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[mmkaternater]

Christmas Eve. The High Mass would have started twenty minutes ago, Chicago time, by Cuddy's watch. Her father had called late in the day, wished her a "merry Christmas" and had asked her if she was going to local services. I haven't been to mass in twenty years, dad. You know that. By now, the priest would have greeted the congregation and begun to cite the Pauline epistles, then moved on and asked everyone -- conveniently on their knees -- to pray for God's mercy and to give thanks for the miracle of a holy birth two-thousand years young. Her mother would not have attended the service. In a strange twist of heretical faiths, her mother -- born in a Jewish suburb in Upstate New York -- had fallen in love with a well-spoken Irish Catholic and had managed to keep her religious independence in the face of her red-nosed, red-elbowed in-laws. Cuddy had always felt more akin to her mother's faith -- the Amidah and the Shir ha-Shirim with their rich, rooted words -- and she kept a small silver menorah on the table behind her desk during this season. It was the only time during the year that she showed any deference to a power higher than medicine.

Seven-thirty. It had not yet snowed. There were holiday parties going on all over campus -- she had been invited to several but had pleaded off for necessity of business -- and there was little staff support in the hospital save for those whose hearts weren't in the holiday (or those whose hearts weren't functioning very well at all.)

Stacy had returned a week-and-a-half prior and had brought with her the smell of sharp cloves and legal affidavits. She had worn black (but then again, when had Stacy not?) and Cuddy had given the answers that she asked for, but had tempered her responses where at all possible. The high, plucked black brows (matched perfectly to the curl of bobbed hair) had risen a few times during the course of the conversation, but Stacy liked to keep her arguments to herself until she had sufficient evidence to voice them -- it was what made her undeniably good at what she did.

Cuddy had not spoken to House outside of routine hospital palava since she had sent him home. He had appeared the next day, peaked but bearing some likeness to his former self, and had not seemed surprised when Stacy had presented herself. They seemed to make a conscious effort to avoid one another.

A milder soundtrack on her computer. Every once in a while she would tap the volume button up a few clicks, decide that it was too high, and then lower it again. This happened several times. She was on her eighth budget surplus report when, dragging her fingers around the rim of her cup, she had touched nothing but a cold, glassy shell. It had gone cold. She tipped it out into the wastebin beside her desk.

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[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He gave a disgruntled shift and sank into the chair opposite her desk with a mock huff at the thought. He wasn't going to spend the better part of half a year crashing his immune system and living pain free just to ruin it over a distaste for oral medication. He'd popped vicodin for so long it was habit to have some sort of pill bottle on him at all times. He felt naked without the shuffle of pills against his leg through his pockets.

It was like not having your keys or wallet. Even if you knew exactly where you'd put them, you still kept patting yourself down to look for them because your body registers the absent weight in your pockets.

"Not only that, but I humored Wilson with an MRI for lymphomas. Way I figure it, it keeps me from having to buy him another really bad tie for Christmas."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"You did the MRI? Good. Thank you. I was going to give him the sweater I had set aside for you," she said, "but now I've got to trade up." He was arranging himself in the chair opposite the desk, balancing his weight on one leg while he hitched up the opposite hip to tug his jacket down. When he finished with one side he moved his weight to the other -- seamless transition. It was a feat that he could not have accomplished ten months prior.

She leaned back in her own chair, fingers loosely tented around the circumference of the cup. Her feet slid halfway from constricting heels and she let the points dangle over the carpet. Her lungs felt rattly. She hoped she wasn't getting a cold.

"'Stacy go back?"

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House's lips tightened tenatively, an expression he only used when his thoughts turned one direction but he exercised restraint against voicing them. It was rare that he ever thought one thing and said another. Even when he lied, his thoughts were believably fixated on his words.

"Yes. Partially why I'm here." Hesitating as he debated, he scrubbed knuckles into a slightly-trimmed up scruff line (he'd let it grow more than he even typically did while his father was at the hospital; normally, House never let it venture from scruff to beard, a transition he kept at bay by shaving on Saturdays so he still had a few days growth by Monday) before simply deciding to get it out there, a decision emphasized by a wave of the hand minutely. "Nothing happened. I know you didn't ask and wouldn't have... but there it is."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy was used to perpetrating magnanimous gestures, but the raise of her hand -- vulnerable palm flesh facing him, fingers slightly bowed -- "House, you don't have to..." the fingers went stiff and then curled into her palm. She pressed her face into easier angles, the softer end of a forced laugh. "...Really."

