And this too </3

At first, it was the clothes. The fitted sweaters and tailored blouses you used to wear around the apartment were replaced by his oversized, discarded flannel shirts and thick, heavy knit cardigans that swallowed your frame whole. When he reached out to pull you into his lap on the couch, your hand would reflexively drop to smooth down the fabric over your stomach, subtly pushing his arm up toward your shoulders instead.

Then came the doors. The bathroom door, which had remained unlocked for years of marriage, was suddenly clicking shut whenever you changed.

House sat in his recliner in the living room, a half-empty glass of scotch on the side table, watching the faint line of light under the closed bedroom door. The baby monitor on his lap gave off a soft, steady hum—Aurora was sound asleep in her nursery down the hall after a grueling three-hour fight against her own fatigue.

He set his glass down, picked up his cane, and pushed himself up.

In the quiet sanctuary of the bedroom, the air was thick with a suffocating, silent grief.

You stood in front of the full-length mirror, clad only in your undergarments. On the bed behind you lay three different pairs of pre-pregnancy trousers, all rejected. The last pair sat at your feet, dropped after a humiliating ten-minute struggle to pull the zipper past your hips.

You stared at the glass, your breath hitching.

The woman looking back at you felt like a stranger. The sharp waist you once had was replaced by a soft, rounded curve that hadn't snapped back. Silvery, pale pink lines stretched across your lower abdomen like fine, jagged lightning bolts—the permanent ink of a body that had expanded to shelter a human life. Your breasts were heavier, your skin looser.

Logically, you knew why. You had spent years grieving lost pregnancies, weeping over clean ultrasound screens, praying for a baby to hold. Aurora was a miracle. You loved her with every single cell in your body.

But emotionally, looking at the soft, altered tissue, a cold, terrifying voice whispered in your ear: How could he look at this and still want you? How could a man as intense, as visual, as unapologetically critical as Gregory House look at this softness and feel anything other than disappointment?

A tear slipped down your cheek, hot and fast. You grabbed one of House’s flannel shirts off the back of the vanity chair, hastily trying to shove your arms into the sleeves to cover yourself.

The door handle turned.

Clack. Tap. Clack.

You froze, wrapping the flannel tightly across your chest, overlapping the sides until you were completely cocooned.

House stood in the doorway. His sharp blue eyes swept over the room with clinical speed—the discarded jeans on the floor, the open wardrobe, the tear track glistening on your skin under the dim lamp light, and the rigid, defensive posture you had immediately assumed.

"You're doing it again," he said softly. His voice lacked its usual raspy sarcasm, grounded instead in a low, quiet gravity.

"Doing what?" you murmured, keeping your gaze fixed firmly on the floor near his cane tip. "I was just... I was trying on clothes. Getting ready for bed."

"Lying," House replied, taking two slow steps into the room. He set his cane against the bedside table with a muted clack and leaned his weight onto his good leg. "You've been dodging me for three weeks. You change behind locked doors. You flinch every time I put my hand on your hips. And right now, you look like a suspect caught red-handed in an interrogation room."

"Greg, please. I'm just tired," you tried, your voice cracking on the last word. You reached up to button the flannel, your fingers trembling so badly you couldn't thread the fabric through the hole.

Before you could finish, House was right in front of you.

He didn't grab the button. Instead, his warm, calloused hands reached out and gently closed around your wrists. Slowly, firmly, he pulled your hands away from your chest. You tried to pull back, to turn your shoulder away from him, but he held fast, refusing to let you shrink out of his sight.

"Look at me," he commanded softly.

You kept your eyes glued to the collar of his shirt. "No."

"Look at me," he repeated, a little firmer, reaching up with one hand to cup your jaw, his thumb softly resting against your cheekbone. He guided your face up until your tear-filled eyes met his.

"I don't want you to look at me right now," you sobbed, the dam finally breaking. Fresh tears spilled over your lashes, soaking into his thumb. "I look... awful, Greg. Nothing fits. My body is ruined. It's soft and loose and covered in marks and I can't—I can't bear the thought of you looking at it."

