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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]

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.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

The room erupted with a loud bark of derisive laughter. She tossed her head back and threw up a hand, dovetailing the motion by bringing the palm to her face. "You're kidding -- Lynch? Professor I-Use-All-My-Own-Textbook-Diagrams-As-Overheads-Even-Though-They're-Two-Decades-Out-Of-Date? Oh, god," she propped an elbow to her knee and pushed her forehead into the palm; rubbed back and forth a couple of times. 'Sudden upward eyes and hard-furrowed brow. That gentle hand turned into a stiff one-finger point right at the center of House's chest:

"And no -- that's not how it happened. Lynch was incredibly accommodating. He loved my paper on lateral organ systems." Another hard point that, if it struck something, would have left a mark. "You were the one who gave me a ninety-two and told me that if I 'wanted to write crap,' I should have just 'become a political consultant or a televangelical speechwriter.'" She shook her head, mouth full of ire that barely formed itself around a smirk.

"You and your insane mindgames. You know, I blocked out a large part of my collegiate experience because of you. There's a gap," she motioned with her hands held about six inches apart, "of about three months that's just a lot of white noise now. You had me working Orgo Chem formulas that scientists at the CDC had trouble with."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Only one other person got a higher grade than you." That bit of information probably came as a surprise to her, as most of her classmates had been scared to show Cuddy their papers, her wrath following House's grading being so intense. He had been positive the floors were shaking when she approached him the day after handing the papers out.

"And the CDC is made up of idiots." Common insult coming from House -- most people were idiots in his opinion -- but no less true than the sky being blue. The response was flippant with mirth to the point where he had to look away to mask the almost-grin he was fighting with, resolutely looking out the nearest window until he was able to get hold him himself and force it down to a lower-keyed smirk.

"You're the one that was a glutton for punishment so much that you kept coming back trying to prove yourself to me."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She was persistent now.

Having gotten her immediate anger and disbelief out in that bright gray-worded storm, she folded her legs over the edge of the couch and pushed into a stand, arms linking tightly across her chest. She kind of swayed from foot to foot, an easy, calculated step around the side of the coffee table. She might have been a lawyer coming around the bench to deliver a case-breaking question to a star witness.

She approached the piano and stood beside it, one ankle turned out. She raised her chin a fraction. Filled her lower jaw with tongue.

"Who got a higher grade?"