She swept that hand, too casual to be borne on casual thoughts, across her desk. "Far as I'm concerned, she needed a ride to the airport." A week-long ride to the airport. "And I'm glad that she could be here for you. It was nice to see her again," she began to reshuffle the order of her desk, nudging files aside with slick coffee fingers, "I just wish it had been under different circumstances." And she pressed her lips, almost demure.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

That had been the response he was waiting on, studying her intensely throughout the entire transition -- body language and facial expressions alike. House was something of a professional when it came to reading Cuddy (she really wasn't that skilled at hiding her thoughts), capable of discerning the slightest change in demeanor with the most subtle line in her brow, and this... well, it had all the subtlety of an M16 fired off in the middle of a busy shopping center.

She was relieved. She was trying very hard to not appear to be...

House left it at that and nodded, though not perhaps the sobered nod she might have expected, her words considered. Instead he flexed palms against his knees, then pushed himself into a rise. "..I'm going home. I think there's a Scream marathon on HBO tonight." Gorey murder movies on Christmas eve. Fantastic.

"You should get out of here, too." Though he doubted that would do any good.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Oh, I will, eventually," with all the certainty of someone who'd already resigned themselves to an evening amongst tabbed folders and hail mary coffee reprieves, "I'll probably put in a couple more hours then go home. There's some..." she thumbed a breeze between the pages of a particularly thick stack of folders "...pretty intense stuff here. I got on a roll before you came in. Don't want to break the streak."

Cuddy tucked the coffee cup behind a larger stack. Gave him an amused, curious glance of sidelong interest: "Scream...that's, what? The movie series? I'm assuming that all the real screaming that you usually subscribe to only comes on after eleven o'clock." Her wan, watered down attempt at levity. "Not really a sanctioned way to welcome the birth of the Messiah, House."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Drew Barrymore getting gutted or the NA/RO version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus..." He made an expression of serious debate, as if he wasn't certain which was more entertaining. They both definitely had their pluses.

Trailing off, he afforded her with a long look, but inevitably couldn't force himself to suggest she should come over once she was finished. He'd come and said what he'd planned on, that was as far as he'd go. They both probably had every intention of being there tomorrow anyway. It wasn't like he couldn't make claim on the sweater she'd insinuated getting him then.

Not that he was much of a sweater wearer...

"Have fun with your... intense paperwork." The idea itself was ridiculous.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She had perked a small smile when he'd gone the predictable House route: deflect, deflect, deflect. Struck with the contrast of Stockholm and Princeton, House was more at home in these dark, dour colours and a scarf that didn't go with a tux. He had buried his mouth into the crux of wool and fringe and she saw his eyes go toward the door with body's intent to follow.

"Merry Christmas, House."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House gave a brief, discomforted twist of his lips, still angled heavily towards the door, but he allowed himself the hesitation long enough to give a small indication in the direction of the menorah on her desk.

He twisted his lips back and forth a moment before pulling up the proper response in comfortable Hebrew. Then again, he rarely spoke anything in another language if he couldn't do it comfortably. It simply was who he was. "Gmar chasimah tovah."

Unreligious as he might have been, he could still acknowledge other people's beliefs -- dim as they may be, in Cuddy's case. Sliding into step for the door, he headed out and pulled the door closed behind him. Hands were shoved deep into his pockets and he ducked under his scarf a bit before he moved away from the door, slumping his way back towards the front of the hospital.

Another Christmas. Last year, he'd been overdosing himself with stolen vicodin. All in all, a definite step up.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

The snow had come -- three hours earlier than the forecast had predicted -- and clumps of it were falling in that strange, meteorological rain that made even walking a visibility problem. Cuddy had camped out at her desk for a half an hour after House's amiable departure.

She had cleaned the dregs from the bottom of his coffee cup and set it aside. In the low lamplight, she saw that it was marked with a ballpoint on the side -- two boxes, one for cream and one for sugar, both checked with a wide blue loop. It was pre-meditated coffee delivery. She wasn't sure if it was this, the music, the hour or sheer insanity that prompted her to shove all of her files to one corner of her desk and dim the lamp. It was eight-oh-six and she had her coat on, a full two hours earlier than her administrative forecast had predicted.

The walk to her car was idyllic: like a scene from an overplayed movie (but not any movie that House paid a monthly premium for), aided by a low roar of approaching wind from the not-too-far-removed Atlantic Ocean. She had her hospital heels on and the pavement was slippery (she almost lost her ankles twice on black ice) but she made it to her car and slid into the driver's seat, keys pumped into the ignition with a roar of cultured engine. The heat chugged on immediately, tempering the frost in the tips of her fingers.

