A/N Not a follow up to the 'Daughters' one-shot. Probably too melodramatic. But, much fun to write. Please leave a review, and enjoy.

Fathers, be good to your sons

---

This, is a very, VERY bad idea.

But House sat at the bar anyway. He had requested a booth where he could see the door and anyone who walked in. He knew his father didn't have a tendency to be late, so he came early, wanting the advantage of a couple beers in him first.

A father-son get-together drink. What a piece of crap.

But here he was. Here he was.

"Greg."

"Dad."

"Or should I call you Dr. House?"

House humors his father with a brief smile before escaping into his beer glass again, for one last alcoholic boost before he plunges into a night of awkward exchanges. And, awkward, is much better than confrontational. He's had about enough of those.

When was the last time his father had insisted on a father to son, heart to heart, la-di-dah, crap? Oh, right. Stacey.

House looks at House.

---

"Just a friendly, harmless drink, that's all. Completely harmless Greg."

Harmless. Riiiiight.

"Come on, Greg. You're my son. I just want to have a chat with you, see how your life is like, get to know you again."

He hears his father's voice crack a little, and he knows the emotion is genuine, no matter how much he hates to admit it. Still, his father could feel as heartbroken as the next weeping woman, he knew the evening wouldn't turn out right.

"Can't a father get to know his son?"

That's the killer. There's always a killer line.

"One drink. I'm not going to stay around long. I have things to do."

Greg hangs up and sighs gustily, rubbing his face with his hand, hard. He scrubs his face a little harder, and then abandons that to find his coat. And his loose change. The bar his father's suggested frowns upon non-tippers.

---

"Greg."

"Dad."

"Or should I be calling you Dr. House?"

Greg humors his father with a brief smile, fiddling with his beer glass. His father nods, understandingly and answers himself.

"Soon. Very soon."

Greg, not one to fully indulge family histrionics, takes a swift pull at his beer and then sets it down, business-like. He doesn't want to wallow in small talk, and he hates it when his father tries to cover up his true agenda of conversation.

"So. What is it?"

"Stacey's a nice girl, isn't she?"

Greg blinks.

"Well I suppose I think so, seeing as I'm living with her."

"About that…did you ever consider marrying a girl before you brought her home, son?"

Greg pretends to think about that.

"Considered it."

His dad frowns a little over his beer.

"Now there's that damn sarcasm that always got you into trouble."

"Well, I'm still here, now aren't I?"

"Greg—I've come here out of concern. Couldn't you try and be civil?"

"Alright then. So what are so concerned about?"

"Look, you've been worrying your mother—"

"Don't drag mom into this."

"—and I've been worried too."

His father gave him a glare that told him not to interrupt again. Whether he'd pay any heed to the warning or not, Greg wasn't sure of yet.

"Now we've tried to raise you as a good person, a gentleman. And the proper way to go about doing things is to marry a girl."

"Stacey and I don't feel the need to rush something like that."

"It's not rushing, now you may find my ways traditional and old-fashioned, but think about it. If you really love Stacey, marrying her will be giving her a sense of security and dignity. Heavens know what her parents think about her, moving in and doing god knows what without a ring."

Greg glared at his father. Why did this man always find the need to manipulate him?

"Dad, I'm not even out of school yet."

"There are plenty of folks who are still in school and are happily married. And you're my son. Our family is quite well off. You'd have no problems financially."

"Maybe I don't want to marry her."

His father's attempts at being sympathetic and kind suddenly darkened.

"What?"

Greg never did this for anyone else, but for his father, he quickly tried to find something else to say to calm him.

"We want to wait. We want to wait a bit before we get married."

His father still stares at him suspiciously before he allows himself to be reassured.

"But what's there to wait for, is all we're concerned about."

Greg shrugged and tried to hide in the foam of his beer.

"We're just not ready, that's all. We're trying to sort things out before we think about something like that."

His father shook his head a little disapprovingly.

"It's just not proper. I mean, you've been living with this woman for almost three years now. You could have brought her home to meet us instead of us having to find out through James. In fact, you should have brought her over. That's how things are done."