House stared at you for a long, silent moment. His expression didn't shift into pity—he hated pity. Instead, his blue eyes darkened with an intense, fierce protection that made your heart hammer against your ribs.

"Ruined," he repeated, testing the word on his tongue as if it were poison.

Without a word, he reached down and unbuttoned the top two buttons of the flannel shirt you were clinging to.

"Greg, don't—"

"Quiet," he murmured, his voice thick and commanding as he slid the heavy flannel off your shoulders, letting it pool onto the carpet at your feet.

You instinctively went to fold your arms over your stomach again, but House caught your forearms, holding them at your sides. He stepped closer, eliminating every inch of air between you, until his chest was brushing yours.

"I spend sixteen hours a day surrounded by human bodies," House said, his gaze locking onto yours with an almost scary intensity. "I look at lungs that fail, livers that rot, hearts that quit, and legs..." He paused, casting a brief, dark glance down at his own withered right thigh. "...that decay from the inside out. I know what a broken, ruined body looks like. I live in one every day."

He lowered his hands from your arms down to your waist, resting his broad, warm palms directly against the curve of your hips, his fingers pressing firmly into your soft skin.

"This?" he whispered, his voice dropping an octave as he looked down at your stomach. "This isn't a failure."

He sank down slowly, lowering himself until he was kneeling on his good knee right in front of you on the bedroom floor—a position that was agonizing for his leg, but he didn't care. He leaned in, pressing a long, warm, lingering kiss directly over the cluster of silvery stretch marks on your lower abdomen.

A sharp gasp hitched in your throat.

"Greg..."

"This body built my daughter," he murmured against your skin, his breath hot against your stomach. He traced the silver lines with the tip of his finger, his touch light and reverence-filled. "When we thought we were broken, when we thought we’d never get to hold a child of our own, this body rewrote its own biology to keep her safe for nine months. It stretched, it adapted, it fought."

He looked up at you from his spot on the floor, his eyes fierce and unyielding.

"Every single mark on your skin is a record of a battle you won," he said firmly. "They are the braves' scars I've ever seen. And you stand here in front of a piece of mirror glass telling yourself you're ruined?"

He placed his hands on your thighs, using you for support as he pushed himself back up to his feet, ignoring the sharp wince that crossed his face as his bad leg took the strain. Once he was standing, he pulled you flush against his chest, wrapping his arms around your back and burying his face in the crook of your neck.

"I don't want the body you had five years ago," he whispered into your skin, his hands pressing flat against your lower back, holding you so tight you could feel the heavy, steady thud of his heart against your ribs. "I want you. The woman who survived. The woman who gave me Aurora. The woman who stays with a bitter, crippled diagnostician every single night."

He pulled back just enough to look into your eyes, his hands moving to frame your face.

"If you think for one second that I desire you any less because your body carried my child," House said, his voice dropping into that familiar, arrogant, absolute certainty, "then your brain is the only organ in this house that needs an immediate diagnostic workup."

A watery, breathless laugh bubbled up from your throat, breaking through the heavy angst that had gripped you all evening.

House didn't smile, but the tension in his shoulders finally eased. He leaned down and captured your lips in a deep, possessive, intoxicating kiss—one that didn't leave any room for doubt, insecurity, or fear. He kissed you until your knees felt weak, until your hands were tangled tightly in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer.

When he finally pulled back, both of you breathing heavily, he leaned his forehead against yours.

"No more locked doors," he rasped softly, his thumb sweeping over your lower lip. "No more hiding under my shirts unless you're stealing them because you're cold. Understood?"

"Understood," you whispered, leaning up to press a soft kiss to his jaw.

House reached back, snagging his cane off the nightstand, before looping his arm securely around your waist, pulling you toward the bed. "Good. Now get under the covers. My leg hurts like hell from kneeling, and you owe me a back rub for making me give an inspirational speech."

You smiled against his shoulder, letting him lead you into the warmth of the blankets, the heavy, dark clouds in your mind completely scattered by the man who loved every single piece of you.

-end of episode 2