(no subject)

[mmkaternater]

It had been a month since Don Herrot had smoothed a ballcap over his surgically-deepened hairline and left to go back to his fourteen-states-spread auto maintenance routine -- albeit at a slightly reduced speed limit. In a month's time, things around Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had gone back to normal gear, too. House had returned to work the day after her visit and had seemed to favour his leg only slightly more than usual. He had agreed to an MRI, but neither Cuddy nor Wilson had been able to catch him long enough to wrangle him out of his distressed jeans and into a hospital gown -- even though Wilson had commented that Cuddy was now in a better position to do so. Clinic duty was shirked, patient rights were violated, and there was always a nurse on duty to watch the status of any expensive equipment that might meet with House's "special attention."

In other words, it was business as usual.

Outside of business was a trickier, cagier creature. It had been an unspoken agreement from the onset of this Unnamed Thing between the two of them that House's apartment should be the command center of things to be consumated. It had just seemed more practical. His place was on a leyline between the hospital and her home and driving from one to the other was a three-point process that Cuddy undertook both before and afterhours. House had couched himself in her home only a few times -- once for breaking and entering, another for a midnight panty raid that produced no goods but allowed him to cop a feel -- and it was a kind of Mecca environment to the both of them that forced all conversation surrounding it to be conducted in whispers.

So when she had formally invited him (as formal as an invitation could get when you were slung half across your invitee with your skirt bunched up around your hips) and he'd accepted, it changed the dymanic. A sort of exposure of those parts of Lisa Cuddy that she strived to keep as hidden as possible: bookshelves stuffed with titles she didn't reveal to anyone else; how her closets were organized; the new paint on the walls and why she chose the colour. It was a nest of intrigue and inquiry and House's natural curiosity compass would go mad trying to dissect it all.

She had lit a fire -- the last of the year -- and had ordained herself in casual clothes. Wine had been opened and tannins allowed to mellow. He was due at 7:00.

It was 7:12.

Comments

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House had had the opportunity to dissect her home once before a few years prior during a case, and while he had afforded it with no small amount of scrutiny, the pressing matters of the case at hand and the presence of his accompanying ducklings had kept him from inspecting it too much, to his displeasure.

Cuddy had free range of his home, but there wasn't a lot to be gathered from it that could not be gathered just as easily from his office as they were kept in the same manner; cluttered, busy, but relatively neat; a penchant for music in all forms (from a collection of vinals to the guitars mounted on the wall opposite him), comfort, and puzzles (from over-marked and dogeared medical journals to the more obvious such as spy-genre and mystery novels and discarded items such as solved rubix cubes).

Cuddy's home was very different from her office; despite the time that she spent in her office, Cuddy didn't really go out of her way to make it overly comfortable like House had his. The couch was a good touch, but pretty much otherwise...

Well, House would be full-on into his Sherlock mode by the time he got into her home, even if he wouldn't go as far as pulling open drawers. Unless she let him get really bored.

She probably didn't expect him to actually be there until 7:30, having told him to be there at 7 so that, being late, he'd actually be on 'time' for the designated 7:30 spot. At least that's what he told himself as he made an idle check to his watch once he parked his 'bike and made his way to the door at nearly 7:15.

Knocking once, he turned his attention aside and nudged a strange-looking pot near the door with the base of his cane. It didn't have a plant in it, but it had soil. Was she growing dirt?

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

To be fair, budgeting at least a half an hour time block in which House would show up had had its precedents. Once, a few years and a few lessons prior, the hospital had hosted a blacktie charity event (this was before poker had become fashionable and string quartets were still the order of priority) and had required that all of its doctors come at seven, dressed to the nines. House had taken "fashionably late" and spun it into "egregiously late", showing up in a loose noose of a tie at nine-thirty.

Ever since, Cuddy had carved a wide trench of time between the time she requested he be somewhere and the time he made his entrance universally known. Tonight may have been a new record for him. She looked at the clock: 7:16.

She dried her hands on a dishtowel and went to the door to receive him. He stood, collar pulled and cane rustling around on her porch, and Cuddy pulled her lips inward to feint a low smirk.

"You're early."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

His brows drew inward momentarily at the smirk of amusement and the statement that he was early rather than late. People finding -amusement- in his tardiness was new to him. Typically, it was met with annoyance or grudging acceptance, the reason in him doing it in the first place. It wasn't nearly as fun if he didn't get some sort of reaction for his trouble.

