Part 1/4

I. Resist

It's happening again.

It shouldn't be. Not after all of this, not now. It's different, or it could be. House is reconsidering.

Everything.

Alone in his apartment, he remembers. The memory of the Amber accident is fading slowly but eventually, obliquely replaced by other fateful encounters, intersections and mistakes of his life. Strangling his cane, preparing to take another another vicodin, waiting for the pain to obliterate the memories now, it only mutilates them like his leg, confirming his inability to ever forget.

It was Christmas.

He was breaking a rule, trespassing into the personal life of a patient, a clinic patient. Her name was on the chart but he couldn't remember it. So he called her Mary and feigned Catholicism. At Midnight mass anticipation was in the air, the perverted atheist still had a little boy somewhere inside fighting for domain over the empty space where his soul should reside.

House knew she was a working girl which aroused him, yes, but did something more. It provoked his curiosity. A pious prostitute, a hooker with a halo, nothing seemed more paradoxical than a religious whore. It was an anomaly and he had to investigate. Bearing witness to a prostitute's portrayal of not just a virgin but the immaculate virgin that bore the child of an entire faith was both entertaining and enlightening.

Ironic.

Curiosity was only part of it. The woman had gotten Gregory House into a church for the first time since Wilson's last wedding. She liked him. That was the true anomaly, the real motivation. And he had to resolve the enigma of her interest. Mary saw his wry grin with a distant gaze and plans were made.

The lack of any enduring consequences is the most appealing attribute of paying for sex but for House it's much more complicated than that. In the real world — that is, the world where sex stems from boy-meets-girl rather than boy-pays-girl — there are always emotional obligations attached, no matter how casual the liaison. Hookers were simple, relationships are complicated. Except this time there was a catch.

He liked her.

Mary liked him. Though 'liking' may not be as ardent a feeling as love or lust it is still an emotion. And emotions are not simple.

the dilemma

With quaint gallantry House opened the door and let her stride confidently into his dark apartment. Turning the light on, her eyes panned across the place until she found the bedroom. As she took his hand and led him to it House limped more from the erection than the leg (he had taken a handful of vicodin earlier, it was the only way he could tolerate sitting in the pew without blasphemous outbursts).

There was no hesitation or interrogation, certainty and experience but no communication. Mary turned the bedroom light on and he turned it off, throwing his cane aside and attempting to initiate with only an uneven stance. When her eyes adjusted she reached for his belt and for a fleeting instant House felt pitifully pathetic knowing she had done this - removed the belt of a stranger- countless times and with the same superficial enthusiasm.

When the button of his jeans was undone, the zipper unzipped, the man himself undecided, he reached a hand out, just one, caressing and curving around her waist, ascending up under her blouse, making her half flinch and saw an insolent sensuality in her eyes, the same contradiction of flirtatiousness and chastity that he found attractive in the first place. Then she imitated him, sliding her hands around his hips and pushing the tshirt up and off of his well formed solid upper body. The jeans fell, one sock slid off with them. It all happened rather quickly as if the pace of his stripping would negate the handicap of his circumstance.

As if he weren't a cripple.

Hers was a much slower provocative striptease. She took in his glances as he sat on the bed, slipping off each piece of clothing with unexpected eloquence and enjoying each individual stage of exposure. When Mary was finally naked he was left struggling with an admiring gaze in the dark. No shyness, panic or dizziness but there was still unease in what he was beginning to feel.

House, who was leaning heavy on his elbows displaying his engorged erection proudly, his eager exposed body an pale shade of blue, sat up, brought his face to her torso, his hands exploring her back, grazed his beard across the soft skin and brought her down to him. A hand traveled up her leg while he reached for the condom and opened it. Mary took it, wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft and stroked slowly several times before leaning down to kiss the glistening head of the infrequently kissed organ and rolling the condom on diffidently. She took her time and House's last thought was the hourly rate as he brushed an errant strand of blonde hair out of her face with wide open eyes and an unmistakable smile.

When the barrier was in place he found himself confounded by the fact she didn't stare at, ask about or touch his right thigh. She didn't implore about how they should do it. And he was grateful for this, the benefit of the doubt, treating him like an ordinary John who could handle her body in all positions, take advantage of her from all sides. As she straddled him high on his hips House, with a sharp gasp, nearly came at how unexpectedly tight she was. In control Mary was good. Gentle, deviating motion, none of the monotony of the usual no strings interaction. It felt different, like more than a business transaction, more than a purchase, more than a Christmas present.

