(no subject)

[mmkaternater]

To say that the last week had been a rollercoaster ride would be, at the very minimum, an extreme kindness. Even the most sadistic of rollercoaster engineers on his very worst day couldn't have formulated the kinds of stomach-wrenching turns and heart-palpitating loops that Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had had to endure in the CDC (and post-CDC) malarkey. House's eighth and ninth biopsies had come back with positive markers for ebola and Cuddy had received an abrupt e-mail a few hours later with a subject line that read

I was right

and a body message of Hold all my calls.

And then he had submerged beneath the hospital's amorphous surface and Cuddy had done what Cuddy did best -- in several nationally-televised press conferences and reports to government figureheads -- and the CDC had taken the boot to the gut (but not politely.) A majority hearing to assess the CDC's role in the crisis was scheduled to begin in the Fall. In the meantime, patients who were being treated for a rogue strand of bird flu were now being treated for a rogue strand of the ebola virus, which had subsequently been traced back to -- uncannily enough -- a Wall Street investor with a flying mammal fascination and a pet store that carried bats without proper vaccinations. Most of the damage to patients had been readily controlled, and Cuddy handled the transition of those patients to several neighboring hospitals. The under-the-radar biopsies were not mentioned. Neither was House's name, though his sudden non-presence in the hospital was enough to send the wiser heads wagging around her door after the press conference broke.

It had taken a few more days before Cuddy could see the top of her desk again, and she was settling into the middle of a Thursday afternoon by clearing her office of the remains of a governmental body. Her desk had been tossed about and there were smudge marks on the spines of her books. Her picture frames had been handled and then tossed back onto the credenza without regard. But, with minor adjustments, Cuddy had begun to tune the instrument of her office back to its proper chord and the hospital was falling in step to the beat.

Which left the matter of House's step -- specifically where it was -- in question. He had ducked all manner of radar since making his brash diagnosis and between dealing with the government, the press, and a worried phalanx of doctors and patients, she hadn't had time to seek him out. Her motivations were not entirely personal. There was a stack of paperwork about a foot and a half high parked on the seat of one of her chairs. Cameron usually ran point on House's mail and House's signature, but there were no cut corners for Cuddy, especially when it could have permanent echoes of impact on the way she did things. She liked how she did things. 'Wanted to avoid more government interaction if at all possible.

By two-thirty she'd had him paged on four separate occasions. She'd rung through to his personal pager. Called his cell phone. Left several messages on his office phone (only one of which she gave her voice to, the other ones recorded her fierce expression as readily as any speech she could make) and even sent a runner up to his lounge and Wilson's office to suss him out. The runner had come back, hedged around the doorframe, and had sullenly reported that House had not been in any of the predescribed locations. Cuddy, in the middle of a last-minute phone call with the CDC, had pushed a 'one minute' finger in the air, then waved him away. She ended the call with an abrupt "No" and hung up.

With a slab of paperwork slung across her hip, Cuddy set out on the trail of one of the most elusive men it had been in her reputation to know. She had encountered Wilson, who looked refreshed by the departure of the CDC but pale when he saw her approach, and he had been characteristically evasive before giving up that House was sitting in on a gall bladder surgery in OR 4.

"He told me to 'hold his calls'," Wilson had said.

Cuddy climbed the sort stairs to the suite above the OR and shouldered into the door, marked irritation in the high lines of her face and in her cheeks. She got a glimpse of a pair of sneakers stuffed up onto the window sill overlooking the surgical suite. A glossy gossip magazine was slung across his stomach. She crossed the distance in short, greedy strides. The chunk of files on her hip was readjusted.

"Gall bladder surgery, House?" she queried from under speculative brows "Did the cable in your office go out?"

Comments

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

It had only been a matter of time before Cuddy would track him down; that much he was aware of as it always happened. He'd been able to get away with it for an extended period of time due to how utterly swamped she was in the wake of his outing the CDC as the bunch of blubbering idiots that they truly were (she'd enjoyed it; he could see it in her face on the press conference he'd watched over the internet), but as Thursday rolled around, he'd taken extra care to hide well as he knew she wouldn't let Friday roll by without having checked in on him.

Cuddy was annoying like that.

