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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]

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.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

On screen, impossibly pretty people playing impossibly young characters were getting slaughtered in impossibly creative ways. Cuddy couldn't remember the last time she'd sat down to watch television -- a movie, a weeknight indulgence -- of her own accord. The truth of the matter was that, when it came to relaxation, Lisa Cuddy had had very limited experience outside of a rigid structure. There had been the blind dates (all of which had been as sparse as the heads of the board members House was referring to) and the occasional night out with the staff (Wilson had been a charming conversationalist and quite supportive when House was in his ketamine coma), but she was more or less a solitary creature and work suited her more than company.

It was strange, then, this compatibility with Gregory House.

"What, a tux? Or a hairpiece?" She grinned.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

A twisted smirk flickered into place at the query, attention wavering free of the television to shift aside and onto her, despite the fact that she was still watching (most likely with morbid curiousity over the content of the film; Unsolved Mysteries was more of House's thing on most days himself, and he somehow got the idea she would prefer that to the gore-fest on the screen currently) the movie. A heavy shrug was given, an action that sent him into a lean one direction from the way he was sitting.

"Either. Both." Her hair, fortunately enough, was still resolutely in place, refusing to contribute to the demographic of bald board members, so the idea of a tuppee (amusing as it might be) was just an idle conversation piece. "Wear both to the next charity function and I can talk Wilson into a dress."

Not himself of course. He didn't have nice enough legs.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"I'll bear that in mind when I talk to the board about the next charity allocation," she said, bringing the glass to her lips for a more thorough introduction to its contents. It wasn't especially late and Cuddy wasn't especially tired, but there was a warmth to her bones from the brandy and the blue-white technicolour glow from the TV provided as much ambience as could fill the dark eaves of the room.

She squidged her thumb across the curve of the glass and rolled her calf into a move comfortable position beneath her. House's wolf breath on the opposite cushion. The wan lighting leant a silver-gray tint to his hair and cut frostlike colours into his scraped-by cheeks.

"You've had a busy year," she said after a beat and an on-screen beating.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"If you -really- want attendance at a charity function, hire strippers. Or find some that will strip for charity." A beat as he considered, then with a more distinguished furrow of the brow. "Hell, strip yourself. Either would sell tickets." House would wear as many ties as she asked him to and sit through the entire thing, dying kid or not.

House was mid-way through a long drink from his own glass, dropping its contents well below the half empty mark, and contemplating the finer points of Cuddy stripping for charity when she deviated subjects with the view back on the previous year. Swallowing the mouthful he had and blinking at the burn the sudden gulp inspired, he hesitated, sucking the remnants from his teeth, trying to find a noncommital way of answering. "..after everything I went through, I didn't even get another good dwarf-that-really-isn't-a-dwarf case for Christmas. What's the point in being an award-winning diagnostician if you can't even get the interesting cases?"

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

He'd dropped pitches and she was sure that it wasn't entirely due to the half-gallon of brandy he'd just poured into his stomach. Bright shine at the corners of his eyes from the burn. "Oh, you'll manage," she said, pushing the back of her head against the cushion and wearing her shoulders downward for comfort, "I hear the bird flu's supposed to hop continents this year. You could bide your time and diagnose it as lupus."

It might've been the tone of the TV colour, but she saw a reflection of a smirk in his face. He was smooth and languid and handling the rim of the glass between the tips of his fingers. Every few moments he would press his thumbnail into the crystal lip, as if he was worried that it had changed shapes or forms.

A slightly softer tone that she wove while looking at the TV's reflection in her glass: "You did good." Not that he needed -- or even wanted -- her to say it.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He made a discontented sound at the mention of the bird flu, using the near-grunt to simutaneously throw a wrench at the supposed excitement behind an epidemic (the bird flu itself was diagnostically boring; if it managed to slip past customs, through Cuddy's clinic, and into House's department undiagnosed, he would mock her endlessly. It would be like her forcing him to treat a patient with a common cold) and to deflect her comment about the past year's activity.

If alcohol made her all warm and fuzzy like this normally, he'd stop giving it to her.

"If your hospital lets Bird Flu get all the way up to my department without diagnosing it, you all --" Including Cuddy and her ironfisted control of the hospital. "-- deserve to have your licenses revoked."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Are you going to make curing bureaucratic inefficiency your next objective? They don't give as many awards for that." They gave stock options.

