(no subject)

[mmkaternater]

It was a rule of nature that disasters occurred when you least expected them. It was, in essence, what made them disasters in the first place. It was being blindsided by Fate; smacked upside the head by Destiny; or thrown beneath the bus of Bad Luck that made a manageable event into a category five disaster. It was also a rule of nature -- albeit one slightly lesser known -- that most palpable disasters happened on Thursday afternoons, just when the providence of the weekend had begun to descend. Just when you thought that you might squeak by to the end of the week without bloodshed, discord, or the roof caving in.

The unthinkable rang through on Cuddy's personal line at 3:47 pm.

She had been occupied for most of the morning and through lunch with fundraising meetings, transplant committee decisions, an hour of her budgeted clinic rotation, and a quick cup of unflavoured yogurt over the steering column of her car. She was buzzing on productivity, fired up by progress and perked by the fact that House hadn't unnecessarily amputated a patient's anything in over a week. She was as pleased as she could be and expected nothing of malice to come out of her cellphone, which buzzed an incoming call at 3:47.

"This is Lisa Cuddy."

"Lisa? This is your mother."

Cold, dripped-down-stomach feeling that stayed until well after she hung up. The walk back to the hospital buzzed, but put cold patches beneath her chin and under her arms. She plunged into a meeting and washed her hands of the phone call for a solid hour, but it returned when she dismissed the shirts and ties and went back to the quietude of her office. The sun was too warm on her back. She took off her jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. Sat, palms pressed to the top of her desk, while sorting out mental pabulum. It was another hour before she wrestled herself from her chair and down the hall to the elevators. The fourth floor was dappled in sun: House had thrown the blinds to his office wide open and the entirety of the Diagnostics suite was blazing with late afternoon light. His team was in the lounge, poring over a stack of files with their noses to paper. House himself was in his office. Cuddy saw his back throw a long, wolfish shadow on the carpet. She tapped two knuckles to the back of his door, steeled herself, and went in.

"Need to talk to you --" a glance to the glass partition, then back "-- privately."

Comments

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House was livid and his ducks knew it, so they had buried themselves with needless work (he was positive that if he chose to walk into the lounge right then, they'd all claim clinic duty and scuttle downstairs) and avoided conversation that might have drawn him in their direction. He'd received not one, but two requests for recommendations for jobs at the end of their fellowship (Foreman and Cameron; at least Cameron had had the sense to write the letter herself and just ask for House's signature. Foreman actually expected House to write something that didn't mention his breaking-and-entering skills or call him a homedawg...) and thus far Chase was the only one to not make an effort at leaving.

House was pacing absently along the track between desk and wall, tempted to bounce his ball against the glass but determining not to, when Cuddy entered. Eyes trailed to her briefly, flared back to his team in the other room before he frowned with piqued curiousity. Privately? The closed door of his office wouldn't work?

"Talk, hm?"

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

"Privately," she repeated, the emphasis on that one word -- privately -- something she obviously felt that he should be aware of. The air that hung between them shimmered with mid-afternoon awkward so she broke her gaze away and pinned it on the looped-back ducklings in the attached lounge. Foreman and Cameron sat on one side of the table, elbows nudged around one another, while Chase occupied the other half and chewed the end of a pen between his teeth. All of them were avoiding direct eye contact. Cameron looked up once, swept her eyes and her ponytail over her shoulder, and pushed a half-smile, half-frown into the glass that Cuddy stood behind. Cuddy saw her fingers pinch a stranglehold around her pen.

Even a dull scalpel could cut this tension.

She pressed her coral lips and bumped her elbow against the door, propping it open. 'Heels steadied to move back into the hall.

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

Privately. Brows furrowing in scrutiny, House's eyes roved about his office once before he tossed the ball back in the direction of his desk for it to land in his chair. Hustling into step after her as quickly as one who was using his cane a little more heavily than normal could (as it seemed, a great deal of his reliance on the object revolved around his current mindset as well, and the tension in the diagnostics lounge was evident), he caught the door before she could let it swing closed entirely and stepped out into the hall with her.

"So I'm guessing that 'needing to speak with me' isn't a clever euphanism for have sex in a broom closet so what is it that can't be discussed in my office?"

All right. He was a little crabby. And typically, someone pulling you away to talk to you in private (at least when you were Greg House) wasn't a good thing, so he was on the defensive.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

As they were leaving his office, Cuddy noticed that the shoulder closest to her was rolling more heavily than usual -- a fat, angry wave -- and that the thup of his cane against the tile floor carried a great weight. Her sensors immediately went up. "No," she said, sliding an annoyed glance in his direction for the broom closet comment, then: "we can talk in here." She shunted aside a glass partition and slipped inside. The room hummed with idling equipment and beds with recumbent figures, some asleep for two or more years. Coma patients. She turned on a heel, curtaining aside one side of her labcoat to rest her hand on her hip -- the one gesture that betrayed her otherwise cool demeanor.