Greg couldn't look at his father while he retorted.

"Well, it's not how I get things done."

His father looked at him and slammed his hand down on the table.

"Damn it Greg! Damn it and your stubbornness. You're too damn head strong, that's what you are. I don't know where you get it, this lack of respect and propriety you have. You certainly didn't get it from your mother or I. You run around, thinking you know everything about the world and that you can damn well do whatever you want. I didn't raise you this way."

His father was beginning to go red in the face and Greg shrunk deeper and deeper into himself.

"And this whole Stacey business! What happens if you get her pregnant? How are you going to explain to your children that their father and mother aren't married? That you're one of those damn dysfunctional family units!"

Greg had enough, and he stood up and yelled back at his father.

"Why are you dragging kids into this?"

His father stood up as well.

"Well why not? Don't tell me you're going to have kids in secret, like you grabbed your girlfriend in secret too! Or what, you're going to tell me you've already got some?"

"If we ever decided to have kids, the first thing I would do is to make sure they wouldn't have to deal with their grandfather."

"Deal with me? Deal with me?"

The glasses of beer lay forgotten until his father, shaking with anger, accidentally knocked one over, swiping it off the table and to the ground.

"Is that what you think of me as? Something to deal with?"

"I'm just returning the favor, dad."

"How dare you? What are you accusing me of?"

"Oh don't you dare say you never saw me as something to tolerate. Never polite enough, never quiet enough, never clean enough, never still enough-from the day I was born, I was just never good enough for you, was I? Well that's not much of a fighting chance, is it!"

"Well if that's how you felt, you could have damn well tried harder to do things right, couldn't you?"

"Yeah? How's that possible after realizing you'd pretty much given up on me, and decided just to give out the required quota of fatherly affection to make yourself look good?"

"Oh, I haven't given up on you yet."

His father said this with a dangerous gleam in his eye. Greg's voice softened in volume, but was still hard and steely as he looked at his father through chips of blue ice.

"No, not after I got into meds school and you realized I could still make your name look good in an obituary, eh dad? We mourn Mr. House who leaves behind a wife, and a son who is a prestigious doctor. Oh, Mr. House! What good genes you have, you can turn out a career man—"

His father gives him a short, smarting smack.

"There's that sarcasm again."

He picks up his coat, throws some money on the table and leaves. It's the first time he's raised a hand to his son, but it's not the worst Greg's felt because of his father.

---

"Well good, the motorcycle is a hobby, isn't it? It's something you do, something you can say that you do."

House sighs a little to himself and nods.

"I'm just worried about you. I don't want you getting too sucked into your job. It's good for a person to have something to do outside of work. Workaholics these days…the stress, kills you, you know."

"I know dad, I'm a doctor."

His father chuckles at that.

They had small-talked, House was no longer loathe to small talk when it came to his father now seeing as it was preferable to their arguments, and the evening was going as well as could be expected. But he could sense his father veering down a dangerous road.

"But I wish you would do more. You've got lots of time, lots of resources. You could be doing plenty of things. Traveling. Maybe getting more involved with your community…"

"I have my work. That's what I do."

"But why stick to just that Greg? You're not limited to what you can do…"

He looked significantly at House's leg.

"…because of your disability. There are plenty of people with worse things that have happened to them, who lead good, productive lives. They enrich their life, and the lives of others. There's no saying you can't either."

House looked at his father incredulously.

"Now I'm not even being a cripple properly?"

His father flustered, saying things along the lines of that he didn't mean it like that, that House was putting words into his mouth and so on and so forth. But House had already heard it all before and he gathered his coat, and his helmet and his cane.

It had been a pleasant evening. Really, truly, absolutely. It was a very nice change for once, and he wanted to remember it as it was perhaps a minute before. Things just didn't go too well between them when after a certain level of inebriation had passed, he'd accept it at that.

"Gregory—"

House looked behind him and gave his father a brief smile. He already had his keys out to start up his motorcycle, but he paused long enough for this.

"It's Doctor House."