| |
Epilogue, or A Reason to Stay
by melissaisdown
Aimlessly led by the soles of his shoes, House and his third soul are in turmoil. His mind convoluted with uncommon emotions, he cannot decide what he truly feels. What he actually wants the results to be. Passing rows of rooms, pacing endless hallways, and drifting through fluorescently green corridors, time passes. Soon it is the middle of the morning and he arrives at fate. Footsteps follow behind him but he is unaware as he stands, feet planted firmly outside of the laboratory.
A moment of reflection before he goes in. Then he picks up the paperwork quickly, as if the letters on it are not going to change his life forever. And back out. Counting his steps, or his breaths, counting in an attempt to reverse time,
to rewind, he anxiously limps as far away from the lab as possible. When he
is only a few paces from Cuddy's room and he can put it off no longer, House
brings the sheet of paper to his eyes and sees the results.
She is asleep when he enters. He sits beside her now,closer than
he allowed himself earlier. A faint snicker escapes him at the sight of her covered
so thoroughly in calamine lotion. She seems like a little girl. Innocent, naive,
virginal even. His eyes focus on her abdomen, watching it rise and fall, watching
her breathe. Bringing her hand to his lips, there is a taste. Or smell (the two are so
dependent upon eachother that he scarcely knows the difference). It is familiar,
it is her perfume. A scent long associated with this woman. And as the skin rests
against his lips so begins his madeleine moment. A gust of memories. A flashback.
It is after the infarction, though not long after. A month, maybe more. He is
still with Stacy. Atleast he thinks he is. She quit him the day she saved him but he'll never admit it. It is autumn, near Thanksgiving as he recalls, when he storms in the clinic. He is drunk. On alcohol, narcotics anything within reach. Barely
able to walk House is making a scene, shouting incoherently about his leg and demanding to see the Dean of Medicine.
She comes out of her office and takes him into an exam room. He's disheveled, an understatement really. With circles under his eyes and sweat trickling down his temple, he is in pain. But, he is not there for pills. It is in fact a follow up visit. Perhaps the only appointment he kept. She examines him, and he envies her bedside manner. A pile of remarks about her ass, he is being himself.
He's ashamed of his behavior, humiliated by his disability, but with her it's different. She's seen his leg, changed his dressings, seen him at his worst, .
She understands.
And as she touches him now, examining his pupils, taking his blood pressure, prescribing painkillers, there is a private communion. An unspoken amity.
She remembers him but not the same way he remembers her. She was there
in Michigan, a face he knows from his memory. He has always wanted to know more.
They don't talk much, their rapport is only in its infancy now and what she does ask him is only clinical anyway. Except for,
"How did you get here?"
"Drove."
"Drunk and with your leg still recovering from surgery?"
She's concerned as much as appalled.
"They covered it in Driver's Ed, mommy. I'll be fine ."
"Well you're not driving home. I'm calling you a cab."
And she does. House leaves the room a little less drunk, his heart defeated and
Cuddy watches him leave, escorted out in a wheelchair, with a guilty conscience.
But thirty minutes later she sees him sitting in the clinic, scowling at a sick person hacking a lung up beside him. She asks the nurse who escorted him why he
was still here and finds out that he offended the cabbie, or rather the cabbie's wife,
and was refused a ride. Cuddy sighs and shakes her head, looking at the clock.
It's nearly five anyway, she tells herself as she goes into her office and gets her keys and purse Approaching him,
"Come on."
"What?"
"I'll give you a ride home."
"I'm fine. Nearly sober," not even believing it himself.
Ignoring him, Cuddy moves behind the wheelchair and starts pushing it
toward the door. But he stands, abruptly.
"I can walk."
Except he can't, as he exits the clinic, Cuddy directly behind him.
Once outside he makes it a few steps on his own but staggers, nearly falling and Cuddy immediately rushes to brace him.
"You're going to need a cane, you know that right?"
"Canes are for old men, and peanuts with monocles."
They are a four legged silhouette in the shadow of the an autumn sunset.
On the way to Cuddy's car they take a shortcut over the lawn. House's
left foot gets caught on something, and his right is useless, so he succumbs
to gravity, falling. Hard, and taking Cuddy down with him.
Now laying in the cold, wet grass her body is alongside his as they realize what
just happened. A minute passes. Yes, atleast sixty seconds. Cuddy sits up
to see House close, just lying there. She doesn't know what he's thinking
or if he's okay.
The fact that she falls with him rather than letting him tumble alone affects him, even now in his diminishing stupor. It permeates his armor and he sits up,
fixing his gaze to hers. Propping himself on one arm, confounded by her loyalty,
he considers nothing else. And then he kisses her. And she lets him. It's a clumsy
kiss with a kind of bleak urgency. It's a quaint kiss, picturesque as the red glow of
a fall dusk backlights them. It's a brief kiss, not too wet or intrusive.