Frowning, he cast a suspicious glance to his wristwatch. Maybe she'd changed the time on it when he was asleep last night? No, he'd been on the correct time for the rest of the day, which meant.. Aha.

The confusion melted into a 'Oh-ho, you're so clever.' expression, pushing himself past her and into the doorway of the house. He'd just have to start arriving early and messing her Houseism clock up all over again. He couldn't have her thinking she could predict him, afterall.

"Yeah, well, I drove extra fast. You know you can get at least 140 on Maple Street over there? Straight line with no direct sight of any highway for a cop to see you from.."

Ignore the fact that it was a housing edition. You could still get 140mph. Maybe 160 if you really throttled it.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Maple Street is in a subdivision," with the droll kind of inflection that suggested she knew that he knew that already and was decorously breezing past road safety statutes, "you'll be walking a middle line if you keep speeding like that." Not that Cuddy had any room to talk; her foot was notoriously horizontal as soon as she got into her car. One of the very few boundless joys that went past her need to control and micromanage.

She did not direct him to wipe his feet, nor would he even if asked. The ground outside was stiff still, clinging on to Winter, and he would not have tracked too much mud in. His coat was dusted with light frost that quickly melted and cast his shoulders in a shimmery wet pelt. She went past him on bare feet. "Leave your coat anywhere. Wine?"

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Cuddy's turn on Host was a little strange. With House, he didn't bother telling her what she could do with her coat and he certainly didn't have wine at the ready when she came in to offer it to her. Generally, if she wanted something, she knew where to find it (if he had it) and he only offered if he was getting it for himself anyway.

Peeling out of the jacket, he gave it a small shake while they were still in the hall so he at least wasn't tracking in the drying frost, and immediately proceeded in the direction of the living room to drop it over the back of the couch.

"Wine? Some sort of occasion I wasn't aware of?" Maybe it was one of those anniversary things women took so seriously. House had never taken Cuddy as the sort to hold much flame to such a thing, or he might have made at least a mental effort to keep track of them just so he knew when to expect her to be mad about him 'forgetting.'

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy dropped a spread of fingers around the nearest wine glass, half lifting off one foot to keep her balance, a wry expression turned on him -- "No occasion; just wine." And it was. She'd spent the better part of fifteen minutes in the wine section of her local supermarket, turning heel 'round in a considering circle as she went up and down the rows, country to country, for something that would be full-bodied enough to mark the short search. She'd come away with a bottle wrapped in woven straw and sealed with wax. Not bad for a quarter of an hour's work.

She inserted a thumbnail around the lip of the bottle and broke the wax seal, little curls of burgundy coming away under the 'bed. A steady, bright strawberry stream into the belly of the glass. She handed it to him and took one for herself.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

He took the glass carefully, eyes trained intently onto her as if he expected this to be a smokescreen of some sorts before he finally allowed his attention to waiver to the glass in hand. "..'Should've gone with it being an occasion."

House took a quick draft from the glass, rolled the taste over his tongue for a moment considering, before determining that he liked it. The smallest inclination of his chin was given -- he wouldn't say it was good. "This just makes it look like you're seducing me. At least with it being an occasion, you could have had the guilt card to play on me."

Not that House would have felt guilty if he had forgotten, so the card would be moot. She could still try to play it, though, that being the point.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Personal experience has taught me thay lying doesn't necessarily make for solid groundwork in a relationship," she said, propping one knee on the couch while she leaned to straighten the edges of a few coffee table books, "I'm assuming that expecting me to follow your 'everybody lies' credo is out of force of habit."

She dropped down onto the cushion and tucked one leg beneath her. Settled and comfortable here in a way that she almost wasn't at his place. House had his affects stacked the way he wanted them: from the piles of medical journals beneath the coffee table to the half-fruit hampster ball that, ironically enough, was always missing rat and/or hampster. It was a bachelor's pad, albeit a neat one, and it suited House well. He could be free to roll through those dark and lofty rooms at his leisure, knowing his limitations and his way through the dark.

Cuddy was much the same in her own space: a cultivated home that reflected the aspects of her she wasn't allowed to show at work. Brighter colours; softer tones. More floral, feminine touches. She wasn't playing for a donation or a grant here. A small tarnished silver tea set on the sideboard. Slim-necked vase full of unseasonal lilies. These were the fleshtones of Lisa Cuddy -- beneath all the expensive suit fabric and shimmery pearls.

