You guys are amazing! Thanks so much to everyone who read the first installment of this, especially: gidget89, Shikabane-Mai, SmilinStar, lhoma320, HotlipsPierce, Eleanor J., abc2, icarusabides, Taboo622, wrytingtyme, HigherThanSoulCanHope, mandy9578, CaptainTish, Critical Blues, Jenny, mo, cybercat08, RogueButterfly, Little Lunar Wolf, Calico Star, Flora Winter, arcadia1328, Schulyer Lola, gypsy71, HolidayArmadillo, J Lesley, Iamnotacommittee, Rachel, and - Lazy Days -.
And before I forget, extra special thanks to gidget89, whose stories have cured many cases of writer's block. :)

She kept telling herself that it was the weather, though the forced repetition didn’t seem to help it ring any more true. The fickle meteorologists kept predicting a record-breaking cold snap, but it was still strangely warm for November, the last rays of the setting sun casting an orange glow over the playground. The shrieked giggles and shouts had begun to die down as those who had taken advantage of the semi-mild weather trickled away with the dying heat and light of the sun. Only a few stragglers remained: a boy and his young mother, two girls and their five small charges, three teenagers who had staked a claim on the empty jungle gym, a man leaning against a tree across the way.

Cuddy had completely forgotten about the book that lay open on her lap until it suddenly snapped shut. Her cheek and arm brushed against something solid as she flinched—an arm that had somehow encircled her without her knowledge. As her heart leapt into her throat and lodged there, warm breath hissed in her ear. “Playing hooky?”

She relaxed automatically, should have at least put on an air of irritation, but she was too tired for even that to come. The bench shifted as House slid onto it beside her—too close for comfort but somehow right, as it always was between them—and she tried not to smile. “I’m allowed to take a lunch break.”

“Alaskan Time,” he mused, taking a long look at his watch. “Interesting choice.”

“I was busy.”

An understatement.

Between the almost endless meetings and pages to the clinic, the lecturer she’d had to introduce and the lecture she herself had prepared and given about ten minutes before it had begun, Cuddy had barely had five minutes to herself all day. The busyness and the constant throbbing in her temple had both added to and distracted her from the strange twinge in the pit of her stomach. Every thought seemed to rest there: the treatments and injections, the two pink lines in the first little window (then another, the blue plus sign in two more, the word itself, and, at length, the blood results: indisputable) and she had to consciously remember not to place her hand there.

She couldn’t let herself be happy. Not yet.

House’s eyes sizzled as they raked down her body—her cheek, her neck, lingering on her chest—though she did everything in her power to keep from looking at him, wondered for a moment if he knew just how intense his gaze was (if he would do anything to stop it if he did). The bench and the playground probably hadn’t been one of her more brilliant ideas—a running theme—and another three seconds of studying her, and House would know that as well as she did.

A little girl must have been channeling Cuddy’s bottled-up emotion, was throwing a terrific tantrum and clinging tearfully to the chains on a swing. Nothing so small and innocent-looking should be able to shriek so loudly.

“I can probably snag one for you,” House said off-handedly, nodding towards the still-screaming girl, her cries fading as she was carried in the opposite direction. “What’s your flavor? Chocolate with nuts? Vanilla and a cherry?... At least for the first thirteen years or so. After that, can’t make any guaran—”

“I like ice cream!” a small boy chirped hopefully as his mother tried to drag him by.

House leaned down to the kid’s level. It was a sweet image—the two of them practically nose-to-nose, the glint in House’s eyes reflected, magnified in the boy’s thick glasses. But then, as always, House opened his mouth. “I like to eat nosy little boys. Yummy.”

Helpless, the boy shot his mother an alarmed look, but she simply tugged him by the sleeve, waiting until she no doubt thought they were out of earshot, not counting on the shrillness of her voice to carry so clearly over the crisp autumn air: “That, Jacob, is exactly why we don’t talk to strangers. Ever. Do you….”

“That, Cuddy,” House mimicked nearly perfectly but for the strong infusion of disdain, “is why lions eat their young.”

“If you antagonized a lion like that, it would eat you.”

“Don’t worry.” As he spoke, he reached out a hand and placed it on her stomach, patting gently, almost affectionately, and shooting her a sideways roguish grin. “I’ll teach your spawn not to be annoying.”

It meant nothing, she silently repeated, a new mantra—was just House being… House: playing on fortunate circumstances and her own emotions just as he would his piano, bending every note, every word and gesture, to his will. This was a man who probably shouldn’t be left within spitting distance of any child until well past the formative years, let alone be allowed to teach one anything.

