Title : Sleep deprivation
Author : DiBee
summary : a late night working, two coworkers, Chase and Hadley, happen to be drawn together. With a little help from House, and unknowingly, from Cuddy. Romance, Humor
Disclaimer : Not mine, nothing made out of it (but a fit of giggle, to be quite honest)
Spoiler : None
Rating : K+
Note : written a few month ago, now, after watching one episode I can't quite name right now, but this sort of popped up, and I wrote along. English still isn't my first language though.
They were the last ones in the office. This late, there was hardly anyone left in the corridor, and the rest of the team had gone for good long ago. They were the only two left, trying to fill the case report yet not actually managing to wrap their head around it. As if something was missing.
For the tenth time in the last minute, they glanced at each other, uneasy, before getting back to the lines becoming blurry in front of their eyes.
Most people would have described either of them as good looking, if not very good looking. They had a good job, even with that crappy boss of theirs, and they both loved it, even though it had cost them more than it was supposed to.
"Not gonna happen" she said as he looked up to her for the hundredth time since the others had left. He smiled as he looked back to the file again. Somehow, her voice sounded as if she was trying to convince herself as much as him.
They worked their way to the end of what seemed to be an endless file, and packed simultaneously, avoiding each other as best as they could. They made their way to the hall and both had half of the same smile on their lips as they spotted Cuddy and House bickering again. His doing the paperwork, for once, must have ringed a bell in the Dean's logic. There was something coming, and she probably wouldn't like it. For a minute, they just thought about the probable portion of denial in their bosses screwed relationship. For a second they thought of the one in theirs. Then snapped back to where their focus must have been in the first place : car, ride, home. And sleep. A lot of sleep, since their work had taught them how sleep deprivation could lead to seeing things that didn't really exist. Such as a relationship. They both had been proved the hard way how a relationship at work could end : either, like the one of House and Cuddy, turn out to be screwed and screw everything around (hopefully, not literally), either, like the ones of Foreman and Hadley, one attempt wouldn't match the other's. If, as Cameron and Chase, they managed to go through that, some unsaid truth would destroy it all. No, thank you very much.
They shared what they promised themselves would be one last glance before parting to each other's car.
"Oh, damn it!" Chase swore as he reached his car, which four tires where lacerated. Whoever he had cured, or not cured, recently had found a way to get to him. And the chances for him to actually have that 'reversed' at this time of the day were, let's say too near to zero to be taken into account. He looked up expectantly at his colleague, and she gestured for him to get in her car as she sighted. It looked like someone was trying to get them together. If she had not known better, she would have thought House could have had something to do with it. But he was upstairs fighting with Cuddy. At such time that was suspicious in itself. It wouldn't be the first time that he actually would have tried to mess with someone's life as well as with Cuddy. Sometimes, Rema really felt sorry for the Dean.
Some few stairs higher, House shot his usual grin at Cuddy, whose eyes rolled in a way that was far too familiar to the diagnostician. The man would never change. But she quite loved him that way. Wow, what did she just think again? She really needed some sleep. Sleep deprivation could really lead her to consider strange things, sometimes. And yet she hadn't found out the reason for House's filling of paperwork, nor his staying that late. She set that aside and turned on her heels to head for her office. It was way over time for her to get home.