She propped her elbow on the back of the couch and drew the glass to her lips, leaving a dark impression of wine.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"You're saying you don't?" The tone of disbelief was evident in her tone. Everyone did lie, and Lisa Cuddy was no exception. Rounding the couch despite the disadvantage of unfamiliar turf, he lowered down onto it alongside her without awkwardness. She did have good taste and seemed to have appreciation for comfort as much as he did.

He liked the couch. Not the print on the outside so much, but if you didn't look at it and just sat down, it was pretty comfortable.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Of course I do." Thumb rubbing the bottom of the glass, stem suspended between two fingers. She worked her hips around the cushion, resettling as he sat down. "People expect it out of you; it's more surprising coming from me." What she left out was the fact that House's penchant for stretching the truth -- stretching it so far that it nearly broke -- was usually motivated by a buried desire to see conflicts resolved, be they medical or psychological. He lied to serve a purpose -- very seldomly his own.

Cuddy lied to ingratiate. It was a cheaper, more lacklustre reason, but it kept the hospital functioning and House capable of continuing with his liar's campaign.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

That much he had to grant her; despite his knowledge of the fact that Cuddy did lie, it always managed to surprise him when it happened. When she lied -to- him about cases, for example, or even more shocking, when she'd lied -for- him on the stand.

It shouldn't surprise him, he realized, but it always did manage it; like the phrase 'everybody lies' applied to anyone but her. Perhaps it was the fact that despite the fact that they both lied to everyone else, it was rare that they lied to each other (House typically only told her his real lies -- not to be confused with his silly ones he knew she knew he was lying about -- when he absolutely had to, to save someone's life, etc.) unless they had felt they had to.

Settling comfortably, he turned his head to watch her squirm for comfort. She obviously didn't spend an awful lot of time on the couch. House knew exactly where to sit on his that was the most form-fitting.

"..So..you lie. But it's not good for --" He hesitated at 'our.' "-- the relationship?"

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She wet her lips with wine and blew a soft, amused breath into the bowl of the glass. "Is that a statement or a question? I lie when I have to and even then I try to do it sparingly. You lie because it's..." she dragged her thumb along the base of her drink "...because more often than not, it's a means to an end. You've gotta' get an answer, or a diagnosis, or a reason for something. So I guess it's not really lying as much as it's deception -- either way, you're good at it."

Lying to House was difficult because he was attuned to subtle cues of body language and expression that gave any lie -- white, black or green -- away. More often than not she was motivated to lie by proxy of guilt, which she wore as brightly as any lapel flower. Even so, she did not want to become an expert at lying to him. Especially now.

"There are certain things I don't want to know -- that I'm comfortable not knowing. Whether that's lying outright or lying by omission, I don't care. It's what makes this work."

This: the impersonal title.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

( 'lo. Spent most of yesterday at one of two doctor's appointments attempting to determine what's wrong with me -- accute resp. infection, yuck -- but am now doped on antibiotics and pleasantly fuzzy feeling. I'll get a post out to you shortly. )

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Usually (thought admittedly not always), House did only lie when there was some sort of goal he felt he needed -- and in most cases did -- to reach as quickly and painlessly as possible and the truth (something he was notoriously blunt and harsh about) would only hamper getting to that end, be it either quickly or in some cases at all.

It was usually in those instances as well that Cuddy knew he was lying and rather than badger for details as she might typically do if she knew it wasn't a pressing matter, left protacol to the wayside in favor of expediting whatever House's agenda was. It was an awkward and at times wink-wink-nudge-nudge relationship but it let them do their jobs and do them well without the hastle of consciously breaking rules they weren't prepared for.

"It's probably better that way," Provided with an amused lilt of the lips aside, studying her from across the couch. "You're not a very good liar and your guilty conscience might as well be a warning sign over your head." Her lips pursed just so and her eyes deviated when Cuddy lied, first and second clue respectively to when she lied. "It's why you totally suck at poker."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Indignation steeped up in her brow, Cuddy angled her chin doward under the weight of her amused disbelief -- "My guilt does not come through in my cardplaying. I have absolutely no weight of conscience when it comes to manipulating you out of your money." Which he would have had an opportunity to experience firsthand at the years-ago charity schmooze, had he not absconded from the table and left Wilson to fend for himself.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House gave an overdramatic raise and rotation of his eyes at her indignation as if the fact that she took even feigned-offense was exhausting. She hadn't stood a chance. "You did realize I was telling Wilson what to do over the phone, didn't you? And that you only won early on because I wanted you to keep playing and keep your nose out of my --" His? It had technically been Cuddy's. "-- case."