Unsurprised when the overseeing room's door was brushed open, House's sprawl tensed none, even when gaze flicked aside to take note of the intruder and her.. particularly irritated (joy) poise in her approach to him. To demonstrate his lack of concern, he flipped another page in his magazine and resumed rubbing fingertips through the newly-cropped (but still scruffy) lining on his chin.

"..Better lighting in here to read." A minor indication was granted towards the blinding reflection of OR lights through the glass paneling that seperated the rooms.

The lighting was better.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Hummel was the attending and his team always worked under the direction of Alice Cooper -- specifically "Under My Wheels" and "Killer" -- despite the fact that Cuddy had tried, time and again, to keep any and all headbanging out of the O.R. The guitar riff squealed and captured her attention momentarily, eyes tracking over the blue-scrubbed heads to the patient on the table. Hummel's head was bobbing beneath his surgical cap, timed to the beat, as he lifted a distended gall bladder from a spotlit abdomen. She filed this infraction away for later discussion with Hummel.

"-- And for purposely avoiding the paperwork you know I have for you," she said, turning her attention back to the slump-backed creature in the chair. She shifted the pile to drive his focus home. "Signatures, House. It'll take you twenty minutes, max." Both hands folded around the clump of papers and hovered them -- in a perfect magazine-obstructing manner -- for his taking. "And don't try and cut corners by having Cameron sign them. These are government docs. I'll compare and contrast if I have to. And you won't like me when I have to come find you again and make you do them over."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Carefully, blue hues rolled upward to fix on the cluster of paperwork she was attempting to hand off to him (it figured; do a good deed, save a few hundred lives from a shoddy diagnosis, make Cuddy happy by getting rid of her intruders, and what thanks do you get? A hundred bits of scrap paper to shuffle your name across because you did the tests yourself instead of making your fellows do it like you normally did) in skeptical disregard.

House refused to reach and take them from her. He was curious to see how defined her upper body strength was to hold an awkward weight like that out over a surface (this surface being his lap) without the support of tucking her elbow. Mentally, he gave it 20 seconds before her forearm started to burn.

..he started to count, and stalled as he did so, eyes checking their way back up toward her.

"If you knew I was just going to hand them to Cameron and tell her to sign them, why didn't you just take them to her in the first place? Get her to sign the first round, do your compare and contrast, then come and bother me for round two." She could have just cut out the leg work they were -both- going to have to perform (her coming to him, him going to Cameron) and saved her energy for when she brought the files to him to be officially signed after Cameron failed to scrape by.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"I'm making a mental tally," she began, hooking her words and tone onto the edge of his own, "of all the minutes and hours that I spend trying to convince you to do something. At the end of the year, I'm going to take that number out of your paycheck and put it into the fund for the children's cancer playroom."

Uncomfortable arcs of heat began pooling from her shoulderblades and into her upper arm.

"You want to continue being childish and deny a half-dozen leukemia patients their right to a new set of Legos? Then start signing."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"I just won $1,000,000.00 for some silly prize that's currently being used as a paperweight for my bills on my kitchen counter." Sure, he had no real desire to donate any money to a children's cancer anything, but he saw it as more of an investment in Cuddy's time than actually an investment in the kid's enjoyment.

"..I think I can afford a few Legos." That sort of threat wasn't going to work on him, especially considering the amusement value of making Cuddy use her time in a day to chase him around and try to bully him into doing things he didn't want to do. You'd think by now she'd set aside a certain amount of time every day for dealing with him.

She already set aside money, time was just the next progression.

Eyes sank to her arm briefly -- notably, not to the paperwork.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She noticed the plunge of his eyes and coroborated it with her neckline -- not an uncommon place for his gaze to linger -- and pulled the paperwork to her chest, simultaneously cutting off what she perceived to be his visual trajectory and alleviating the burn in her arm. She shoved her jaw full of tongue and curved her brows into sly shapes. "I can't afford a government oversight committee or a new diagnostician with a double specialty -- which is what you'll force me to do unless you sign this," she turned a thick corner out, "all of this, by tomorrow afternoon."

Wrangled stack away from her chest and placed it, mindful of corners, in his lap. Her arms were bouyant from the release and prickled with resumed bloodflow.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Ugh. She had to ruin it by anticipating him looking at her chest when he hadn't even had the pleasure of committing the crime she'd assumed he had! Rolling his eyes in frustration as he realized what happened, he flopped back into his slump more heavily (probably a seemingly odd reaction unless he was just really upset about her covering his line of sight to the neckline of her blouse), mental calculation scratched.