She drove, only half remembering the way from previous missions (she had never been officially invited to House's apartment and had relied on Wilson's shoddy directional skills and a later Mapquest query the first time) with her windshield wipers batting ineffectively at the snow. They were predicting twelve to sixteen inches, heavy drifting, and combative road conditions before the holiday morning rolled around. Those creatures with warm caves and warm families were already at home, but there were still a few intrepid loners out on the road and Cuddy appreciated their company.

His block was tree-lined and lit by foggy lamps. He had well-maintained sidewalks and when she approached his door her heels crunched over conscientiously-scattered salt. Her gloves muffled some of the sound of her knock. She could hear dull TV noise coming from inside.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He'd changed pants but left the red t-shirt he'd tugged over his head that morning in place. A tall glass of brandy was made to temper his mood, and otherwise he'd sat down to wait on Scream. Drew Barrymore was making popcorn when the door knocked, and for an idle instant, House thought it was the television and ignored it.

A sidelong glance in the direction of his door was made over the back of the couch (he'd been sprawled across it lengthwise) and he noticed a shadow through the paneled glass. Stacy? Wilson maybe? Off chance of Cameron?

Setting the glass aside, House shifted into a roll off the couch and to his feet, a motion that never settled entirely well with his leg. He always had to remind himself that just because there was no pain didn't mean it was all right. The damaged nerve-endings he'd had grafted into his thigh kept him from feeling the pain there, but it didn't mean the leg was well by any means.

Limping to regain his balance, but not for reasons of pain, he angled himself for the door and made his way there. The phone on the television started to ring, but he forced himself to turn away long enough to throw back the lock and pull the door open.

He blinked, visibly taken aback, when he saw Cuddy standing in the doorway.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She had collected most of her breath in the space between her mouth and lungs, partly for the trepidation and partly for the fact that she was worried about soft tissue freezing, and when the door swung open she let some of it go, producing a fog. He seemed surprised to see her. Cuddy took a small portion of this surprise for herself -- for later recollection and reflection -- but left the majority of it to him.

"I finished early."

Her eyes angled around the red curve of his shoulder. 'Back to him again. "The paperwork," by way of further explanation, "you left and everything just got easier. I should have you do that more often." She turned a glance halfway over her shoulder toward the street, pulling at the loose ends of her scarf. "I didn't want to presume or..." she made an amused sound with her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek "...I know you had plans."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

A smirk was given to mask the genuine smile that was far more tempting; it wasn't a complete victory, but for the most part, the smirk won. Long enough, at least, for him to nudge the door open a little more and step back so she could come in.

"Ms. Barrymore's a leniant mistress." Anyone, really, who could be rented for $2.95 a week from a local video store tended to be.

Waiting until she was inside, he eased the door closed behind her once again, resecuring the door with only the most minor of considerations given to the snow. She wouldn't be going anywhere any time soon, and he didn't mind in the least.

"Hopefully you ate before you came because my pantry consists of a really old can of soup and a jar of peanut butter. I do have brandy." ..and that apparently made up for everything.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She advanced into a space that was wall-to-wall Greg House. Stacy had left touches here and there -- the blanket was folded on the back of the couch instead of balled up between two cushions, and Cuddy would see neatly stacked dishes in the kitchen if and when she ventured that far -- but for the most part, House's dominant genes and personality overrode anything recessive. Here, dark wood floors met dark-clothed furniture and the lip of the baby grand was stacked with sheet music and, yes, X-rays.

He had good taste. Dutch Modern furniture and feel and, not for the first time, Cuddy was reminded of the kind of taste he'd had pre-dating Princeton. His off-campus apartment -- which she'd only had occasion and reason to visit once (maximum three times) -- had been a shallower reflection of this modern space. He had cultivated his pleasures like he'd cultivated the three days' growth of beard.

"Cafeteria dinner," she said of his question of foodstuffs, "which, I don't know, compared to what you're serving..." She tempted a smile and threaded the scarf from the loose collar of her coat. He had padded away from her, long bare toes on cold floorboards, and it was the doctor in her that looked instinctively for the limp.

"Brandy's fine," she found herself saying, resigning her coat and scarf to the back of a chair.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

There were reasons that hospital patients and long-limbed diagnosticians -- generally which had nothing in common save a tendency to live off the same food -- tended to either lose weight dramatically or remain in a seemingly endless state of leanness. The cafeteria provided the lion's share of House's meals and all of a patient's and the correlations could be drawn with a fair amount of ease.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt the hospital to throw a little peanut butter in.

"..You don't even let the cafeteria workers have Christmas Eve off. Slave-driver."

As she went about pulling off the layers of her bundle, he made his way into the kitchen for a glass and equal-sized drink as he'd barely touched his own before returning and handing it off. Screams from the television.