She spoke in a low, bottom register voice: "I'm going to tell you something and I'm trusting you to keep as quiet as possible about it. I'm trusting you to see this as nothing more than it is -- just a simple, uncomplicated piece of information that you don't need to do anything with. That I'm asking you not to do anything with." She rolled her lips back over her teeth and turned her careful regard up to him. "Before I go any further, is there any way that you can misconstrue what I've just said?"

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

And Cuddy tended to chide House for using coma patient's rooms. Granted, she wasn't watching their television or inducing headaches on them... Still, he gave her a dimly amused and quizzical look when she deviated their track into the room and immediately allowed himself the amusement value of wandering over to the patient's vitals monitor.

Intrigued as he was, he couldn't quite whip around and study her for it, so he merely turned and lifted his brows. "You mean other than just pretending it's opposite day and all the implied nos in that speech actually meaning yes, right?" She was testy and potentially murderous, so after an instant of considering her, he relaxed the needling in favor of stating. "..No, I didn't misconstrue it." Close as she would get to a concession and promise to do as requested.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

A steady pattern of spiking green lines tracked the beating hearts in the beds, a soft rusha-fwuhm of air from the bedside respirators filling and deflating tired lungs. House was poking long fingers around the equipment, leaving dry 'prints on the readouts. The bed offered a tempting barrier between the two of them that she could have hid behind, but hiding was never Cuddy's schtick, so she rounded the edge of the mattress and stood at his shoulder. 'Position of I'm about to impart a confidence.

It really wasn't a big deal; she was more taken by nerves than anything else and was mentally castigating herself for this show of hesitation and uncertainness. She pushed her toes into the tips of her shoes and found some resolve in the hardness of the floor. Trepidation passed over her like a wave, then was gone. She would be honest. She wouldn't be vulnerable.

"My parents are coming into town tonight." This, by itself, no real ordeal. Then: "They want to meet you."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

The fact that her parents were coming was no real thing; parents did that, obnoxious as they were, and as far as House knew Cuddy had a semi-decent repoire with hers. Her concern was mildly concerning, and House frowned at her in her approach, studying quietly until she dropped the bomb as it were, and the reason for her approaching him.

They want to meet you.

House shuffled, adjusting his grasp on his cane to support himself as he rolled back on his heels, keeping his expression controlled. "They want to meet me, the diagnostician whom you've worked with for the past ten years or they want to meet me, the guy you've been sleeping with for the past few months?"

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Cuddy's gave dropped reflexively to the face of the closest comatose patient to see if he'd heard. Still concerned about keeping specific information about their relationship as quiet as possible (though she had gotten steadily used to the idea that it was becoming hospital-traded information) she thought about the ability for the subconscious mind to pick up on proximal conversations. If the guy woke up any time soon, he'd have a hell of a bit of gossip to share with the nurses.

She drew in a short breath. "Neither. Both." An upward lift of her eyebrows; fingers repositioning themselves on her hip. "I didn't use either of those exact descriptions when I talked to them. They know you by reputation -- you were the 'thing that finally got me out of the office for more than two hours' when we went to Stockholm." Her parents had been thrilled at that and had clipped the newspaper article detailing the event (complete with a grainy photograph of House in black tie, looking baleful over his award, Cuddy in the background) and mailed her a copy.

"They know I've been involved with you professionally; they've only recently been told that I'm involved with you personally."

[addxcted.livejournal.com]

House gave a disgruntled sound at that, eyes dancing away as he frowned deeply. Interesting as a meeting with Cuddy's parents might be and a useful mechanism for discerning parts of her he was yet to understand, he did not necessarily want to be introduced in that calibur that he undoubtedly would. It mandated certain behaviour from him and that was not something House was skilled with; conformity.

"..Maybe you should rent out Wilson for the night? I'm really not the 'take home to meet the parents' kind of guy. I think it's the baggy clothes and blackeyeliner." Or just a toxic personality. Take your pick.

[betteroffdean.livejournal.com]

Her face didn't register surprise or, more predictably, her trademark crinkle of irritation. Just an easy upward trek of brows and the corners of her mouth. She blinked a long, turgid blink like a lazy bullfrog. Her smile was a little more than polite. "I told them you were in the middle of a case." Which had opened up an avenue for her mother to grill her about her own penchant for workaholicism and the 'reason she was seeing this House in the first place'.

A slight wag of her head. "It's really a non-issue." She was pressed things into order within her brain; knowing that he was right: there was no telling what House was capable of when goaded into being civil. "I just wanted you to be aware."