It was neither slow nor fast, burning nor frigid. It was tepid, want and warmth on a snowy Noel. She rode him with conviction, intermittently humming some hymn, House kept his eyes closed most of the time, his grip around her loose as she rose and fell, respectfully.

The man respected hookers more than he respected his fellow physicians. He respected them for the job they do, no matter the unpleasant, impoverished or desperate circumstances that may or may not attract them to the vocation. It was still their choice. No pity or sympathy, just respect.

While his veneration escalated the heat spread. Mary moaned splaying a hand across his chest and a dilemma arose. As his orgasm advanced he felt compelled to kiss her, press his mouth to hers and achieve a new level of intimacy. It was an impossible desire, a law he could not break. Liminal, he arrived at some threshold but had to resist crossing it.

Other rules he had no problem breaking if he gained something from the crime. Here he would lose something. He'd have to admit she's more than a piece of ass, that he himself was not entirely worthless. It was supposed to be detached, raw, devoid of romance, sexual but not sensual. But as he touched her he enjoyed it, delight if her supple flesh, reverie in the feminine presence. This wasn't cheap and it didn't feel insignificant. It was candid, consolatory and merely a coincidence that it was carnal. As he reconsidered the piety of this prostitute his perspective shifted but the dilemma remained. He could not resign resistance.

Ginger, peppermint, mistletoe and pine, his final futile thrusts were spent on the thought of the true secular agnosticism of the season, the meaninglessness of it all. Religion. Sex. Emotion, just everything.

When he came House felt like neither a sinner nor a savior. He simply felt good, for the first time in a long time. Murmuring some indistinguishable word as the pleasure elevated, an invitation he voluntarily and vehemently stifled as soon as he realized he was saying it, he expelled a soft sigh of relief. Before the sensation dissipated he knew he didn't want this to be it. He wanted something more than thirty seconds of joy, to ask her out, to do this again.

But he couldn't.

The only thing more ridiculous than celebrating an August birthday in December, hanging stockings and believing in miracles was dating a prostitute. All intentions beyond that night were impossible. When the pleasure had passed, when she was still on and around him, Mary leaned down, her hair tickling his face as if she wanted to whisper in his ear and kissed him on the cheek. With closed eyes he smiled.

It wasn't the smile of a cynic. It was a seraphic smile. Somehow she had passed the ironic duality, the paradoxical honor, the spellbinding juxtaposition of contrariety onto him. His sarcasm, willfullness, and arrogance were being paired with vulnerability, tenderness and concern.

Ordinary emotion.

Mary lay beside him a few minutes, just legs and toes touching while the heat of that decisive moment cooled in latex against a softening muscle. The pleasure seemed fabricated as it receded and the innate pain returned. His leg, his heart, there was no difference anymore in the dim and silent interlude of the next day's dawn.

House stared at her, without turning his head completely, reluctant to reach for his leg, to let her know he hurt. Consideration or self preservation. Watching her examine his ceiling, he wondered what she saw. In him. He wondered if there was any sincerity in her interest. He wondered if he made her come. Mary exuded an energy as ironic as everything else. Ebullient. As if she didn't just finish a messy difficult job, as if the whole act inspirited or inspired her somehow, as if she enjoyed it. House's eyes traced the profile of her face, uncovering closer majestic highlights and curious still. Even after attaining the desired and needed intimacy he still hadn't solved any problem or puzzle. Feeling slightly less hollow he didn't mind the stranger in his bed and sat up, routinely removed the condom and dressed.

By the time he had finished Mary was dressed and patiently standing beside him. He reached for his wallet and followed her to the door. It wasn't awkward the way it usually was, he was nearly ignorant of his limp, focusing so intently on what he should say, if anything.

With a shy smile and boyish blink he handed her the cash. It was more than he usually paid, twice as much. Not for the carnal but the courtesy, the illicit kiss, a law breaking meeting of her lips and his face, reparations for his resistance of reciprocity.

Mary pushed his hand away, refusing the money.

With a beckoning expression she ensured him he wasn't a patron, "I don't work on holidays."

House grinned appreciatively but was put off, almost irritated by the affectionate esteem. There was too much dissonance, too much feeling in what should be arbitrary. Uncertain what to do next, he briefly reconsidered kissing her.

Instead though he slipped the money into her purse as she turned away and said, "Christmas present then."

Knowing she deserved it just for tolerating him, that she more than deserved it for liking him.

House stood at the door a long time after she left, leaning heavy on his right leg, wanting the pain to distract him from whatever exactly he felt.

Again.

It wasn't love. But it wasn't just lust either.