Knowing all this, repeating it, still didn’t keep her pulse from steadily quickening.

“In order for you to do that,” Cuddy finally managed as he moved away, the spell broken, “you’d have to actually not be annoying yourself.”

She was glad the darkness had finally settled and she couldn’t quite make out his knowing glance; but still there was that tone. “You’re finally out of Egypt. Mazel tov.”

Denial, perhaps. More like hesitancy churning with trepidation, fermenting with the stomach acid and fear—a mixture she had spent too many near-sleepless nights analyzing in the weeks and months after he had told her she wasn’t fit to be a mother. They had continued her injections silently after that, neither of them mentioning it though the outburst had formed a sort of wall between them—full of chinks for quick glances and easily scalable, but there all the same.

“Did you come all the way out here just to irritate me?”

“Unless you wanna get stoned and make out.” House jabbed his cane towards the jungle gym, the three teenagers draped lazily over it. “Another few minutes and we can totally score some cheap weed.”

“I think one drug addiction is probably enough,” she muttered as she felt him grope in his pocket, the gesture as familiar as the orange bottle he finally pulled out. “Case in point.”

“Breath mint,” he responded flippantly, tossing a pill into the air and catching it on his tongue, the muscles in his neck flexing as he swallowed. “Haven’t we had this conversation?”

Maybe if she had let him come in last night, she would have actually fallen back asleep: he had always felt so perfect, so right pressed against her, and memory was only a pale imitation. The thought startled her. Exhaustion must have been affecting her judgment more than she’d realized.

Cuddy shifted on the bench, tried to inch away from him. “Why are you here?”

“Sleeping Ugly needs a multiple subpial trans– ”

“I told you not to call her that,” she quickly admonished. “And absolutely not.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” House sing-songed, typically, infuriatingly. He had been fidgeting but suddenly stilled, and she had a feeling that it had nothing at all to do with the seriousness of his patient’s condition, and everything with the space that was now between them. It was only a few inches, shouldn’t have been perceptible or mattered.

In that moment, there was nothing more dangerous than this silence, a Petri dish for unbridled emotion and possibility.

“You’re not performing unnecessary brain surgery on a little girl.”

“Hey, I’m with you. We skip all that and just sign the death certificate now, I can be home in time to watch that babe scientist solve a murder using a scratch on the stapes.” He heaved a sigh, batting his cane back and forth between his palms, and whether or not he had somehow intentionally timed the beat with her pulse, the effect was still a little unsettling. “Course, the grandparents might have a problem with it, but they’ll be pushing up daisies in a few years anyway.”

“You’re being overly dramatic.”

“You’re not being objective.” House turned towards her then, almost accusatory but not surprised. And how he ended up pressed against her again without seeming to move was anybody’s guess, but there he was, warm against her, a thousand contradictions at once.

“I let you do a brain biopsy last night,” Cuddy responded finally, because one of them had to speak, and he was either oblivious to the tension or relishing in it. She knew House as many things, but oblivious was never one of them.

“And it worked.”

“It told you nothing you didn’t already know. You were just lucky it didn’t do any harm.”

A streetlight clicked on nearby, its bulb nearly burnt-out, a dull flickering orange that cast an eerie sheen across House’s profile. He was grinning, and she realized her poor selection of an adjective half-a-second too late.

“No – I would’ve gotten lucky if you’d’ve let me inside.”

That’s what you think, she wanted to say, or maybe, We’ll never know (with a coy smirk, that tilt of the chin, eyelashes fluttering—she could play his game just as well as he could when she wanted to). But the words somehow tripped themselves up on the way out of her mouth, lengthening, twisting, and suddenly serious. “If she has another seizure that won’t respond to medication, you can talk to the grandparents about the transection. Until then….”

“Wait for some magic fairies to make her all better?” Even for him the tone was harsh, but she knew it was only frustration. He’d been on this case for days and time was running out.

“Find out what’s wrong with her.” It was much colder now, her soft voice crystallizing as it hit the air, amber clouds in the weak, sputtering light. “Besides the epilepsy.”

In the silence that followed, her thoughts fluttered: she smoothed her skirt; he tapped his knee to the deep, bass-y rhythm that had started to vibrate the air. It would have been the perfect ending to a scene in a movie: the camera panning from her face to his. He would’ve nodded sadly and risen (maybe squeezed her arm, laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder), his back shrinking quickly as he hurried away down the path; he’d call her not long later, breathlessly spouting a diagnosis, a cure—everyone smiling, a bright, dazzling white.