He had not even needed to be at the table to know what Cuddy's hands had been (and Wilson's; even Wilson had turned 'round in his seat to try and see where House was spying from); her visual cues would have been even easier to read in person.

"If I can read you that well through Wilson's description on a cellphone four floors away from me while I'm distracted with a dying kid, I daresay I could have read you if I'd still been sitting across from you."

A moment, and then offhandedly. "Maybe. That dress did have a really low neckline. I might have gotten distracted."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"The sun doesn't rise and set on your ability to maniupulate someone, House," as if this were a revelation that only she could impart to him, "Wilson got lucky. You --" with a lift of a directional finger "-- got lucky."

She formed her fingers in a loose clutch around the rim of her wine glass and got to her foot, padding to the kitchen for a purposeless mission. Her voice boomed around the edge of the doorframe and back to him: "When it really came down to it, I don't think you'd be able to tell when I was bluffing and when I was telling the truth." She came back into the living room and her lips had been revitalized by a new layer of gloss. "Other than at cards, anyway."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Provoking the beast. House's brows shot upward and remained elevated as he watched her return, shifting about on the couch into a more idle lean one direction until she had settled once again with a new coat of lipgloss. She really thought highly of her abilities to deceive didn't she?

House had never witnessed Cuddy lying in a way that wasn't painfully obvious. He really wasn't sure how she'd gotten him out of going to jail -- she'd seemed so pained about that whole lie. The judge should have seen through it.

"..my 25 years of experience in all-things-that-are-Cuddy voices a resounding BS to that." She might have been good at lying to other people but House always figured it out when she lied to him, or at least got suspicious about it until she explained. She just was not good at keeping things from him.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

House thought juts as highly of his ability to suss out the lies from the truth. Statistically, his aptitude for being right was quite high. There were a few instances, though, in which he was outstrapped and outmanned. Challenge was sniffing around the edge of the couch. Cuddy tucked intrigue in her cheek and planted a brace of knuckles against her temple, eyes narrowing to amused almond shapes.

A game. An amusing one. The wine had mellowed her enough that she could proceed, cagey cat's smile in place.

"Your BS detectors never once picked up on the fact that I never once gave any thought to sleeping with you in college." Which was only a partial lie: she had never once given any thought to sleeping with him in college until, with his minor assistance, she had passed Practical Anatomy with an exemplary mark.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

( Good morning. Hopefully you had a good weekend. Back to the grind, eh? )

Brows angled sharply and House made a sound akin to a cough in the back of his throat, lips turning feverishly in their effort to not flat-out grin in amusement at the suggestion. Partial-lie as it might have been, it was a lie and a blatant one at that, and one that he had no doubts to.

While House might not have understood what kept her coming back to him, there was no denying by either of them the almost chemically reactive potentcy their chemistry created. The tension was there, always had been there, and most likely would be.

"Start small next time. We should have just slept together in college and gotten some of the sexual energy out there." They'd both wanted it.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Small, white hand went out for her glass of wine. She gave him a shrewd look across her shoulder, "If we'd slept together in college you would have been absolutely unbearable now." Her back fit to the cushions, lips pressed to the rim of the cut crystal. "You're already difficult enough." A light, bantering tone to this without real grudge.

Yes, there had been occasions that younger, co-ed Lisa Cuddy had thought about wrangling those unwrangleable limbs into a bed or an unoccupied study carrel, but she'd had fiercer ambitions a lot of the time that -- as badly as she wanted a way to fill his mouth with something other than academic criticisms -- had kept her off of his beaten track.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Eyes were dancing with amusement at her response, watching in casual regard as she retrieved her glass and rebuttaled over its rim, eyes clearly not as sharp as her words would have liked them to give the allusion of being.

