Disintegration
By Angelfirenze

Disclaimer: Shore, Jacobs, Singer, et al., own everything House-related. Rowling owns 'some guy named Snape'. The lyrics belong to various bands. The references, quotes and--sometimes--lines, books, and movies mentioned belong to the authors and script writers who wrote them, etc. The toilet incident is all me. The journal entry I wrote years later is just as shocked and awed. I was actually twelve at the time. Yay.

Summary: "Now that I have your attention, I have the pleasure of being able to say I might not see you for at least a few blessed months. Maybe if we both write to Santa, it'll be years."

Rating: FRM for language and other objectionable subject matter.

Pairing: None, really. It was originally going to be House/Cuddy, but my muse has decided that this will be a gen fic rather than het. At least that's the way it's turning out. I think I'll go with it.

Reviews are always encouraged and appreciated.

...And all the things that I wish I had not said...Are played endlessly 'til it's madness in my head...

"I'm sorry I punched you."

Dad's voice was so quiet, so...nervous...that Rob barely understood it at first. They were sitting in Rob's living room, Dad curled up on the couch, his already unruly hair on end and his eyes heavy-lidded with recent sleep. Rob was sitting at the desk Blythe and John--his grandparents, they insisted on saying and he half-heartedly protested before giving in at Blythe's loving glare--had bought him from IKEA. It was a sort of draftsman's desk with an underlight that he believed he would find useful for examining x-rays and scans of new cases. Having only been Head of Diagnostics for a month a half, however, he was still spending the majority of his time working on his paper (it seemed that until his full worth had been proven, Cuddy seemed loathe to let him loose just yet) and so he instead visited with his father often, trying anything to keep him from climbing the walls in boredom. The fact that Dad usually didn't have the energy to leave his bed most days now wasn't mentioned. They could all see the anger on his face and didn't wanted to worsen it.

As it was, Dad slept most of the days away now, the only means of temporal orientation being twice-daily trips to the bathroom and the bi-weekly trek to the hospital for treatments. Blythe took care of helping dress and undress him. After that, breakfast (when he had an appetite, which wasn't often) and flipping through the satellite channels with John. Rob found himself fascinated, watching John and Dad take turns overrunning and complaining about the narrators during the various documentaries they watched. It wasn't until he'd spent so much time with them that he could see how alike the two of them really were. He especially found it funny that they, themselves, couldn't seem to tell at all.

As it was, most of their time together was spent in silence with Dad sleeping and Rob studying journals and working on his dissertation. He was up to nearly hundred and fifty pages now and John jokingly asked, "Are you writin' a novel, or somethin', son?"

Rob had rolled his eyes, shook his head, and went back to scouring the New England Journal of Medicine, leaving John to snort and shake his head in turn. He didn't know how much time had passed since then, but his grandfather seemed to be busy elsewhere now and Dad was staring at him with glassy, saddened eyes.

"What are you talking about?" Rob asked now, glancing up and briefly taking in Dad's limp form curled in the blankets.

"Oh, come on," Dad frowned, pain visible in his face, and Rob looked up again, this time stricken at the contempt he heard. "Surely you wouldn't forget me detoxing and nearly killing a patient, you solving the case at the last possible moment, and me showing you my gratitude by cold-cocking you."

Dad was breathing hard now and Rob wished he wouldn't speak so much all at once, but knew there was no stopping him when he got going.

"Maybe I didn't think it was worth remembering," Rob said calmly, giving Dad a level stare. "It's not like any of us were at our best. Tritter was making our lives a living hell. You weren't being treated properly for your pain and it was taking a toll. I'm sure if I'd been you, I'd've wanted to hit something, too. I did, actually, after he tried to make it look like I was screwing with you..."

Rob felt his voice peter out, a flush creeping up his face, and he looked back down at the scrawl of his latest notes. "Again."

He could feel Dad's subsequent scowl burning into his skin and wanted to shrink away. "I'll make you a deal. You're sorry you ratted me out to Vogler, I'm sorry I punched you. They're over and done with, never to be mentioned again. Deal?"

Rob looked up again, chewing his lip. He sighed. "Deal."

"Right, so no more of this Catholic self-flagellating--"

"Dad."

Dad frowned slightly, glancing at the ceiling and then sighing. "Sorry. Religion hasn't exactly brought out the best in those near and dear to me."

"What about your mum's cooking? Or Wilson's?"

Dad's lips quirked into a bit of a grin, then, and he nodded reluctantly. "Fine. The cooking's good, but--"

"But nothing. Wilson spoils you and so does your mum."

