Untouchable
Chapter 28
(Maybe I Like It This Way)

A month later

"I gotta go," House said as Stacy sat down in the chair opposite him. He glanced up at her.

"No, no, he'll be here," Stacy assured him quickly. "I'm sure he's just running a little late."

House glared. "He's cancelled two exams. He's not gonna—"

"He's scared of you," Stacy said, cutting him across. She fixed him with a pointed look, telling him that she knew he that he wasn't going to leave because if he hadn't wanted to be here, then he wouldn't have shown up in the first place.

"Sure. The ex-boytoy. Yeah, that makes sense," House said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

"He wasn't scared before," Stacy said. She reached for her glass and took a sip.

"And that makes even less sense, because before, I was single," House pointed out, before he remembered that he hadn't informed Stacy of the loss of his status as a bachelor.

Stacy raised her eyebrows. "You're not single?" she said incredulously. "I think you're lying to me, Greg."

"One of my fellows forgot the rule about never having sex with your boss," House said casually. "Multiple times. That was really messy. But we got it straightened out."

"You'll have to introduce us," Stacy said wryly, still looking like she thought he'd just made it up.

"If your hubbie lets me check him out," House said. He glanced down at his watch. "He's twenty minutes late. I'm out of here."

He had his cane in hand and was about to push himself out of his chair when Stacy grabbed his hand and gave him a pleading look.

"Please," she said, the desperation shining through her dark eyes.

House considered really leaving her there, because the damsel in distress act never worked on him, but… Just a little while more. He could do that for an interesting case, as they'd been seriously lacking in anything more mysterious than appendicitis hiding behind situs inversus. Ten more minutes, and then he was really out of here.

"He'll be here," Stacy promised.

"Why? Because he loves you and does everything he's told?" House couldn't resist saying—but the glare he received in response wasn't too awful.

"Because I didn't tell him you'd be here," Stacy said, rather smugly.

Lacking for something smooth to say in reply to that, House focused on her necklace, which had been turned around since Stacy had sat down. "Jesus is breaking the tenth commandment," he said, nodding at her chest.

Stacy looked down, and House saw her smiling as she fixed the cross so that Jesus was facing away from her.

"Stace?"

A man in a tan suit had come up to the table, looking at House in confusion. House assumed that this was the Mr. Playing-Hard-to-Get Mark Warner.

"What's going on?" Mark asked, going back and forth between Stacy and House.

"Hey—" Stacy stared, but House seized the opportunity.

"Hi," he said, holding out a hand. "I'm Greg House. You must be Matt." He smiled pleasantly.

"Mark," Stacy corrected, glaring at him.

"Mark Warner," Mark said as they shook, as if Stacy hadn't just made that obvious. "Don't get up." He sat and kissed Stacy on the cheek, whispering something that House couldn't hear over the murmur of voices in the restaurant. Stacy said something in reply and apparently all was well, because they both turned to him and smiled.

"Hi," Mark said, smiling at him. "Wow. Greg House."

House barely tolerated the smile. "Yeah. Wow."

"No, I haven't been avoiding you," Mark said, nodding and grinning in an almost embarrassed way. "I just didn't want to waste your time. The other doctors checked me out and they said it was just stress. College season—kids, parents… They're all over me."

House nodded in agreement. "Makes sense to me."

"Greg—"

"What do you want me to do?" House asked her, shrugging his shoulders.

Stacy glared at him accusingly. "You said you'd check him out."

"He says he's healthy," House said, holding a hand to indicate the very healthy Mark sitting across from him. "What's to check out?"

Mark looked relieved. "Sorry for the mix-up. But I'm glad the two of you got the chance to catch up. Looks like you're having fun."

"Lots," House said witheringly. "Telling Stacy about my latest catch."

"Didn't think the boat would be good for you, what with that leg," Mark said with a steely note to his voice.

"No, no, no," House said, waving his hand in a way he knew made him look slightly drunk. "No, I don't go fishing. I was talking romantically, old boy—you haven't been on the dating scene in a while, have you?"

He watched Mark clench his jaw. "Not since I met Stacy," he said, putting an arm around her possessively.

House had to refrain from rolling his eyes. Hadn't he just said that he wasn't on the market? "To relationships!" he said loudly, holding up his drink.

Mark grabbed his drink and held it up, clinking it against House's glass, and they both downed the water—House finished first because he'd been sipping on his while waiting with Stacy (who was currently giving him a very indignant look). Mark nearly slammed his glass down on the table after finishing, and House silently counted down the seconds until the drugs would kick in.

Stacy was still glaring at him, and the silence was just stretching into awkward when Mark's eyes suddenly began to cross. Having been ready for it, House reached across the table and eased his head down as Mark lost consciousness. Out of the corner of his eye, House saw a paramedic with a stretcher coming into the restaurant.

"Someone call 911 for a wagon to Princeton-Plainsboro?" the paramedic called, and House raised his hand.

"Garçon!" he said loudly, snapping his fingers to get the man's attention. Around him, people were looking worriedly at each other and putting down their forks. "It's okay, ladies and gentlemen, nothing to worry about. Unless you had the veal." Because a little pandemonium never hurt anyone.

"You dosed him!" Stacy said incredulously.

"I told you I'd check him out," House said, grabbing his cane and stepping back so that Mark could be loaded onto the stretcher. "I was a little worried they were gonna get here before he passed out. Would have been tougher to get him to drink." Stacy was giving him a dirty look, so he quickly moved on to something else. "He'll be admitted for the night and I'll throw him at my team first thing in the morning—feel free to drop by and contribute."