Cuddy leaned forward and set her glass on the edge of the coffee table, fingers suspended above it for a few seconds to make sure it didn't tip. House's large, tendon-strapped feet moved around on the surface and made the brandy slosh lazily against the glass' sides. She settled back.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

A nonchalant shrug shifted his entire body from the way it was sprawled, surprisingly staying in more-or-less the same position despite the movement. He thought about setting his glass aside as well, but he was fairly comfortable, and doing so would require getting up.

He resigned himself to finishing the drink just so that he didn't have to move.

"..that or perfect the human race through selective breeding, I haven't decided yet. Still sort of waiting to hear back from Angelina about that check I sent her."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

One corner of her mouth perked up in what might've been good humour if it hadn'tve been pressed so far already that evening. She brought up her palms and corraled handfuls of her hair behind her shoulders, twisting it into a loose pony at the base of her neck. She tipped her head to him: "I'm pretty sure those kinds of Christmas miracles are antiquated. God's not as showy -- or generous -- as he used to be."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Damn," The word was breathed with a solemnity that was almost believable. He actually seemed to deflate a few notches. "I'll just have to find someone else with enormous..." Pausing for sincerity of the gravity in his words, he cast an idle glance her way to determine if she was taking him seriously or not (she wasn't; she rarely did, even in serious situations it seemed). "..lips."

Her lips were fairly average-sized. That was too bad. He'd just have to resume the search.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy capped the tip of one tooth with the flat of her tongue; 'gave it a considering sweep and then pressed her lips into motion: "If you're going to genetic purity, you can't get closer to the mark than offspring with permanent five o'clock shadows, latent drug addictions, voracious egoes and very, very big..." she allowed her 'brows to pop "...lips."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

She had no room to talk. She had been considering Wilson as a sperm donor. Worse yet, Wilson had thought it was something more than what it was in the first place. House grimaced at the very thought, but the expression was shortlived in favor of amusement.

He gave a sage nod in response. It was a good thing he didn't seriously want children. He'd have them conniving to take over the world by the time they were ten. The head games alone at home would be out of control.

"..What about your stab at genetic perfection?" He hadn't heard or seen evidence of continued in vitro attempts in a while from her. He'd briefly entertained that that had been why she'd been dating around -- another attempt at what she'd done with Wilson, but even that had tapered off over time.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy set her teeth on points and folded her lips carefully, a slight sidelong jerk of chin to indicate that it was a subject that she had deliberated about but would only say what was absolutely necessary. "Running a hospital comes with a lot of responsibility," she briefly pushed the pads of her thumbs against one another to feel the resistence, "a lot of long hours -- early mornings, late nights, sometimes really late nights. Diagnosticians whose actions frequently lead to really late nights," and here she gave him a tight, midly irritated expression, "-- it really wouldn't be in the best interest of a kid -- any kid."

Her mouth worked to one side while she reached for thought and an area of argument (a perfectly sound, rational argument) to chew on. She was quiet for a another half pause before she drew in a breath through her nose, the action seemingly buoying her head back up to Confidence Levels.

"I just hope the hospital outlives me -- like a child would've."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He was tempted to argue against the pessimism but decided against it. House was neither optimistic nor particularly supportive in most cases. Instead, he mustered up an understanding nod (her arguments were sound, and he wouldn't deny the logic in it; they were both for the most part rational creatures and it hadn't been a rational Cuddy that made the decision to attempt for a child. Sometimes, irrational Cuddy wasn't all bad, though...) and let the touchy subject drop where she left it. No intention of pushing further, at least on that particular sore spot.

House gave a minor shift, finishing off his glass before determining he had to find something to do with the container. Oi. Reluctantly, he pushed himself upward and leaned to drop it onto the coffee table in front of him. "I'm sure there will be some big expensive wing with your name tacked above it. Wilson will make sure a broom closet in the back of it is given my namesake just so I can always be around to irritate you."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

He did her a kindness by not pursuing it. This might have been standard practice and procedure to most people, but House was of the ilk that an argument was an argument and any kind of dissension against his viewpoint was the mark of an idiot. He was generally right. But now his willingness to drop the subject was both welcome and surprising.

A pair of fingers skirted the line of her brow and ducked behind her earlobe, rubbing at a wave curve of bone. She had not told him of the three attempts; three attempts and one success. She had rationalized that not trying at all would have been worse than the final failure. And then she had had House to worry over, and a vindictive detective with spearmint smoking gum tucked into his cheek, and Wilson's damnable determination to "do the right thing. In the wake of all that, a child had seemed a laughable idea.