It is their first kiss.
It breaks abruptly and Cuddy looks around to see if anybody noticed this public
display of affection. She stands and puts her arms out to help him do the same, but he doesn't take them, getting up slowly on his own. He leans on her as they complete the journey to her car in silence.
Brevity is the ride home. They distract themselves with small talk but House
can't be this ignorant. When he confronts her about the kiss she just passes it
off as him being drunk and adds something about Stacy.
They cross the threshold of his apartment, his arm hanging around her, dangling as if from a pillory. Cuddy's body overlaps half of his as she's in front
of him but still at his side, supporting him. The apartment is a disaster. A complete
mess with clothes, books, prescription bottles, everything. Everywhere.
House trips, on who knows what exactly, as they reach the couch. Cuddy is pinned
between him and the piece of furniture. It's the closest they've ever been. And it's right. Tears in his eyes until he blinks them way, never allowed to forget his injury.Hunched, pressing against her, the situation is sobering and House is nearly there.
He lifts off of her and sighs, dropping to and sitting, not on the couch, but the floor.
Cuddy's knees are at eye level. Soft, dimpled knees. He wants to kiss these knees but grasps her nearby wrist instead. House whispers something into her hand, the word forming like a kiss. And he pulls on her arm, as if he needs to tell her something, urging her down. She stoops, convincing herself he has something to say, and then sits beside him. Neither speak.They are looking at eachother, heads turned, naked faces, one seeing only the other. House leans, lessening the gap between them. So close that they recycle eachother's air until he can see clearly the sapphire freckles in her eyes. The slightest movement and their lips meet. He's kissing her. And she's letting him. Again. It's a remorseful kiss, gentle and deliberate. Slow. He pulls away and inhales, the taste of her in his mouth diluting the acerbity of alcohol. It happens again, a hand rising to her face, his thumb stroking her jaw. This is all of his pain mounting, a slow rise. It is an omen.
Ashfall before an eruption. Tectonic plates are about to collide.
The anatomy of a volcano is a distant thought for them but a parallel
scenario no less.
The kiss develops, it transforms. In his deepest desperation, House is grasping
for straws. Waiting for it to end. For her to slap him in the face. But the end
has no end and so he advances. Their lips part, but his never come off her body.
He moves towards her neck, kisses near an ear, enjoying the toasted cocoanut aroma of her hair. Trailing down, his tongue escaping on the descent of her neck.
Wanting her shoulder, his fingers reaching for her top bottom and undoing
three more. He slides his mouth along her shoulder,reveling in the contour of
the bone beneath him. Gnawing a little makes her moan so he does it again.
House pulls her closer to him now, so that she is leaning on him, her weight
hovering. Cuddy seems neither hesitant nor confident. She is lost. In the moment and in his arms. His body is perpendicular to the couch and until now they have been resting against it, but with her in his lap, he goes to lie down, flat on the floor and she lifts his shirt off as they do.
They make out with the fury and exploration inexperienced teenagers.
The enthusiasm of virgins. Resolving the angst, dissolving all emotions kiss after
kiss, this embrace makes them forget about the pain and guilt, the complications, the consequences. It is the only thing that makes sense. It is the complete abandonment of logic.
On top of him now, Cuddy's mind grappling for reason, she tries to squirm away but he won't let her. House pulls her closer, holds her tighter, his arms forming a ring around her that is infinity. On the floor, in his apartment. In his and Stacy's apartment. It feels illicit. It is raw passion, reverence from an irreverent bastard.
It is almost love.
They don't undress per se. His pants come down, not far,he's still too insecure about the scar. Her blouse remains but the bra has vanished, and her breasts
escape it. She straddles him in her black skirt, his hands exploring
underneath it as her mouth rampages his. She is aggressive and he loves it.
She wants this, he realizes. They both realize. And in that moment pith. The
kind you can only experience when an unrequited love is validated. Conceived. Reciprocated.When you have her in your arms and she doesn't mind that you have no intention of ever letting go. He has a photograph, tactile. But to hold this
woman close,to be able to cherish his infatuation, the tangibility of lovemaking,
is a far greater possession
House is getting soft. And hard, at the same time.
She's devouring him, biting his lip, eyes scrolling down his chest, panting and rocking hypnotically against him. She lifts off to slide his briefs down and they kiss
one last time before he penetrates her effortlessly. A physical fusion and their
connection is born.
Strange, there has been almost complete silence through all this. Neither of them has uttered a word. It's as if they are in a vacuum, no sound really stands out. It is surreal, muteness and deafness. A missing sense.