"..Yeah." He wouldn't deny it. He most likely would have been, and would continue to be, if she'd given him that sort of hand in their relationship that early on. Where they stood now, years of headbutting leading up to their current point; well, it made things easier to handle on a rhythmic level. They were familiar with one another enough to handle two alpha personalities in a relationship.

"..but I could have taught you so much more about Practical Anatomy." More than his hours of tormenting her (he'd continued to sit next to her for the remainder of the class save the week the professor had been out and House forced to teach in his 'stead; the students hadn't taken too well on the first day to his suggesting he let them go play at recess and he'd been obliged instead to force out a series of elaborated-upon lesson plans) ever taught, anyway.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

That entire semester, couched next to him in too-close airline desks with his ballcap pulled low (even in winter and long after baseball season was over and done with), had been one academic and psychological challenge after another. Cuddy was, by her very nature, a dominant force and wouldn't take his debauched and arrogant comments as easily as some of her more easily swayed peers. So when he'd appeared to make a home of the second desk in -- never compromising with his long leg room -- she'd grinned (grimaced) and had borne it with a moxie and a determination that had soldiered her through medical school and into her role as his boss. There was a small part of her -- all right, an admittedly large part of her -- that had taken satisfaction at climbing above him on the social and occupational ladder. But, then again, House had never clammored for fame or position. He did as he pleased, often at the expense of others, and was content to wile away his days in ratty, faded t-shirts instead of corporate suits. That suited the House she knew.

His voice had a mellow, wine-laced quality to it now that she knew couldn't all be due to alcohol. He might've been settling in -- if he were capable of such a thing. At his presumtion of his "teaching abilities" she curved her mouth into an easy smirk around the lip of her wine glass.

"You taught half the campus about practical anatomy," her words an easy, teasing roll, "and from what I heard from a few of them, you taught quite a few things about gross anatomy, too."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House gave a careless shrug as if to ask what she had expected him to do, even if he almost reflexively pointed out that a great deal of his oft-discussed collegiate partner-swapping was more discussed than actually acted out. He could remember being invariably surprised sometimes at hearing about his supposed conquests second-hand but it had inevitably become a source of amusement for him.

And really. What guy would have said he hadn't slept with all those girls if they all swore to it?

Instead, he just grunted and shifted again to nest himself back further in the overstuffed couch, fingertips playing over the glass in hand. "You'd be surprised by how much gross anatomy is functional practical anatomy, too."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

At one point, Cuddy had been sure that she was the only girl on campus that hadn't talked muscle systems with Greg House. Most of it was gossip furore, she knew even now, and even with his lauded nocturnal conquests to precede him, House's medical prowess had been what kept her gravitating back toward him. When the semester had wrapped and she was cast into a new season of classes, she'd managed to snag Reed's intermediate endocrinology seminar (complete with six weeks of one-on-one research fellowship) and had been better for it since she had had House's tutelage. He had been off TA'ing higher level courses at that point, but she'd seen him in the halls and quads and there'd been a frission of grudging recognition between them.

Hers was only one of three A's that Reed gave out that semester -- and it was hard-won.

She tipped her ear toward her shoulder in acknowledgment of his comment and pushed her eyes toward the fireplace. A year ago, if you'dve told Lisa Cuddy that she'd be sharing wine and a cheery crackling fire with Gregory House, she would've referred you to the recently-renovated Pysch ward. It was still eerie to be sharing space with him, even in her own home. Especially in her own home. She would break it with confident humour:

"You, on the other hand --" her dark brows high and peaky "-- you wanted to get me into bed the moment you sat down next to me in Lynch's lecture."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"Actually, I wanted to sleep. I was hung over and didn't want to be in that class, even if I'd been sober. Thoughts of adding you to the end equation of bed didn't really start forming until you started acting disgusted with me five minutes later." Funny how that worked. At least he was honest about it. Cuddy would never admit to having wanted to sleep with him that early on.

"You act like I'm the catalyst in everything here. I'd've been happy to never see you again at the end of that semester but you're the one that always came around the track when I was out there, acting like I didn't notice. You sure as hell didn't have any classes out there." But the 'chance' encounters had resulted in them at least speaking on a regular basis.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

It figured that House's interest wouldn't be roused until he met with friction. He liked the problem and the puzzle; things that were too easy -- people who were too easy -- generally didn't even make a ripple in his mind. Her younger self had been irritated and intrigued and had wanted to turn over more stones to find out what was underneath. So she'd draped casual scarves around her casual shoulders and had re-routed her walk to class to include a dip by the track where he practiced. He always ran early, and he almost always ran alone.

