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  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.

  
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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.