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Mar. 8th, 2007 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmkaternaterIt was somewhere in the cusp between Winter and Spring and Cuddy's car was complaining about the amorphous border between seasons, spewing out gray-blue exhaust like an old man chomping on a faithful cigar. The sky couldn't decide what to do with itself day-to-day, so it settled on gray smear and discovered that it liked it that way. She was blatting away a sheet of rain and snow with her windshield wipers, sitting in the driver's seat of an idling luxury vehicle with both hands on the wheel (one gloved, the other fumbling for the heating controls on the dash.) Two streets down and one over, House was somewhere within the structured walls of his apartment, dealing with structured dosages of painkillers and unstructured parameters on how to use them.
Wilson had come to her.
He'd begun by saying "I just wanted you to know..." while his hands had been suspended, palms out, at chest height like he was pushing a weight away from him. He was, in fact, pushing a box of anvils onto her desk. "He didn't ask. I offered." And his voice had rattled a bit. 'Little like a half-dozen white pills in an orange bottle. After he had left, it had taken Cuddy the better part of an hour to release the tightness in her jaw. She had excused herself from an afternoon meeting of the board -- the first time in five years that she'd done that -- and closed her office while slats of afternoon sun still rode the floor. The sun warmed the back of her head while she walked to her car and when she slid into the driver's seat she'd touched her crown with tentative fingertips to feel the warmth. Then she'd driven.
She brought nothing with her. If she'd brought anything -- groceries, take-out, a movie, a dozen roses, or the Harlem Globe Trotters -- House would have seen through it immediately. He didn't like segues or stepping stones. She might not have even gotten through the door. Her foot pushed the accelerator and the car crept ahead on slushy wheels, closing the last bit of sidestreet distance to his curb. She'd been here before: a mission borne out of worry, House's stately apartment sitting back on a tree-lined sidewalk, water like a deluge around her ankles. Things hadn't been much simpler back then, either.
But at least he'd been clean. She didn't know how she'd find him now.
Her knock was more assured that it'd been the last time.
Wilson had come to her.
He'd begun by saying "I just wanted you to know..." while his hands had been suspended, palms out, at chest height like he was pushing a weight away from him. He was, in fact, pushing a box of anvils onto her desk. "He didn't ask. I offered." And his voice had rattled a bit. 'Little like a half-dozen white pills in an orange bottle. After he had left, it had taken Cuddy the better part of an hour to release the tightness in her jaw. She had excused herself from an afternoon meeting of the board -- the first time in five years that she'd done that -- and closed her office while slats of afternoon sun still rode the floor. The sun warmed the back of her head while she walked to her car and when she slid into the driver's seat she'd touched her crown with tentative fingertips to feel the warmth. Then she'd driven.
She brought nothing with her. If she'd brought anything -- groceries, take-out, a movie, a dozen roses, or the Harlem Globe Trotters -- House would have seen through it immediately. He didn't like segues or stepping stones. She might not have even gotten through the door. Her foot pushed the accelerator and the car crept ahead on slushy wheels, closing the last bit of sidestreet distance to his curb. She'd been here before: a mission borne out of worry, House's stately apartment sitting back on a tree-lined sidewalk, water like a deluge around her ankles. Things hadn't been much simpler back then, either.
But at least he'd been clean. She didn't know how she'd find him now.
Her knock was more assured that it'd been the last time.