Just for this, he was going to have Cameron sign 5 of the sheets and he was going to stash them at random intervals throughout the stack of papers just to see if she actually checked them or not.

"Tyrant. You know, the CDC didn't make me sign papers."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"At this point, I wouldn't trust the CDC to park my car." She had brought along a pen -- one of those high-end affairs with the filigree detailing (because she'd known he would find it pretentious and be suitably annoyed) -- and she pinched thumb and forefinger against the barrel to bring the tip into place. She placed it on top of the paper stack. Tilted her chin down to catch the corner of his roving eyes. "By tomorrow, House. I'll know if you switch signatories." Her jaw went up, filled with confidence helium. "And if you do, I'll retaliate by pulling my finger out of the post-Nobel Prize P.R. dam. You think I'm irritable? --" her mouth quirked "-- the press is irritable."

It had been out of courtesy to him that Cuddy had refused any and all courtship offers from the media. And there had been plenty. House, one of the youngest and fastest-turnover nominees in decades, had an entourage of scientific, academic, public and private interest groups all scrabbling for a soundbyte. Cuddy had spared him that, but she was not beneath reconsidering if it meant furthering the smooth operation of her hospital.

At the moment, House and his two-hundred signatures were contingent on maintaining that.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House scowled at the pen during its entire trek from her hand down to the stack of papers (he still hadn't budged even in the most minute of ways to try and grab the stack or the pen. The slightest tilt either way without stabilization would send them all toppling into the floor in a heap), as if he blamed it entirely for the annoyance Cuddy's visitation was proving to become.

She wouldn't pull her finger out of the P.R. dam because the notion of House himself handling it was most likely terrifying -- especially if he was irritated with Cuddy when he did it. He'd go out of his way to make things worse.

Even so, he didn't want even that sort of interaction with the press and now turned narrowed eyes up on her with skeptical annoyance; the sort of skepticallity he held when he was really tempted to call her bluff but fearful enough to not do it.... yet.

Carefully, he curled digits around the god-awful-ugly pen and twisted it into his palm, as much of a mark of concession as he'd allow.

"This is the last time I ever save -you- from a CDC take-over. I'll just sit on my diagnosis next time."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

That actually got a smile out of her. As much as he enjoyed making her run -- she had never known him to be pleased with compliance or levity -- she took just as much pleasure in putting him through his paces. He knew which areas of her were most susceptible or goading; what topics stirred her into reaction. But she knew the map of his irritation, too, and could put her finger down on a place on that map and trace his annoyance like the strong curve of a road. There was a strange sadism between the two of them that was, at turns, unbearable and irresistible.

"No," she said, "you won't. Because you've got the instinctive urge to meddle and second-guess. Just like I," with inward fingers of possession, "have an instinctive urge to second-guess your second-guessing."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Some people would call that 'instinctive urge' of yours a psychological tick; you're bent on control. Should really see a shrink about that, it's not healthy." House of all people lecturing on healthy living styles (it happened fairly often, surprisingly enough).

Perhaps it was a little juvenile to be lashing out at her more obvious quirks when he had a closet full of his own, but it was what she had to expect, coming to him and peddling a day's and arm cramp's worth of signatures despite the fact that he'd just saved her hospital from another week or so (or however long it took the CDC to figure out it wasn't the bird flu) of governmental control.

"I bet I wouldn't have to sign 200 pieces of paper if I took that Infectuous Disease job Mark Portillo has been trying to fill up at Yale, either." He frowned down at the stack before finally reaching to shift it in his lap so that it didn't fall out. Cameron would undoubtedly be seeing part of the stack, no matter what Cuddy said. She'd all but challenged him to do so.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She had turned away from him toward the glass, the matter of signatures dispatched with her confidence in his ability to comply (limited though it was), and regarded the operating theater beneath them. Hummel had transitioned from Alice Cooper to Gene Simmons now, and was tying the surgical string with quick little tugs that reflected the timing of the drums.

