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1. maybe not in my lifetime
Cuddy gets fifty-six dollars back on the books she spent over a hundred for; the pregnancy tests go into the trash compactor. She goes and spends the money on expensive underwear that she doesn't even want.
In a late night argument with House over a broken MRI machine (or something, she isn't really listening to herself talk), she just pulls him onto her; they haven't done this since college, but it doesn't matter. It makes her feel soulless, which passes for good if you don't look at it too closely.
He ruins the new underwear, which is just as well.
2. a dog that's lost his bite
All he can think is that this isn't like the last time.
House lies in the bed (uncomfortable too small, mattress thin, not his own), staring up at the ceiling because he can't bring himself to turn over.
A nurse walks in and says something to him, but it just buzzes in his ears. If he were alive right now, he'd probably be gloating over Tritter, but he isn't, so he won't. All he really knows is he'd sell his firstborn for a drug- any drug.
His having a firstborn seems like a gamble though; maybe he should sell Cuddy's?
3. His eyes as clear as centuries
The House who goes into rehab isn't the House who comes out. The surface is the same- he's no teddy bear- but there's a deeper change, and Wilson feels it.
It takes Wilson a week to attempt conversation. Fifteen minutes, and it feels like old times, excluding the twinging in Wilson's conscience.
During General Hospital one day, Wilson turns to House and apologizes for everything he can think of. House fixes him in a look that hits his very soul, and Wilson knows he's forgiven.
Then House shushes him, pointing at the television, and it really is old times again.
4. a love that you discover accidentally
What Cuddy really meant when she said that she wanted House's help was a smooth adoption process for Wilson and the occasional playdate with "real dad."
House, however, takes it to mean something completely different. So different that she (in point of fact) has to look up the word "polyamory" to understand what House is even talking about (this is after she has her clothes back on and is once again thinking clearly).
Cuddy is even more surprised when Wilson, in all seriousness, asks when House is moving in.
She decides to pretend she planned it that way all along.
5. the bottles and the bones of the night
After a little time and a good bit of practice (which nobody complains about), it just gets comfortable. Between the two of them, House and Wilson seem determined to spoil her rotten, and Cuddy's content to let them.
It's almost two when House finally comes home, exultant over a patient, and she's dead asleep with Wilson reading next to her (sleep is no impediment as far as House is concerned).
Cuddy awakes to the sensation of four hands running up and down her body, stroking and teasing in all the right places.
Oh, she could get very used to this.
6. sane people go crazy on you
The point at which Foreman realizes the world has gone mad is ten minutes after Cameron brings her knitting (a baby blanket, pale yellow) to work.
It's still surreal that this will be Cuddy's (who would come to work if the building was on fire) last day for four months, but that's practically mundane compared to Wilson waiting on her hand and foot and House boasting about his fertility at inappropriate (all) times.
Ten minutes after Cameron comes in, Chase walks in with an enormous stuffed duck, and Foreman just wants to go home, where he's safe from the baby.
7. the pearl gray morning sunlight
It's just past dawn when House's leg wakes him up. Lying close, House can't help but notice that Wilson's losing weight; he looks so small stretched out among Cuddy's ridiculously huge pillows.
House knows that when Wilson wakes up, the guilt's going to drive him right back to Cuddy, but he honestly isn't jealous. He's come to view the situation a kind of enlightened self interest- Wilson belongs to Cuddy right now, but House's got them both right where he wants them for as long as he wants them.
Still, House tries not to wake him before he has to.
8. As near to love as love will ever be
The first time James ever holds her, he stands there for ten minutes trying to feel something.
Everyone he's ever heard describe that first moment says that there's something magical about it, some automatic connection between the father and child. He waits, but it doesn't come.
Looking at it cynically (read: the way Greg would look at it), he was suckered into this whole situation. She's his in name only- she's got two parents, why is he there?
Then and there he decides he's going to love her, just because she's the only person he knows who doesn't need him.
9. when strange isn't fashionable
When she sees the name Evan on her roll, she makes up another little blue cowboy to paste in between two little pink flowers.
When Evan shows up in pigtails and black leather, she has to pull down the cowboy and replace it with a little green frog, at the insistence of her scruffy "uncle" (who she's certain she saw kissing Evan's "father" before school, yet who showed up at parent-teacher conference with her mother).
Evan's absent when they do family portraits, and she can't decide if she's disappointed or happy about that. Eventually, she decides she'd rather not know.
10. heaven's only daughter
She has a photograph on her dresser of her parents, taken just after she left the hospital. One of them has just said something funny, and they're trying so hard not to crack up.
The polite fiction (which she partially blows by calling Greg Poppa) lasts until her roommate sees it. She can't help but grin at her reaction – part outrage, part morbid curiosity.
Evan's not fazed. She couldn't precisely say she'd have chosen it, but it's as much a part of her as it is of them. It's the rhythm she knows, and she just dances, come what may.