But as she moves, riding him tantalizingly slow, to feel him, every inch, every
particle inside her for the first time, their minds are screaming.
"Lisssse," his cries, able to only call her by her first name in fables such as this.
A quiet escalation to the inevitable. It is a sad torment they are putting
themselves through in this consummation. An interesting word, he decides.
Because they are being consumed. By eachother and each passing day. By
circumstances beyond their control. This is in their control, perhaps the only
reason it is happening.
House, in ecstasy at the sight of her as she touches his face has an
original thought. That there might be more than this. That perhaps there could be nothing better than making her his bride and slowly growing old together. And here is where he first considers he may be in love. And rejects it. He can't be. It's misplaced, an aftershock of his relationship with Stacy.The only real relationship he's ever had. This isn't a relationship. It isn't a commitment. It is sex. A human need. A series of physiological responses.The next thought escapes him.
The slow, deliberate writhing of her hips is driving him mad. Every muscle in
his body tenses.
'Lust, not love', he thinks comforting himself with semantics.
Then another thought, 'If heaven exists-'
But it doesn't, House knows. This is as close as to salvation either lost soul will ever be. And it is enough.
Except they're not lost. Not anymore. They've found eachother. This embrace, a tacit unity. It builds as Cuddy's face is a blush red. Sprinkles of condensation
across her cleavage. House pulls down on her, needing to be deeper inside and
without the two legs needed to thrust his hips. He pulls heedlessly with this need and it works. He is buried inside her. They are one and it is perfect.
It is a paradox, rough and tender as she kisses him then rises, her hair creating
an opaque border around her face. They stay like this as dusk becomes night,
and revel in the darkness, against eachother's flesh for as long as they can.
When the tension is too much, the oppressive heat unbearable, self preservation is put on the back burner. They share an idea in a simultaneous instant: the belief that they might live forever. And then they come. House first but only by moments. It is not a crescendo. It is a complete release. An expulsion. The sum of all fears and doubts, crippling doubts. And awful anguish.
Catharsis.
House wants more. More of this, more of her. More from it all. And then for the
first time, but not the last, it comes to him: you can't always get what you want.
Drained, he passes out almost immediately. His leg hurts but for a few minutes more, his heart does not. Cuddy rolls off and lies beside him for a while,their bodies in symmetrical harmony on the mahogany floor. Sound returns, she hears traffic, crickets, a neighbor. She knows she must go.
House feels her lift his arm up, having to pry her body out of its
tight grip. He wants to scream, to admit that he loves her and carry her in his
arms to the bed.
But he cannot even articulate the word 'stay'.
So Lisa Cuddy stands, uncertain where she goes from here, her feet struggling to put one in front of the other. This was not out of guilt and that scares her. She does not know why this happened and tears fill her eyes at this defiance of logic. Seeing him one last time asleep, she thinks he looks as if he already knows she will not be here when he wakes. No promises or expectations, a clean escape. A one night stand. Except he does not know this. Perhaps he suspects it, fears it, letting it reside far back in his head. But in his heart lies the possibility that this could be a brand new start. With her. That it'll be clear if he wakes up and she's still here. In the morning.
If. A dream afraid of waking, he lets it sleep. But in this dream, this suddenly omniscient dream, everything is exactly how it seems so he finds the courage
to open his eyes.
But it's too late.
He should have given her a reason to stay.
A week later she calls. Two weeks later he is the head of the department
of diagnostic medicine at her hospital.
Accident,mistake, different names for the same thing. A varying
degree of the same mess. Another strain of the same indiscretion.
It's no different he knows now, as the flashback fades. Current events
bear an uncanny resemblance to the past. And all the sentiment and charity, all
the emotions exchanged between them cannot change this. An autumn sunset
and a spring storm are one in the same. He thinks, 'If I knew then what I know now-'
They have an unusual relationship. Friendship. And for him there is no
logic in doing this now only because it had been done then. It's not worth jeopardizing or losing what they have. He's too weak, too empty, to keep this up.
"I should have given you a reason to stay," he whispers at her bedside,
the test results in his lap.
He can't accept that it's over, still seeing a faint beam cast by a ray
of sunlight in an idealistic future. They can settle with eachother, for eachother. They can finally just settle. But his broken heart will never heal if he keeps tearing out the sutures, so he stifles these thoughts, chastising himself for being so naive, so stupid.
And Cuddy moves, turning her head, inquisitively looking upon his solemn expression. Her eyes begging for an answer.
"How do you feel?"
"Better," she breathes.
She's looking at the papers in his hands.
"Are those the test results?"
House nods, holding his breath. Not letting the stale air fill his lungs.