House cast it an idle glance, moving back to the couch to settle on one end of it instead of the sprawl, but he did bank the volume down some, leaving room for comfortable conversation over the noise.

He knew that, as a hospital, none of them really got the benefit of getting holidays off. They unfortunately tended to be busier than regular days.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

House, true to form, had handed her a tumbler instead of a traditional or refined snifter, and two cubes of ice bumped noisily against the glass. But the brandy was gold and smoky and had the good brandy smell that she had recognized in her younger years but had mostly sworn off in favour of a trimmer waistline and stronger countenance. But she would't refuse it -- not in this setting, not on this particular day.

Cuddy came around the side of the couch and perched on an arm, glass given an upper thigh coaster. "If you wanted a fair and just world, you should have gone to work for Doctors Without Borders" She raised the glass to her lips and took a sip, stung by the potency. "'Meantime, I'll continue to pay time-and-a-half to the employees on my staff who want to work holidays."

After a moment's consideration of the comfort of the couch arm she slid down onto the cushion proper and curled her ankles against the base, one tucked behind the other. Ice cubes clinked. He was weighing one end of the couch and she had sunk into a place that had, very recently, held his body heat.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Time-and-a-half?" He gave a blank look in her direction as she settled opposite him on the couch, hesitating mid-way through pulling a draft from the tumbler in hand. He wasn't privy to that luxury, then again, not everyone in the hospital could boast being salary or having the sort of pension he'd have if he ever got around to actually using it.

"I knew you were playing favorites with everyone else.. with me, you just tell me I have to be there. I should sue." If she played favorites with anyone, it was him, even if it was the backward sort of paying-more-attention-to-than-he'd-like-in-most-circumstances favorites that he'd treated her back at U of M.

Maybe that's where she'd learned the behaviour. Frowning slightly at this realization, he shot her a skeptical glance out of the corner of hooded eyes.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy's mouth formed a curious and amused shape around a sip of brandy. She swallowed the burn and pushed her elbow up onto the back cushion, fitting a frame of fingers around her temple. "I've got eight lawyers on retainer, House." A beat, forward lean. "And a brother-in-law who works for the ACLU in D.C. --" her thumb came down to trace the curve of her smile "-- bring it."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House made a face that could have easily been disguised as being a response to nothing more than his drink. He hadn't been serious, but her more-than-serious response did merit a glance and consideration at the least to determine if it was a possible pursuit.

Nah. She'd just delight in beating back the effort. He didn't mind working on holidays anyway, typically. It made them get over with more quickly, and that tended to be his single concentration. Push through the season and people will resume being themselves. He was -almost- finished with Christmas, then there was a week until New Years and the world would right itself again.

"I just made the hospital..god-knows-how-much money in grant and donation funds this season." He knew Cuddy was extra busy and he knew that a great deal of that could be attributed to their recent excursion to Stockholm and the extra-heavy paperweight he'd dropped onto his piano and failed to open. Stacy had doted over it and moved it...somewhere, but House hadn't seen it since.

Maybe she'd taken it with her.

"I think I'll end the year on a high-note. It gives me all sort of room to go over-budget in your House-insurance plan next year."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"That's better than a sweater," she said, briefly filling the toes of her shoes with her feet and then slipping them off, one at a time, "thanks." She might only have been half kidding. Truth be told, while they had profited monetarily and public relations-wise from his recent (albeit reluctant) step into intellectual infamy, there had been little re-working of benefits in his favour. She had alleviated him of the clinic hours he had demanded in trade for accepting the award, and she had kept PR entreaties off of his desk (not that he would agree to fulfill them anyway.) But she had been resolute in keeping things even-keeled around him and not, as hospital board policy might wish, given him god-like powers because of the money he'd brought in.

And House, for his part, had kept his silence about what had happened in Stockholm. It was true that they hadn't seen much of one another -- out side a certain formal structure -- since they had returned (the roof and his office withstanding) and there was little room, even then, for the scale of the things they had to talk about. She wasn't sure that she wanted to. They were consumed by things outside themselves. It was a familiar place to be lodged.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

It was better, honestly, that she had handled it the way she had. House's primary reason in not wanting the award in the first place had been due to the change it suggested and he was notoriously unfond of change in any manner. Inter-hospital regime changes, duckling rotations (this more recent than the regime); hell, even the quarterly on-call list changes that Cuddy put into place bothered him.

It wasn't often that he consulted anyone in the hospital that wasn't a direct employee of his, Wilson, or Cuddy, but if he ever -wanted- a consult, he didn't want to go have to look through back weeks of old e-mail to find the carefully constructed document and attachment Cuddy sent out. She'd learned in his first year to not change his on-call schedule if only because he'd simply refuse to follow it and wouldn't answer his phone. Everyone else should do the same, in his opinion.