"Your ego is a thing to behold."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

"All this time, and you still deny it." He gave a tutting sound under his breath and shook his head, though it was obvious it amused him. She'd go to the grave denying that it had been anything more than House's ego and not her own preoccupation with him.

So he had a bit of an ego. He didn't deny that either. In this case, it was justified, as Cuddy had been going out of her way to see him following that first semester, even when House's interest had waned in favor of having figured her out.

The puzzle that was Lisa Cuddy was never a very difficult one, interesting as she remained.

"You could have just told me to buy you a drink rather than walking by every day and oogling my short-shorts."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

As a rule, women didn't like having a man -- significant, insignificant, or House -- pigeon hole them into a set routine. The feminine mystique disallowed absolute understsanding. He might have had a bead on some aspects of her (her drive for her work, her charitable guilt, to name but two) but there were onionskin layers to Lisa Cuddy that he hadn't glimpsed. Maybe wouldn't ever fully cull to the surface.

-- Her couch was one of them.

She roped her wine glass in for another drink, giving him her stern regard over the rim. "It wasn't every day. And your legs weren't that impressive."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

There was a long moment in which he considered her words, and while the amusement of the conversation at hand did still continue to hang in place, an odd sort of expression crept into place; not as if he'd taken offense at her statement, but it had turned his thoughts inward temporarily which was a dangerousr region.

Draining the remaining contents of his glass, he sat up and pushed himself forward to set the glass on the nearest stand alongside the couch.

"Maybe not every day, but you did transfer int Intermediate Diagnostic Medicine my last year there after the TA lists were out." House had never pointed out the fact that he was aware of that fact; she'd been transferred into the class well before the first day, but being the nosey sort that he was, he'd looked into it once a perusal of the student list had popped up her name among the 'familiar' ones.

Perhaps Cuddy had wanted a taste of House in a class that he actually found interesting vs. Practical Anatomy.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

She followed the long reach of his arm with her eyes, half his face cloaked off when he shifted to settle his glass. Her lips flared up briefly, trying for combative amusement, though there were subtler tones to her voice when she spoke:

"Are you insinuating that I've spent the last twenty years carrying a torch for you? House..." she turned her lips to her glass and took some time there "..there are egoes and then there are egoes and then there's you."

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

(Good morning! I'm taking a personal day from work today to decompress. 'Wanted to know if, given our new information, whether or not you'd like to start a new scene. This one's sort of...antiquated, lol.)

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

( Good morning. /yawn. Wish I could say the same about a day off, but I get tomorrow off so I suppose it all works out. I just have to push through today. Lol.

What did you have in mind? )

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

(Oh, you'll be fine. This time tomorrow, my fingers'll be worn to bones and you'll be lounging about like a big lounging...thing.

I don't think that the fact that they've slept together before has to change what we have too much. It's more just tweaking perception. As to the exact nature of a new scene -- I don't know. Cuddy's parents could come visiting. And she would be keen to keep it as quiet as possible -- maybe pulling Hosue aside in a hallway ten minutes before they get there -- but it would open up avenues for some interesting tableside conversations.)

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

( She'd be so afraid of him misbehaving. I think that would be very interesting, actually. I'm sure she'd have the dilemmia of wondering if she should even tell him at first, then telling him because he'd find out even if she didn't.

Almost halfway done with the day. x.x;; Still have lunch, too, so huzzah. )

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

(Excellent. I'll start then, eh?

And I hope you got a chance to snag some lunch. How're you feeling of late? Still under a cloud?)

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

( I'll be looking for the post, as I'm back at the office now. The antibiotics helped a lot of it but I'm still in that fuzzy cold-like state and will probably continue to be like that until it gets entirely out of my system. It was so bad there for a few days that I could hardly take more than a shallow breath without hacking up a lung. It was terrible. )

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

(I'm popping off to dinner, so I won't have anything for you for -- oh, I don't know, I'm being treated to a steak, so it might be a bit. But if you'd like to post in the interim, you're more than welcome. 'Else I'll sit my chops down and write something soon after I get back.

'Glad to hear you're on the up, at least. Terrible, terrible strains going around. I hope you rested.)