He hesitates, an answer in itself. And shakes his head, afraid his voice
will reveal disappointment then,
"I was wrong," a disgusted admission.
"You're not pregnant."
Stoic, clinical. Merely a front.
Cuddy makes no effort to conceal her disappointment and it pains House
to see her hurt by this. As much as it pained him when she was gasping for air.
The sorrow of missed opportunity. Fact,not fiction for the first time in
so many years.
A safe return to the way things were.
He's distant now, as if she is a black hole whose event horizon he
cannot near. He wants to console her somehow. To apologize for
getting her hopes up. His mouth opens, his lips move but no words come.
And in this awkward beat an unnatural reverse transformation takes place.
The frog becomes a tadpole. The monarch a caterpillar. This couple who were
on the verge of making sense in the cosmic scheme of things are willfully
now just employer and employee.
Sweet sauce and Partypants, they have called eachother. But no more.
Their indiscretions will be ignored, their past forgotten, their present platonic.
What finally fell in place just falls apart.
It is a tragedy. A love story. A one legged relationship falling fatally
from a balance beam.
Tragedy because what they have is more than physical. It is something chemical, beyond hormones or pheromones it goes down to the atom, the composition of the matter that makes them whole. They are comprised of the same elements,they are equals. And opposites. The polar attraction a natural driving force that they can not overcome.
Love because of everything unsaid.The mutual possessiveness
between them. Their rapport. The details about eachother that nobody
else notices. They are friends. They are lovers. They are lost again, waiting
to be found.
'It started out with a kiss. How did it end up like this? '
"It was only a kiss," House convinces himself, still waxing nostalgic.
Knowing it was in fact, so much more.
There will be a day, an indeterminate amount of time in the future when,
outside his office Lisa Cuddy will see her reflection in the glass as she passes. She'll see through the glass. She'll see him. And longing for this mirrored perspective,familiar and proximate they'll be lovers again, at last.
But neither of them wants to wait years for contingency or convenience.
So they repress their mutual desire, and sway back into the sad, unspoken
status of the situation.
As House stands with one foot in and one foot out of her room, a visual
metaphor, a familiar voice comes from behind him.
"House."
He turns around and gives this face a single nod, like an altar boy who regrets
extinguishing the wrong candle.
"Wilson."
Wilson goes in the room, flowers in hand. House moves on.
Involuntary as the broken heart beating inside an otherwise hollow
cavity are the misguided footsteps marking a passage that ends at his office.
A final destination for this new day. He stands in the middle of it, two hands on the
cane that supports him, and considers. Many things have happened here. Diagnoses, epiphanies, cures. But there is no cure for what he is feeling now.
It is a malady he has been trying to treat for years. An affliction he knows
he has an anecdote for but can not bring himself to concoct. His heart and brain
are in a tug of war, hopelessly torn between reason and emotion, what feels
right and what is right.
Cuddy put him here. She gave him everything he wanted in spite of all she
knew it would cost her. His biggest failure has been to not have done the same for her. With this thought House finally knows how he feels about the test results; nearly as disappointed as her. A doctor too objective to give his heart full autonomy, he will never know what he is missing. Only that he is missing it.
House suppresses a flutter in his stomach at the exhilaration of knowing he could have her. 'She could be mine'. But he doesn't deserve her, he knows.
Denying himself happiness has become a habit, a way of avoiding complacency
by substituting it with misery.
He is imperfect, it could never last. Except it has it has lasted. As soon as they acknowledge it though, as soon as they try, they would ruin it. The gossamer illusion would shatter and be as flawed and damaged as the man himself. He would lose her. And he's not willing to take this risk. It's more to have her at arm's length than completely out of sight. By sustaining his own misery he is sparing hers.
Glad his friend has returned, House is beginning to accept responsibility
for the pain he inadvertently caused Wilson. A dim reality settles on him.
That this is it. Pain, incompleteness, shortcomings. Having even the slightest role in the loss of a life seems more significant now than all of the lives he's ever saved.
Amber was an echo of House. She was him in a softer form. His competition
only because they were such matched rivals. Part of House died with Amber. He can't tell what's left of himself. An integral piece is missing. It is hard to explain.
Finally accepting what he has done, House knows he will never forgive himself, he can only hope to forget, to block the memory, erase the details.
Aware of this lack identity, House lets his eyes scan the room, in search
of what defines him, some object that contains the rest of him. He sees the photograph, the tennis ball, the white board. All of it seems absurd now.
Searching still, the flicker of a light from the hallway catches his peripheral view, and then he finds it. The glass door beckoning his stare, reminding him always, mockingly reads Gregory House, MD.
Please post a comment on this story.
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.
|
|
|