"They would if I could keep any of it down."

"Your meds aren't working?" Now Rob felt worry consuming him, hoping...praying. God, please, no...

Dad took a breath, frowning at the expression that must have been on Rob's face. "It's just been a while since I had the energy to try. I guess I'll have to give it a trial run."

Rob sighed in relief and turned on his stool, pushing backward with his legs until he reached the phone that sat on the shelf under the window. "No time like the present."

But Dad held up his hand. "I have appointments to keep as it is. Let's see how those go before you go consigning me to a smorgasbord I won't be able to finish."

Rob bit his lip to hide the smile trying to emerge and placed the handset back on the base. "Want to play chess?"

Dad shook his head, opting to read Kierkegaard instead. Chase had discovered a chess set while unpacking Dad's and Wilson's things after the move to Cuddy's house. Dad had stared at it for a moment before taking it from him and removing the carved lid that doubled as the board. The black marble and soapstone pieces were separated by a partition and he reached into the right side to remove a soapstone rook, rubbing his fingers over the smooth surface, his eyes seeming to look at something nobody else could see.

That night he'd asked Rob if he knew how to play chess. Rob had shaken his head in the negative and Dad had scowled. "So you were taught how to swear in six different languages, but actually amusing yourself productively was left to the wayside? No wonder you're addicted to crossword puzzles. Though, in theory, you should be better at filling out the clues."

"Hey, not all of us got to spend hours in front of the television!" Rob had protested, jokingly, knowing his grandfather had probably not allowed anything of the sort.

"I didn't watch much television, actually. I mostly overheard it and then it was usually the news. I liked the radio and piano better anyway."

Rob had nodded, then, and Dad had proceeded to teach him how to play. He spanked Rob soundly the first six games, but Rob finally won the seventh. "You're not hopeless," Dad had told him and he'd smiled.

They usually tried to get in at least one game a week now, especially since Rob was still in the process of writing his paper and the Bayside poster he'd ordered for his office hadn't arrived yet. He'd lent all of their albums to his father, who had listened to them one after another. After removing his headphones, Dad had nodded in approval and said sardonically, "Well, at least you're not listening to Bri--"

"I never listened to Britney Spears, thank you very much," Rob had cut him off, resisting the urge to throw something at him. "Which is your favorite?"

Dad thought for a moment, turning the CD cases over one by one and lining them up so the names of the songs were visible on the lid of his piano, which now sat in the sixth and last free bedroom. "'Head on a Plate', I think, and 'They Looked Like Strong Hands'. 'How to Fix Everything.'"

Rob had nodded. "I like 'Winter', the song they dedicated to their drummer."

"The one who died in that car crash." Chase looked surprised.

Dad took a breath. "I looked them up after you told me about them. I was curious."

Rob gave him a little smile. "You're always curious."

"If I was a cat, I'd've been dead a long time ago. Or so my father says."

Rob snorted and took his vitals while Dad rolled his eyes. "I think I want my own copies. Maybe I could sneak them into Jimmy's CD player and see how long it takes before he bursts into tears."

Rob had laughed, then, reminding Dad how mean he was. "Duh," Dad had told him. He then wheeled his chair over to the wall of music he and Wilson had built and pulled out a random record sleeve just a bit before sliding it back into place. With that, he rolled over to his piano and Rob helped transfer him to the bench. He'd spent the next three hours playing Air Supply on piano while complaining about how geeky Wilson was behind his back and continuing to do so after Wilson came home, much to his annoyance.

"You know the songs!" Wilson protested, gesturing at the piano. "You know the notes to the music!"

"I, like Fox Mulder, am cursed with an eidetic memory," Dad reminded him, abruptly switching to 'Synonym for Acquiesce' from Bayside's first album and chuckling when Chase did a double take. "I like this room," he said, smiling.

"You'd better," Cuddy told him from the doorway, a smirk on her face. "Because you're lucky I had the space. You two are insane. I never intended for this room to be a testament to you two and your neverending quest to perforate your eardrums." He and Wilson had been given leeway by Cuddy to put all their music related things into this room and they'd spent hours cataloguing and combining their collections to the point where John had remarked that they were fanatics and dinner was getting cold so the rest could wait.

"You never meant for it to be anything, evidently," Dad reminded her pointedly. "Because it was mostly bare if I recall correctly."

Lisa rolled her eyes before walking off and Dad muttered about finding them on the floor one day.

...I asked her to stay, but she wouldn't listen...