It was a start.

the green light

Stacy was the end.

She was the beginning. She was everything.

How they met was accidental coincidence. House with juvenile persistence could not resist participating in the paintball tournament. He dragged Wilson along, flooded his brain with lawyer jokes and and eagerly loaded the gun.

In hindsight he admits it was a great analogy for the start of a tumultuous relationship- warfare a first encounter. Enemies, adversaries, opposing teams, a standoff, the first impression was being shot by each other. It should have been an indication of things to come, he thinks.

But House overcame enemy fire justifying the defeat somehow thinking it was more Romeo and Juliet than man slaughter.

"What's the difference between a lawyer and a trampoline?

You take off your shoes before you jump on a trampoline," was the last thing he said before she shot him. House laughed and unloaded his remaining ammunition. War was declared and continued at dinner.

They talked and ate, the nervousness of reckless spontaneity dissolved into the rare exhilaration of an impromptu tryst. When he took her hand, touching her for the very first time, he wondered if she always wore her crucifix onto the battlefield and tried to rationalize how he could make this work.

They lingered at the restaurant until midnight when they were expelled by an exhausted waitress. Neither wanted to separate but both were committed to not being the first to admit it. The chemistry was tentative and Stacy was left annoyed and offended by his abrasive self assurance and the assumptions he made about her, that were of course true. She didn't want to acknowledge his accuracy or admit her attraction.

Their first date was a catastrophe.

House walked her to her car suspecting he had blown it (the memory of not having the limp is now more painful than the thought of never being with her again), managed one more lawyer joke and stood as zealous as an adolescent about to have his first kiss (and with the most popular girl in his class). Stacy scowled, narrowed her speculative brow and turned away before he could make one more audacious advance. The car door opened, hitting his leg and scraping a few layers of skin off of his ankle.

Stacy drove away without looking back, almost afraid he would follow her.

House didn't though. He just stood at the curb as the car disappeared into the distance and accepted the challenge.

The next day, when he had manipulated his way into attaining her address and was certain she was home from work, House visited her. Pounding on the door until she answered, when it finally opened he was inexplicably speechless.

Stacy stood facing him impatiently, smirking at the scenario, arms crossed in an uninviting stance and before her smile could straighten into an lithe line of lips he kissed her.

It was an inimitable first kiss.

Hands clutched and pulled her to him. One rose to the back of her neck, brushing her soft cheek gently with his palm. Each sensation was intensified by the element of surprise. It was warm, wet and right. Extemporaneous and natural. The fragrance of fall floated through serene air under the night's opaque sky and dead leaves stood their ground against the wind. The doorstep was white with moonlight, the breeze cool, their mouths connected and they felt like the only people in the world. The universal law of transience made it a modest embrace. So House deepened the kiss, parted his lips wider, it was still soft, sweet, tender. A chance. Stacy's arms clasped around his body, the first taste of each other was a catalyst. When he broke away to breathe House kissed her cheek, her neck, nudging his nose and mouth into her shoulder and then returned his lips and tongue to hers. When he realized they were making love under a porchlight and in the suburbs he stopped, fixed his transparent eyes on hers and walked past her into the foyer.

They made love that night, several times and on various surfaces of her apartment. Not because they loved each other or were in love yet but because they knew what they had was kinetic. It wouldn't be a one night stand. It would be something. Something they needed, something they wanted, an unexpected new beginning.

The morning after, or the third day they knew each other, Stacy awoke diagonal and in his arms, occupying the majority of the mattress. She watched him sleep for fifteen minutes before her eyes spotted a clock and she realized how late she was for work. When she finally got up House's eyes opened aware that he wasn't in his own bed.

"I have to get to work. You can eat breakfast here and use my toothbrush if you want," Stacy said from across the room, dressing and putting on make up at the same time.

House murmured something about bodily fluids and gingivitis, watching her intently as she left. The moment she was gone he missed her. He brushed his teeth. Staring at his tousled hair and criticizing her choice in toothpaste he watched his mirrored reflection. In her bathroom, with her toothbrush, she trusted him to be there alone and somehow he saw this scene as more personal than sex. Then it happened. He fell in love.

The privilege of every level of intimacy was before him. It consumed him and he let it. The man could no longer resist. That night they made love in his apartment and she moved in before the end of the week.

Sex with Stacy was the first House had that wasn't motivated by lust or conquest. At all. It was his first coital connection with emotion.

Love.

Not at first, naturally. "I love you," didn't come until the end of their first year together. But sex became something it had never been. And something it would never be again.