Had she allowed even a single P.R. request to slip through the cracks and onto his desk, he'd've most likely done something embarrassing. Cameron continuously combed out his private mail to keep any from getting through. Between Cameron and Cuddy's combined efforts, things hadn't changed for the most part.

Except Foreman. House didn't like the way his previously most-caustic fellow regarded him suddenly, as if he respected him more. The man reminded him far too much of a younger Cuddy. Too ambitious for his own good.

"How are you handling everything anyway? You've been working 8 hours a week more than normal." Odd that he'd be able to pin down to-the-approximate-hour how much more time she was spending holed up in her cave, but he'd spent a lot more time at the hospital over the past two weeks than he typically did and Cuddy tended to always be one of the first things he noticed.

"An invitation to the Annual New Year's Charity party hasn't even made it to my desk." Testament to her overtime hours.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy's brow creased -- first at the exactness of the number, secondly that House had managed to raise genuine concern without being turned into stone or a pillar of salt. In th end, she rationalized that it was a very Houselike thing to do. He was trained in observation and his cognitive detective ability didn't stop at microbes and moles. He was just as adept at people watching and had probably intimated the rough productivity haul by monitoring the light on in her office, or by how many sachets of sugar she put into her coffee. He was like that.

Still, it was a slightly personal question and since neither of them did exceptionally well with candor, Cuddy had to scrape past the surface answer -- I'm fine; I've been handing everything exceptionally well and suited to my station -- for something else.

"This time of year is rough anyway," she said, bringing her hand beneath the bottom of the glass, "a lot of things to bring under one umbrella, sometimes at the last minute." Words and the placement of tone a reluctant admission that she could not do everything, even though she was contracted for it. "We're actually on-target," she lifted her eyes, "well, above target, as far as fiscal returns are concerned. We'll be able to break ground on a nuclear medicine wing some time next June, July." Her head fell back and she gave him her candid, unguarded regard.

"-- And I thought you'd sworn off charity work. 'One black tie event per decade' is what I think we settled on in your contract."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He smirked despite himself at the response involving his distaste for black ties, squirming down on the couch into a comfortable (even though it really didn't look it) bend that allowed him to kick legs into an idle lock in front of him at the ankles on the coffee table.

By his calculations, he'd been to one during his 11 year tenture which made him due for another. Then again, Cuddy was most likely saving that one for a really horrible one. She'd find one, sometime. The poker one shouldn't have counted, anyway.. that was fun, and House got to leave early. If another event came up in which he could use his Cuddy-knowledge to the advantage of destroying her in Texas Hold 'Em, he'd probably go again, black tie or not.

"Yeah, well, ties do make my butt look big." And they were uncomfortable and made things really difficult if you happened to get into a fight (not that House was prone to random brawls, but his hypothetical ones tended to involve someone grabbing a tie).

The comment about the nuclear medicine wing was taken with an absent nod. Excitement for Cuddy, really no interest to House. The premise enough was interesting, but he was certain she'd hire enough boring doctors to scare him away from the department altogether.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"You look good in a tux," she said and, in case this was to be taken as a compliment, she remanded it with, "but half the board looks good in tuxes, so don't go sending out for your drycleaning just yet." House so rarely looked after his appearance that, when he did put even a minimal effort into it, the effect was astounding. Stockholm had seen him the most presentable version of himself in years. It was surface shine and artifice, Cuddy knew, but it pleased her to see that there were facets to him that a twenty-plus year association had yet to reveal.

She tugged her leg up onto the cushion beneath her and pushed the toes of her other foot against the temperate floorboards. Squidged her foot around a bit, 'little too coltish to be entirely comfortable in her skin or in the situation. But House's company and apartment were warm, like a soft wool blanket, and Cuddy felt calmer here than she had in the institutional corridors of the hospital.

It should have bothered her, but it didn't.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Half the board is bald, too," Okay, so that was a little pety, but House had never been known for his extraordinary maturity, and he did have a point. Anything that detracted from the hereditary hairloss demonstrated in the majority of the board -- female portion included -- would make them look good.

Fact of the matter was, scrubs looked horrible with a bald head. Dress it up in a tux and bow tie and it would look better. House could hold his own -without- the tie.

Maybe if she'd let the compliment stand, he wouldn't have resorted to it. Then again, he might have anyway, and his ego would still be bloistered. It seemed to be Cuddy's personal mission to keep him as deflated as possible at all times.

"You probably wouldn't look too bad in one yourself." It was unfair really, that women could look hot in men's clothing but not vice versa.