That night, House fell asleep curled in the middle of a pile of his albums and Wilson had carefully picked him up, trying to ignore how light his friend was, and carried him to his bed before spending the rest of the night organizing his own things with alphabetized sticky-notes stuck onto the ends of certain covers to remind House where everything was. Around dawn, Wilson had gone to check House's vitals and found Lisa doing so herself.

"I can't believe we have to sneak in like a couple of vandals, tiptoeing and whispering as though we're doing something...wrong...and do this when he's asleep."

"Yes, you do," Lisa then reminded him and she gave him the BP cuff. "You know exactly why."

"I just I wish I could..."

"All of us do," Lisa had said quietly, tears barely visible in her eyes. "All we can do now is hope we have a chance to ask his forgiveness."

"He already forgave you. That much is obvious," Wilson whispered, his eyes glued to the pale form of his friend below them. "Meanwhile, Blythe had to expressly ask him if he'd allow me to put in a PICC line. He'd flatly refused, if you remember."

"He forgave--"

"No, he hasn't. He's just working on it." Wilson's voice was dejected but Lisa fixed him with a dark blue stare that made him gasp.

"If he's working on it for John then I know damned well he's working on it for you, too. John House, if you remember, is the reason why Greg has so little trust to spare in the first place."

Wilson didn't reply to that, so she nudged him, telling him, "Go to sleep. You're getting to be as bad as House was."

"Want me to start bursting into sterilized ORs at random?"

"Don't. You. Dare."

Wilson did as he was told, managing a smile for the first time in a very long while.

...And he said one word to me and that was 'dead'...

Stacy Warner dragged a comb through her wet hair, listening to whatever nonsense Mark had left playing on the television. She sighed, exhaling audibly, and wrapped her bathrobe more tightly around herself. Sidestepping the bed, she crept out into the hall and down toward the den. Taking a few more breaths to steel herself, she picked up the phone and dialed Greg's home number.

I'm sorry; the number you have dialed is no longer in service--

She blinked and stared at the phone in a mild state of shock. Greg hadn't changed his number even after they'd broken up. After you left, a tiny, callous voice that sounded more like the man she was trying to reach than she was willing to admit. Frowning and throwing caution to the wind, she reset the dial-tone and punched in Lisa's number. She was absolutely certain that if Greg had changed his number--because he certainly hadn't moved--then either Lisa or James had to know about it.

"Stacy?"

Lisa's voice was heavy with exhaustion and, for a moment, Stacy regretted having woken her up. She shoved that aside, however, and got back to the matter at hand. "Lisa, hi. Has Greg...changed his number? I called, but--"

"But that number's no longer in service."

Stacy paused at the strange, unrecognizable tone Lisa's voice had suddenly taken on. "Right. Yes, is...is there something..."

"He's otherwise preoccupied, Stacy," Lisa said in the same, yet now even colder tone. "Is there something you wanted?"

"I wanted to know where Greg is, Lisa, that's why I called."

Stacy listened to Lisa's audible sigh. "Well, right now, he's in bed and there's no way in hell I'm waking him up so don't even ask."

"In bed? It's only..." Stacy checked the clock on the mantel and felt her face crease in disbelief. "It's barely ten o'clock! Greg never--"

"And you would know because?" Lisa's voice was now distinctly chilly. Stacy took another breath and let it out slowly.

"Alright. Obviously, I'm missing something here because I don't know what's going on and I've obviously pissed you off for some reason and you're not going to tell me, so I think I'm going to just hang up and try James now--"

"Don't bother. Here he is."

There was abrupt silence before James Wilson's voice came on the line. "Hello?"

Stacy blinked and gave herself a bit of a shake. "James, hi, what...are you and Lisa...dating?"

"Stacy. No. Is there something you wanted?"

The exact same fucking question. Stacy fought down the urge to slam the phone against the side table and took another breath. "An explanation would be nice. Such as why suddenly the two of you are acting like I--"

"Strung House and Mark up like marionettes while you flitted back and forth between whomever was making you the least uncomfortable at that particular moment in time?"

"I...I didn't--"

"Yes. You did." James' voice was tired, as well, she could hear but, even more, the condemnation in it rang clear. "Why are you calling, Stacy? Don't you have a husband to take care of? Isn't that why you left...or why you said you did after--"

"Okay, what the hell is going on?" Stacy was angry now and had to trouble to keep her voice down lest she wake Mark.

"House is sick, Stacy." Wilson's voice was flat now. Quiet and shaking, though she could barely tell.

"Sick? Sick, how?"

"Why do you care?"