House is certain there's a formula. Some explanation, some reason why it was different then. Why it's bothering him now. Some way to calculate the intensity, the emotion, the pain that will come from a relationship, to define the purpose of a connection.

They lived together for five years. It was his last and greatest commitment. There was a pregnancy scare and before the infarction he began looking at engagement rings, persuaded to do so by the marriage advocate who was his best friend. Before he could propose something permanent he went golfing, got a pain in his leg and was maimed because of a misdiagnosis. And because of his proxy.

He never really stopped loving Stacy but the anger murdered all other emotions. He was different, physically and psychologically. Tragedy and loss only fueled his sarcasm and cynicism. After a while he forgot what happiness was. Eventually misery replaced intimacy, pain desire, and loneliness companionship. House pushed her away and Stacy left convinced he was better off without her. The last woman he ever truly loved abandoned him when he needed her most. After that House took a determinedly pragmatic view on sex and told himself he liked being alone. A library of porn was created, the internet became his bedfellow and his hand was sufficient.

He had a job at least when he finally recovered and the work, the puzzle was all he really needed. Cuddy indulged his obsession and the naked ring finger was less conspicuous when his knuckles were wrapped around a cane. Left with just one thing again, he resigned all vaguely optimistic notions of ever having anything more that had manifested before the infarction.

When he wasn't working House was plagued by insomnia, missing the familiar warmth beside him in bed; Stacy's dark hair fanned across his chest, the smell of her perfume thick in her air, the stack of legal files on the night stand, he would lay on his couch, chase a handful of vicodin down with whiskey and contemplate suicide.

Home wasn't home anymore. Everything reminded him of Stacy. Every room embodied a memory, taunting him with what he could never have again. So he moved. And eventually moved on. Cuddy helped by giving him something to do, Wilson helped by (like alcohol and narcotics) just by being there.

Then one day the lost love of his life reentered his realm. Vulnerable and desperate for help, for her husband. There was ineffable complexity in what House was feeling. He didn't want to meet, treat or save Mark. But he couldn't hurt Stacy. And his decision was rooted in selfishness and hope. He saw it as an opportunity to win her back, impress her and remind the woman why she loved him in the first place, find out if she still loves him and let her know he made the wrong choice.

House was fixated on Stacy when Cuddy hired her. Her aura, her charm, her presence all became attainable again. He had been longing for reunion, pining five years and misery finally seemed like a prison cell he could escape. With counterfeit reluctance he played the game. Telling himself he was just doing it to solve the puzzle of how Stacy really felt about him.

Love, hate, indifference. He took what he could glean from her: pilfered therapist's notes, a sink full of dishes, an attic rendezvous and a rat named Steve McQueen. Their mutually mixed emotions and insurmountable unresolution culminated with a stolen kiss in a hotel room, House finally knew how she felt and realized what he wanted. The kiss was a turning point, innocent, impassioned it changed everything. The way it had a decade earlier.

"Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!"

From Baltimore on, he was James Gatz, a wistful naive love and the pursuit to recapture it became his new obsession. Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg and his lavish weekly parties were all merely means to that end. Stacy was his Daisy, Mark a respectable Tom Buchanan and House a lovesick Jay, full of forlorn hope. Until he actually got her back.

Sex with Stacy was everything he'd remembered and more, soft skin glowing in the late evening shade, hazel eyes shining as she clutched under him, the flutter of her pulse on his lips, he could still make her come. There was love in it. And hate, passionate polarities. The entire embrace was a brief glimpse of a longed for yesterday. Different with the leg, wrong though they fit together perfectly, as if she'd never been gone, when it was over he still felt incomplete.

Stacy was the green light, a guiding light, a dream of the future. When House touched her though her he knew she wasn't really his. "Did you tell Mark?" He can hear himself asking. Stacy hadn't, and she wasn't planning to. Her hesitation was a confrontation for both of them. House made her choose and the reluctance left him incapable of accepting her decision.

With a willful admission that he could never change House pushed Stacy away again. It was expository deja vu, the end at the beginning. Resisting his own dream, resisting repetition, resisting the future in a world with no present and a painful past he finally let go when happiness was his to enforce. It was both selfish and selfless.

He didn't want to go through the agony of a duped and doomed relationship. Again. And he didn't want Mark to have to go through the same thing he did.

A chapter had ended, a volume of complexities was shelved. It's all a book he can never reopen - published, archived, its pages now just a sad history lesson.

the uncertainty of all things (logic and recollection)

Wilson told him to get a hooker and he did, if only to reward his complete success in humiliating and debunking the legitimacy of a tattle tail's work. The first prostitute was a distraction, dalliance, a physical attempt to induce selected amnesia.