'Shifted a half glance across her shoulder at him. He'd rearranged the pile. She could now see the outline of the cane tucked behind him. The slant of mouth and brow made idle theory of his comment about switching positions. "Mark wouldn't hire you," she said, and rolled amusement around in her mouth like small stones, "aside from a reputation the size of a small principality that precedes you -- that includes ethics breaches, law suits, subpoenas, publicized drug addiction, enough speeding and parking violations to shut down the traffic bureau -- you're overqualified for Yale."

With her eyes on the surgery: "-- And I told him not to."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

She could have left it at his being overqualified and the laundry list of problems he tended to bring along when he entered an organization, but no.

Cuddy apparently was playing the glutton-for-punishment card today. She wanted to get a rise out of him, and she pushed all the right buttons in suggesting that someone wouldn't hire him strictly because she had said not to.

House blinked, staring at her, then immediately frowned. "What do you mean, you 'told him not to'? Do you call around every time you hear abotu a job I might actually be interested in getting and sabotage it? Little territorial aren't you?" Now he was severely considering contacting the man about the job despite not even wanting it, just because she had overstepped her bounds in attempting to prevent him from taking it in the first place.

Reaching behind him to where he'd set the cane to the wall, he snagged it and forced himself to his feet, shouldering the weight of the files into a tuck against his left side as he did so. He was about to go start making phone calls.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She turned, one smart heel and one smart revolution, her arms slung across her chest in that condescending way that women have, her chin tilted slightly upward to catch the remnants of his hot words as they rose toward the ceiling. There was a short distance of tile between them that she crossed in two heelclicks. Below, the lights caught the edge of a table full of blades and flashed prisms up into the observation suite. Cuddy's eyes had taken on a catlike shape -- round almonds that pointed at the ends; curious -- and her expression was more of an irritated amusement.

"You're not interested in the job," she said. Her tone was decisive. "Even if you were, you have to admit that you've got it good here. You wouldn't last a week under Mark --" she leaned forward, dropping her tone to an arch musing "-- he's not as creative as I am."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Turning as she approached and her tone dropped into an under-one, a voice that he typically didn't hear inside the hospital but was becoming gradually accostumed to hearing it outside of it. It was her House-specific (or at least, that's what he assumed, as he certainly never heard her use it with anyone else) voice and it tended to draw his undivided attention, no matter how irritated he was at her at the time. Toss that in with the fact that he couldn't remember her using it in a work-place setting prior to that moment and he'd all but forgotten he was mad.

Bracing his cane against his leg a bit more tightly, eyes pinned down on her, curious as much as he was wary. She was standing closer to him than she typically did at work, as well.

Pursing his lips thoughtfully for a moment, he adjusted his posture to emulate her lean, closing the distance further until his head, hung forward as if on a hinge, had to hitch closer to his chest at the chin so he could continue meeting her gaze.

"Is that what you call it? 'Creative'? I'll admit I've got it good here if you admit you called him for your own selfish reasons -- nothing to do with what I wanted or what's good for the hospital. You don't want me going anywhere."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy's response was a slow, 'lash-dipped blink and an upward tug of mouth muscles, lines settling into something more cagey. Visual assessment of him -- no, more than visual. More like impressionistic. She could keep reading his eyes without breaking contact and, though both of them were well aware of the advantages of blinking, neither one seemed to do it any more than absolutely necessary. The impressions she got of him were gleaned from proximity (he had nearly come toe-to-toe with her) and from temperament. There had been a point that she would not be able to later identify when he had jumped from tantrum to curious.

She kept her ground, dropped and rolled her shoulders back to confident stations. She had meant at first to temper the level of her smile, but it spread, unwieldy and of its own volition, and she nearly lost her hold on his eyes because of it.

"I want those signatures, House."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Uh huh. Lids narrowed dimly at the deviation, keeping his proxmity effectively diminished while he continued to allow the curiousity run its course despite the fact that his verbalizing of it had forced her into a defensive mode. He wouldn't get anything out of her willingly, but now he had his jaws 'round it and be damned if she'd get it back.

Suddenly, his expression wiped from its studious turn, contouring out easily into indifference and he rolled shoulders back into a shrug of emphasis. "Fine. I'll call him after I've signed your papers." Turning just as promptly from her as the facial change, he balanced himself and faltered into a hastened limp for the door.

The gall bladder surgery had been very, very boring anyway. At least in his office he could crank up his iPod while he signed.

And if he got bored, the ducklings and Wilson alike were close. He could take a break and bother them.