"What the hell kind of question is that to ask?" Stacy snarled, pulling the phone away from her face and staring at it as though it had attempted to bite her. She pressed the headset back to her ear and whispered sharply, "How in the hell can you even ask me that?"

"Because it's a question we've all had to answer. Now's your turn."

Then James hung up on her.

I weave like a one-armed boxer, throwing punch after punch...After punch, I...I give in--I'm so dumb, I'm surprised when they duck...

John House helped ease Greg out of the passenger seat of the car, careful to grip underneath his arms and not too hard. He knew that Greg bruised easily, the weight his son was slowly regaining hard won and well-deserved. He was vigilant not to do anything that would harm the fragile form in his care. It was a charge he took seriously and without reservation. Part of him wondered if he was trying to make up somehow for all he hadn't done before. Most of him refused to think about it, but a tiny little bit of him thought he should have felt this way long before, when Greg was new, bright, and untarnished. That fraction couldn't shake the idea that this was his second chance. He felt Greg's groan of exhaustion more than heard it as he lowered his son's haggard form into his wheelchair and pushed him through the sliding glass doors and into the second of two hospitals he'd come to know so well in the previous months. He and Blythe had gone back for a short trip to Nyack, quickly packing up their old house and moving to one in Princeton instead. It wasn't far from either Greg, Lisa, and James--he no longer called him 'Wilson', being as involved in each other's lives as they were now--nor Robert, and something about that filled him with a strange sense of wholeness. Base living had kept his family more or less separated for most of Greg's life. Blythe's family in New England had seen more of her and their son than his in Ohio had of him and for a long time he hadn't been able to understand just what was so...he couldn't find a word to describe their closeness, even thousands of miles apart, but he was sure that if he asked his wife or son, they'd be able to tell him one.

"As much fun as it's been staring at a bank of elevators for the last five minutes, Dad," Greg's quiet, strained voice drifted up from in front of him and John snapped back to the present. "I'm sure Coopersmith won't be too pleased to be deprived of the chance to poke and prod me with needles. It's fun, you know."

John frowned, thinking of the bruises tracing Greg's arms and chest and grunted, "Somehow, I'm disinclined to agree."

"Nobody likes me, everybody hates me..." Greg sang quietly and John resisted the urge to frown.

"That's not true, kid," he said quietly, leaning forward to press the up button and hearing the ding of an elevator to their left.

"Maybe not to you," Greg mumbled, shifting slightly in his wheelchair.

"Damned right," John said quietly, a small smile coming to his face, and when he went to stand next to Greg once they'd boarded the elevator car, he was more happy than he could say about the hint of a smirk that now graced his son's pale visage.

The drive down the Massachusetts General Hospital had been spent mostly in silence, with Greg asleep in the front seat for nearly all of it. John had turned the dial to National Public Radio and left the volume low, gripping the wheel firmly as he heard about the latest death tolls from the war in Iraq. He'd been for it at first, as Blythe reminded him from time to time. He wished he'd realized what was going to happen before now. Perhaps he wouldn't feel like some of the blood of his fellow soldiers was on his hands. When he'd first watched The Daily Show with Greg and James, he'd been surprised to see a Marine he recognized corresponding for a liberal satirical 'Fake News' show. He'd been convinced that there were no liberals in the military. Greg was quite happy to disabuse him of that notion and now made it a point to watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Daily Show, and the oddly pronounced 'Colbert Report' with his father as often as he could. He thought that Greg would take the chance to make as many jokes as possible, but mostly they watched with little conversation and more chuckling, save for Greg and James complaining about the commercials that came on in between segments. When John told him he knew Major Robert Riggle, Greg had shrugged a bit and told him that he figured as much.

"He's a good kid," John had told him and Greg had gestured toward the television, where Riggle was dressed in some purported 'post-apocalyptic' get-up made of football padding, complaining about gas prices while Jon Stewart egged him on.

"Well, duh, Dad. Though, I think John Oliver's funnier."

"That Oliver's British," John had griped and Greg had risen an eyebrow at him.

"Two words: Cambridge Footlights." James had laughed, then, and John had looked at them both.

"I don't even know what that means."

"We'll have another chat when you do."

John had sighed and watched the rest of the program, noting that Greg owned a lot of the books Stewart and Colbert covered in their interviews. He's always wondered where Greg got the time to be so well-read, not having taken a real vacation in what he has found out was more than six years, but he supposes that with all the free time he now had, Greg would be diving through more books than ever.

He hasn't been disappointed. When Greg wasn't sleeping, he was usually reading. Blythe would ask him how many books he'd plowed through that week and he'd name a figure and she'd laugh and tell him that that was her boy. Greg would sigh and blush a bit, but go back to his books all the same.