Paula's glossy lips, like the rest of her, were half his age. As the professional fellated him House still couldn't forget. He kept attempting to justify his refusal of a life with Stacy, tried convincing himself it was a moral sacrifice and not just vindictive rejection.

It was an affair. Lechery and infidelity were not a favorable foundation. Except that really wasn't how they started, it was just where they picked up. Even when he came it was painful, with closed eyes he was still nauseatingly aware that the dark head between his legs was not the one he wanted.

And it would never be again.

Sex thereafter was always rational. With no emotion it was only a vain attempt to reduce the suffering, to feel something other than chronic agony. But his hand and hookers only tempered the loneliness, there was no pretending it was an erotic adventure, just a single aimless hour with an unknown and indifferent woman. No amount of pills or pleasure could challenge what the man retained in his hollow heart. He was always left empty, alone and longing for something more.

Something free, something real, something significant.

Objectively he decided no woman could ever love him again, not now. He's too old, too jaded, too weak to do anything even if she did. Logic revealed every scenario to be impossible so he simply ignored his foolish desires. His last painful possession is the memory of the few women who felt something with him, felt something for him.

"You like me. Why?"

The question he asked Cameron confirming her crush was provocation.

There was nothing likable about him and they as a couple were unlikely. He had to find the error in her judgment in spite of the fact that her schoolgirl fascination polished his ego. House admitted to hiring her because she was beautiful and when he elaborated she reconsidered the man and chaos ensued.

When Cameron was an option she filled his masturbatory fantasies. It was fun having her as a possibility and flattering that she considered him one.

They went on two dates. One comic, one tragic but House remained stoic, revealing nothing to the girl begging for a revelation. On the first he confessed to living with someone, kindling Cameron's hope of his capacity to maintain a relationship. The second became everybody's concern, Wilson gave him advice and Cuddy gave her blessing. A corsage was purchased, earrings complimented, Freud quoted. Cameron's blackmail and disillusion left her convinced not only that her boss wanted her but that they could somehow make it work. House couldn't do it, he had to resist the easy opportunity. She was gorgeous, smart and attracted to him but for the wrong reasons. He dissected and crushed her and for good reason.

Cameron defended him but not because she believed in him, or liked him, but because she thought he was defenseless, a charity case. To be with her would be admitting he needed help, to change, that everything about him was fundamentally flawed. After that she was no longer a possibility.

Then Cameron kissed him. It took three years but her audacity was a relief. For his ego, not his conscience. House kissed back. It was a long, wet, meaningless kiss. Surreal until she tried to stab him. Cameron was trying to save him. It hurt. She didn't like the man, just the fact he was broken and was motivated solely by her naive impulse to fix him. House wasn't dying, just trying to feel less pain. And for those few seconds, he succeeded.

Relief became dejection and when he visited Cuddy he took advantage of her confiding sincerity, the truth of her trust. It was a romantic loyalty and honest love for the man. Platonic, almost absurdly unconditional friendship and faith, it wasn't new. He had been her employee for eleven years by then. Cuddy always defended him, perpetually protected him and once she slept with him.

-

But everything is different now. And the same. Thirteen isn't an option and the fact that he realizes this makes him feel obscenely old. With the first team he was their boss, their mentor maybe. But now his role has shifted, there's paternal implication in his renewed identity, his relationship with the new team: Kutner the over zealous foster kid, Taub the high school senior who cheated on his girlfriend but will still take her to the prom and Thirteen damaged, unraveling, he's already defended her on her downward spiral.

He isn't certain who he is to anyone really. Wilson's back, but things may never be the same. Cuddy's different. And the same. She tried, she lost. She still wants to be a mother and he's afraid she's given up so he kissed her, the impulsive need, the dissolution of doubt, the intimacy they've both been deprived for so many years. The pain in her eyes, her hands on his face, the taste, it's all he can think about now. A kiss, what he could never have with a hooker, what he hasn't had in years - meaning, motivation, her.

The kiss ignited something, it changed everything. Cuddy, her baby hopes and his role in it all.

"Forget it," he said, now he wonders if she did.

House has been with her for years, half of his life has been spent negotiating, nagging and needing her. She is in fact the longest relationship he's successfully sustained with any woman.

Now he realizes they have something all the others were lacking.

Context.

They've known each other the span of two decades, they have a history, a past. One they never talk about.

But will never forget.