely sure what she felt for him before, all it takes is one night of being lulled to sleep on an airport bench by the rhythm of that stupid ball bouncing on the tiles, by the sight of him frowning at words scribbled on a wall with lipstick, and she's in love all over again.
She asks herself what now. Of course, Lisa asks her that too, as does James, and it's almost funny to find him worried about her being the one toying with Greg - if she had any indication Greg's intentions were actually serious, she'd be back in a heartbeat. But last time he made his feelings towards her so perfectly clear, and that man can harbor hatred for years if he wants to, and the scary thing about Greg is that it's not out of the realm of possibility that all of this is just a plan to get her to leave Mark and then brutally crush her heart as an act of revenge.
And Mark, Mark... And there's Mark.
There's Mark, who doesn't pick her up from the airport when she gets back from Baltimore because he can't drive. But when she steps into the apartment she's surrounded by the smell of jasmine, and Mark is holding a huge bouquet of flowers and it's not even her birthday. "Stacy," he says, his voice hoarse. "I need..."
Something catches in her throat, and she couldn't speak if she wanted to.
"I need your help."
She packs their bags before she can make any more mistakes, and they move back home. It's a long, agonizingly slow process but little by little Mark starts getting the use of his legs back, and after a while he starts healing, and his eyes crinkle when he smiles again and they make love every night and live happily ever after and she never thinks about Greg House again.
*
Of course, none of Stacy's dreams actually came true.
What really happened was that she made a decision when House was in a coma and he lived, but lived in pain, and, unforgiven, she left him after a little over a year.
What really happened was that House saved her husband's life, and she broke the vows she'd said out loud and slept with him.
What really happened was that she made a decision to leave her husband and, just as she feared, House turned her down, and she had no choice but to leave again.
What happened later was that this time, she came back.
*
"What are you doing here?" he asked, hovering uncertainly on the threshold of the half open door, not stepping outside, not inviting her in.
"You were wrong," she stated simply.
His eyes narrowed. "I'm never wrong."
"You're wrong more often than you think. You were wrong about me, this time. You're also wrong about you."
His hand tightened its grip on the door frame. "If Jiminy Cricket were here, he'd tell me I shouldn't even be talking to you."
She took a small step closer, but not too close to make him flee. "Five minutes with me and I can guarantee James would be on my side."
His thumb was rubbing the handle of his cane tensely, and she saw him hesitate, take a breath and prepare to strike - but at the last second his expression shifted and suddenly his face was completely, brutally open, old and wrinkled and vulnerable. "There shouldn't be sides to this," he exhaled softly. "I can't play this game anymore." He looked down at the floor, keeping his voice quiet, and there was a hint of pleading in his tone. "I only barely survived last time."
She almost snorted. "Do you think it was easy for me? I thought I had it all back. I thought you wanted me--" She paused but he didn't meet her eyes, so she kept going. "I made a decision to leave him--Greg, I made that decision. Your Casablanca routine, while admirable in a you'd-thwack-your-patient-if-you-saw-him-doing-it kind of way, didn't change anything, all it did was keep you and me apart. And if I thought you wanted it that way I'd stay the hell away - I did that once before - but you can't tell me that that's what you really want."
And still, he wouldn't meet her eyes. Just stood there silently, unmoving, and she desperately wanted to touch him, but wouldn't reach out without his permission.
"You know me," she said. "I don't settle for second best. And I don't want you to change. If I didn't love you the way you are, I wouldn't have stuck around for five years, Greg. I don't want you to change. I'm not going to leave you. I won't."
A phrase from years back echoed in her mind. Don't you think you deserve to be happy? She wished he would say something.
"Trust me," she whispered.
And finally those blue eyes turned to her, searching her face intently for a moment that stretched for millions of eternities.
Stacy waited for his answer.
*fin*
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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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