Her face rose and fell in a facial shrug when he talked about end-of-life accolades, his breath and chin turned downward into the red of his collar. "I don't really care about the name or the wing," she said, "I just want to know that..." now a shoulder shrug "...I want to know that I didn't make the wrong choice. You know, the dean versus the doctor thing. I think I did. I want to believe that I did."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"You did." The sincerity in his tone was unignorable; the dead seriousness that virtually dared anyone in the room to question him -- it was a tone he'd perfected and she'd heard often over the years.

If anyone had the experience under other Hospital administrators to speak on the subject, it was House. He'd bounced from job to job for years before landing in Cuddy's office and was well-versed in what worked and what didn't. Administrative problems trickled down until, by the time they reached the bottom rung of the staff, it was a waterfall.

Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital tended to run flawlessly, and usually when it didn't, the squeaky wheel was House.

Just then, however, he was in no hurry to continue being squeaky, and after giving her the serious response, pushed himself to his feet awkwardly and slid away from the couch. He appeared to be lost for a few seconds (though it was just obvious he was uncomfortable with the serious tone of the conversation) and inevitably settled himself down at the piano bench, moving the x-rays aside.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She did not say 'thank you.'

Cuddy knew that she had done well for herself. Second-youngest dean of medicine, first woman. She took these statistics with her wherever she went and they sat just beneath the surface of everything she did -- an intradural marker of capabilities. She had pushed herself in college (somtimes with House's wiser aires and wise-cracking pushing back) and she had taken that to the doorstep of her specialty. She had given herself over to the scientific study of hormones while her contemporaries had conducted less-than-scientific inquiry into the same subject with one another; had screwed her eyes to microscope pieces and read slices of pituitary, thyroid and adrenals as easily as other people read body language. She had gone far, peaked early, and continued a long and much-lauded career at one of the finest teaching hospitals on the Eastern Seaboard.

It might not have been as perfect as the three-by-five life that she'd imagined as an undergraduate, but accommodations for a life had to be made, especially when that life was given the formidable task of running a hospital and micromanaging one of the most brilliant-minded men in medicine.

But now the conversation had grown far too serious and there was far too little seriousness on the television. Cuddy pulled her feet up beneath her and swung her hips sideways, planing her heels in the spot where House'd just been. She brought one knee to half mast; spread the spaces between her toes.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Micromanaging House was always set up on a pedastal with the rest of her tasks; people seemed to ignore the fact that the choice to do so had been entirely -hers- and continued to be. He'd done any number of combinations of misdeeds to merit having his license stripped, much less to earn being sacked. If she ever decided she wanted to see him out the door, she could have it done with very little resistance. As far as the board went, Wilson would be the only one to dig his heels in.

Well, maybe now she'd have a little more trouble, but she could have done it with relative ease any time before December 10th.

Stacking the X-rays carefully into a neat pile, they were pushed into a corner on top of the piano and promptly buried under a stack of medical journals (the x-rays actually belonged to him, and having a set of his own x-rays lying around the apartment was just a little odd. Cuddy would clue in on it if she got close enough to read the name.

"Guess who I got a phone call from earlier."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

House making small talk? It was curious enough to make Cuddy sit up and take notice, pushing her elbow against the back of the couch to bring hips into interested alignment. His back was a curved red bow over the piano bench. He would shift things around and the lamplight behind him would catch the fine, soft hairs on the contours of his arms.

She made her voice to be neutral. "Who?"

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Typically small talk wasn't his thing.

Small talk that could bring up amusing conversation pieces that would undoubtedly make Cuddy squirm, though, was very interesting.

"William Lynch." He let the name sink in a moment, barely restraining the urge to grin as he turned his attention downward to the piano keys and brushed fingers across a few to rid them of dust. While he wasn't an enormous neat freak, years of living with a cane had taught him to keep things off the floor and he'd always obsessive-compulsively taken care of his piano and the few guitars hanging on the wall.

"..Wanted to congradulate me on the Nobel. He must be pushing 80 by now." Eyes danced toward her. "Wasn't he the professor responsible for you coming in second?" House knew full and well that part of Cuddy held him, not Lynch responsible.

House stuck to the fact that she'd've gotten worse grades later on if it wasn't for him. She'd been far too textbook before he decided to annoy her.