But this was life (a stark contrast with its muted shadows, different shades of gray), and House, and none of it was ever that vivid or easy. He didn’t move to acknowledge what she had said, couldn’t run, never touched anyone unless through a protective layer of sarcasm or latex. But he would trudge through hell and high water to find that cure, even if it meant flouting her, the American Medical Association, and the Hippocratic Oath in one fell swoop.

She had known all this when she hired him, had known it long before. He always required an addendum, with everything, and it was her job to give it, though up to her discretion as to whether verbally or with little more than a glance. (How many thousands of conversations had they had where their eyes said more in an instant than pointless words ever could?)

But now it was dark, and Cuddy didn’t trust her gaze to convey the right emotions. “And if I hear you’ve been in her room flashing the lights or done anything else to induce a seizure….”

“You won’t,” House promised, too quickly, using an index finger to trace a cross over his heart. “Hear about it,” he added under his breath, and the way he was grinning at her, he’d meant for her to hear it.

Then he was standing and she wasn’t, though he was waiting for her, even holding out a hand after a moment, the gesture so uncharacteristic of him that she could only stare. He retracted the hand quickly, shoving it deep into his coat pocket, as if by hiding it he could pretend he had never stooped so low as to actually offer help to another human being.

“Afraid of what people’ll say if they see us walking back together?”

“Like you don’t already have some story—”

He placed the tip of his cane on the toe of her shoe, not pressing down, just holding it there, waiting for a reaction. “Depends on whether you’re up for the swings or the slide—either should allow for some interesting friction.”

She knew she was in dangerous territory when she found herself actually considering these options—not in the sense that she would ever act on them, but a simple what if…. “Go back to your patient, House.”

“You can’t avoid me forever.”

“I’m not avoiding you now. House. For once, just….” But he had already turned, without any further pestering, sarcasm, or innuendo (more atypical even than his offer to help her off the bench had been), and Cuddy could do nothing but frown at his retreating form.

Tuesday Nov. 13, 4:29 PM

Maybe she hadn’t thought he’d noticed in the dark—though he’d seen everything else (her paleness, the dark circles beneath her eyes, the way she hesitated more than was normal or necessary). Maybe she hadn’t even noticed herself, but she had draped a hand over her belly as she’d spoken to him, delicate fingers flexing protectively. It had stood for only an instant, but it was all he had needed. Anything he could say to her now would no longer be teasing.

House hadn’t gone far when his phone rang, and he answered without bothering to look and see who it was. “Tell me she’s seizing and the meds are crap.”

“You don’t need to sound so happy about it,” Chase responded coolly.

“Awesome.” He wheeled around, heading back towards Cuddy, the bench, that damn flickering streetlight. “Hold down the fort. I’ll be back in ten.”

“Wait. What do you want us to—”

Chase’s voice was quashed with the push of a button, the phone quickly stowed in House’s pocket, and he ignored it when it began to ring again. The park bench was empty, Cuddy nowhere in sight. The woman could boast all she wanted about her ability to outrun him, but tired as she had seemed and on those heels, there was no way in hell she could have completely disappeared down the path in thirty seconds.

It was an unsettling sensation, the prickling of each individual hair standing up on his arms and the back of his neck. There must have been something in the air—a strange breeze, a sudden chill. Fear was something to which he simply was immune.

“You know,” he called out as he approached the bench, not quite sure what he planned to do once he got there, “I have a much better version of hide-and-seek we could be playing.”

His only answer was the dull sound of his cane hitting against the wooden slats of the bench, the terrible shouldn’t-even-be-called-music that the jungle gym hooligans had started blaring. But underneath there was something, and he zeroed in on what was barely a sound at all: a rustling, a muffled whimper (or maybe a trick of the ears—it wouldn’t have been the first time). House rounded the bench, rust-colored leaves crackling beneath his feet and his cane as he penetrated the darker shadows in the trees behind it.

“Cuddy?”

His cane was suddenly gone, torn from his grip, and the unexpected pain in his head was tremendous. Someone shouted—or something, because the sound was feral, inhuman, but if nothing else the rawness in his throat was evidence that the noise had come from him.

There were bright sparks that fractured and multiplied, trailing tails like comets in atomic tangerine—a dark face, unrecognizable—then Cuddy’s, shimmering in an afterimage as his eyelids were weighed down, heavy as anvils—the zing of pain (again, or maybe the same, just increasing), and then….