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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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[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Enough to think that cheating off a guy -- who got the answer wrong anyway -- was a good idea. Come on, House." She brought the side of her hand against the piano top and spread her fingers like a fan. "You might've been sloppy, but you still cared. It just came more easily for you than it did the rest of us."

House had been able to toss off diagnoses like a shot. Nine times out of ten -- and after significant reluctance from his handlers to admit it -- he'd been right. Statistically, House was an outlier of mythic proportions.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

There were plenty of ideas that he had that he knew weren't good ones yet he did them anyway. Sometimes, he knew they were absolutely horrible ones, but did them simply because they were either the only way or just..really, really funny. He still wasn't sure which classification his decision to cheat had been in.

..At least he'd gotten even.

As for it coming 'easier,' well... maybe the deductive reasoning he'd come pre-equipped with, but he still had to learn the material, same as anyone else. He'd just been content with his nerdiness in preliminary school to start early. The volumes upon volumes of medical journals and dictionaries that he still regularly used to this day proved that he still learned during every case.

People just didn't see it.

"I wouldn't say that. It's just bravado. If I came into your office saying 'This and this and this hasn't work so I think this very dangerous procedure will', most of my patients would die as you deliberated."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"That's the thing, though," she said, "you don't think -- you know. And look, I'm not trying to bolster your bravado to new levels -- I don't think the mattress funds I've got stacked away can even begin to touch that -- I'm saying it because, ninety, ninety-five percent of the time, you're right." Her fingers crept up onto their tips and she walked them toward the music stand while circling hips around the edge of the bench. 'Sat down next to him, her feet worked beneath brass piano pedals.

"But there has to be a system of checks and balances. You might be right, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give you carte blanche to do what you want."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House's mouth flew open briefly in a way that could have only been described as shocked insult at the insinuation that he didn't think, but she immediately deactivated the bomb by covering the statement with a backhanded compliment.

His hackles were still up, prepared to rebuttal fiercely, but he deflated carefully with her words until, by the time she was finished, the expression of indignation had worn away almost entirely.

Slowly, carefully, lips turned and he gave her a long look without fully turning his head to face her as she settled alongside him at the piano.

"..I must have done good." The tone was almost entirely comprised of obvious teasing qualities, perhaps to skirt the seriousness such a compliment suggested. "..with the whole thing about Stacy. You've never complimented me like that before."

At least not to his face.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She had her palms on her pleated skirt and when he rumbled his incredulity about being praised -- it was only loose, somehow-striking-up-against praise -- she pushed them into the fabric and turned her face up to the ceiling, her jaw shoved forward with amusement. Her laugh was soft, abrupt and faded more quickly than the piano note had.

"Yeah, House. This is all about Stacy."

It had been 'about Stacy' for approximately five minutes in her office, when Stacy had come in wearing a new black suit (which she complimented) and a soft drape of tangy perfume (which she also complimented.) There had been a friendship there, not too far back, and somewhere between the preliminary small talk and the fourth cup of clinic coffee, Cuddy had that she liked Stacy despite Stacy. But those razorback black brows had pushed downward and Stacy had asked questions that she'd had to deflect with a veil of 'I don't know.'

It was her administrative responsibility to protect him at work. It wasn't her responsibility to protect the softer. lesser-seen aspects of him. But she'd done it anyway. She still didn't know why.

A light turn of her mouth prompted more words, but these she deflected to the piano keys: "And don't worry. I won't forget myself again."