Stacy gave him one last glare and then turned around and hurried after the paramedics.

oOo

Chase hadn't been fully asleep when House had come home, but he hadn't been fully awake either. He was definitely swaying more toward sleep at this point, and only dimly registered the sound of the door opening and House whistling something cheerful, and he didn't flinch away from the light that came streaming in from the hallway. He didn't even jump when House poked him in the back with his cane.

"Go away," he groaned, knowing that it wouldn't do any good. "I don't care."

"I told Stacy about you," House announced.

Had he been more awake, he would have sat bolt right up in bed to stare at House. As it was, he'd been on the verge of falling asleep only minutes ago, and the most that he could muster was to let his eyes flutter open for a second. "You did what?"

"Well, I didn't tell her that you're you. Just that I'm not single," House said. He limped out of the room and flicked off the hall light, and Chase heard him moving around in the dark. "She's hoping for an introduction tomorrow."

"You really don't like her, do you?" Chase asked, closing his eyes and winding down now that he'd appropriately responded to House's announcement.

"I have a good reason to not like her," House reminded him pointedly. The bed groaned as he got in.

"Yeah, but I bet you didn't try to kill her," Chase said lightly, but he felt House freeze and he mentally kicked himself. The strangulation was still on the list of Things We Don't Joke About. Stacy herself had recently been taken off of it. "Sorry," he muttered.

"We're treating her husband," House said, moving along and ignoring the awkward moment like he usually did. "Tomorrow morning. Should be a fun time."

"Mm…" Chase said noncommittally. It didn't sound like it was going to be any fun at all, actually, because he hated the idea of House's ex hanging around the conference room for hours at a time. But there wasn't anything he could do about it but quietly wait it out. He just hoped that it wouldn't take them longer than a day to solve the case and send Stacy and her husband on their way, back to wherever they had come from—Rolling Hills or something annoyingly suburban like that.

"I can hear you thinking," House said, yanking on his hair.

Chase barely held in a yelp of surprise. "House! Leave me alone." He rubbed at the back of his scalp and scowled into the darkness, the pain having woken him up. It would be at least another fifteen minutes before he fell asleep now.

"I don't cheat," House said suddenly. "If that's what's got your knickers in a twist."

It scared him, sometimes, how well House seemed to read his mind. But as he opened his mouth to reply, he found himself lacking for what to say. Thanks for the reassurance? I never doubted it? You wanna come over and untwist my knickers yourself? Nothing appropriate was coming to mind. So he substituted actions for words and found House's hand and squeezed it, trying to convey all the words in his head in the gesture.

"Aw… Isn't that sweet?" House said, and Chase could hear the smirk in his voice.

He rolled his eyes and withdrew his hand. "Shut up."

oOo

Stacy was waiting in his office by the time he made it to the hospital. She was on her cell phone doing some important lawyer business when he pushed open the door, but at his entrance, she whirled around and paused in her conversation. House heard her excuse herself while he limped past her and let his backpack fall on his desk with a thump. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Chase come into the conference room and set his bag down on a chair.

"What are you going to do?" Stacy asked him.

House shrugged off his coat. "Some delegation." He threw his coat over the back of his chair and then limped over to the door that led to the conference room and stuck his head in. "Hey! Someone get me my coffee. Black. And get to know Mark Warner—his file's on the bookshelf."

Cameron rose and walked over to the coffee pot, and Foreman stood up to go get the file. Satisfied, House let the door shut and turned back to Stacy.

"Do you have any ideas?" Stacy pressed, stepping closer as House went back to his desk to start unloading his pack.

"A few," House said loosely, leaning his cane against the side of the desk. "None I'm inclined to share at the moment. Don't want you suing me for emotional trauma if I'm wrong."

He knew that Stacy had rolled her eyes at that. "I'm not going to sue you."

"And I'm sure you'll convince your hubbie that he feels the same way about last night," House said leadingly.

"He's not pressing charges," Stacy said dryly. "But only because he loves me and does everything he's told."

"I want one of those," House said wistfully. He pulled out a stack of paperwork that he intended to have Cameron fill out later and set it on his desk. Finished, he reached for his cane and turned around to see Stacy staring at out at his fellows.

"She's pretty," Stacy said softly as he came to stand next to her.

"Cameron?"

It took House a minute to remember that he'd told her that he was sleeping with one of his fellows but had failed to specify that the fellow was male. Naturally, Stacy would assume that it was Cameron because the only other time he'd been so versatile with his sexuality had been in college, when she hadn't known him.

"She used to have a crush on me," House said, turning to watch Stacy. "But I think she watches Oprah every night, just to make herself cry."

Stacy turned to him in confusion. "But you said—"

"No, not Cameron. I'm with the blond one. In the paisley and stripes."

And with that, he left a gaping Stacy to figure out if he was joking or not and came into the conference room. Cameron handed him his coffee as he entered and then went back to her seat. Across from her, Foreman was flipping through Mark's file.

"There's nothing wrong with him," Foreman said, lowering the file.

"Is that his wife?" Cameron asked, looking past him and into his office concernedly.

"That's her," House said cheerfully, taking a sip of his coffee and limping over to the whiteboard. Setting his cup down on the table, he grabbed a marker.

Cameron glanced from House to Chase. "The woman you used to live with?"

"That's her Indian name—on her driver's license, it's Stacy," House said. "I assume you have a point?"

"It's just—" Cameron faltered. "Um. Isn't that kind of awkward?"

"It's fine," Chase said, before House could get in a properly insulting comment. "No one's going to kill anyone."

"Except our patient, if we waste time talking about our social lives," House snapped, uncapping the marker. "Differential! Let's go!"

- fin -