Better than watching Geller bending silver spoons...Better than witnessing newborn nebulaes in bloom...She who sees from up high smiles and surely sings...Perspective pries your once weighty eyes and it gives you wings...

Now they sat again in Mass Gen's triage room, Greg getting yet another ID bracelet and some tube or other fixed onto his PICC line. He was thoroughly bored with the entire process and felt that rereading a printout of something or other was a better use of his time. John knew better than to ask what it was. It was either medical jargon or stories printed off the internet written by fans of that weird book series Greg, James, Robert, and three quarters of the known universe followed avidly. Lately, Greg and Robert had been having discussions about the motivations of some guy named Snape.

John didn't see what the big deal was, but figured anything that kept Greg from blowing up the house like he'd almost done when he was eight was a good thing.

Robert had laughed in complete disbelief as Blythe told him of the time when she asked Greg to clean the bathroom and he'd thought he'd expedite the process by adding 'a little of this and a little of that' or something along those lines. Little had anyone known at the time, least of all Greg, the boy had accidentally made mustard gas in the toilet.

"I was eight," Greg griped as John shook his head for the millionth time. "How the hell was I supposed to know that mixing Comet and Pine-Sol was a bad idea?"

"Bad idea?" Lisa had burst out from the other side of her kitchen, looking beseechingly at Blythe. "We're lucky your son still has a face! And that we use chlorinated drinking water. Please tell me you bought him a chemistry book after that."

"He bought himself one," Blythe had responded resignedly. "He wanted to know why I'd been so upset. Wanted to know why I was so relieved he'd been cleaning the toilet at the time."

"All I'd wanted to do was make a more powerful cleaning solution!" Greg scowled, leaving John to chuckle. "Oh, you laugh now, but you weren't happy at the time."

"Of course I wasn't!" John confirmed vehemently. "We ran upstairs, half expecting the bathroom to be blown to bits and you with it!"

"I was just trying to get it done faster," Greg groused, digging a spoon into his oatmeal.

John sighed and shook his head. "I know, kiddo, I know."

"Dr. House," an irritated voice broke into Greg's concentration and he looked up in equal vexation. They were in Radiology now, the bright lights behind the walls making spots dance before his eyes.

"Unless you're hiding scans behind your back, leave me alone. I'm just getting to the good part."

"You've read that before," John reminded him, eyeing the two hundred or so pages of the green and yellow book Greg still had to reread and wondering how all of it could be 'the good part'.

"Yeah, but now Snape's 'done a bunk' and the battle's about to begin."

"Done a what?"

"Ask Robbie," Greg said, burrowing more deeply into the book and effectively ending the conversation before John sighed and gently removed the offending tome from his hands.

"Thank you," Dr. Coopersmith said in a clearly annoyed voice before revealing Greg's chart. He removed several black plastic sheets from the folder he held in his other hand and slipped them into the crevices of the lighted walls with sharp little cracks. "Now that I have your attention, I have the pleasure of being able to say I might not see you for at least a few blessed months. Maybe if we both write to Santa, it'll be years."

"You still believe in Santa Claus? What are you, six?" Greg asked with faked derision, but John was staring at the scans. He's seen the ones from months ago, before the chemotherapy and the surgeries and the drug trials. He's learned to recognize the masses that have inhibited his son's brain functions for so long. He finds his breath catching in his chest to see that there's nothing there now but the blurry white clouded shapes that represent Greg's brain. No holes signifying tumors. He looks at Greg's eyes, so often glassy and unfocused, and sees the hard, inquiring stare he's missed for seemingly an eternity.

"Remission," Greg says, his head tilting to the left. "No metastasis to my CNS?"

"Your LP results reveal no evidence of anything out of the ordinary, no."

"Some real doctor speak would be nice," Greg said softly. "I miss it."

"And I need you to get the hell out of here. Preferably never to return."

Greg faked a pout, then, "You're not sorry to see me go?"

Coopersmith favored him with a malevolent grin. "Did I mention the 'House is Gone' party we have scheduled? We're cutting the cake at four."

"I want the voodoo doll and candles forwarded to Cuddy's house."

"Whatever. Just get out and never darken our doorstep again."

John laughed and even Greg couldn't keep the smile off his face.

"Have you heard of the term 'kiss my--'" John clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Oh, hush, boy. Goodbye, doctor."

He didn't laugh until they were back in the car. Greg stared at him the whole way home.

...My biggest fear will be the rescue of me...Strange how it turns out that way...

END