Disclaimer: 'House' is not mine, I just love to borrow without permission.
Trouble on the Horizon
"Uh-oh, looks like I'm about to be busted," a voice drawled sardonically, its owner listening intently to the sound of heels clicking down the hallway. "Shh," the man commanded his youthful companion. "Maybe if we keep silent, she won't be able to-"
The footsteps slowed, then stopped completely- coincidentally, right in front of their hiding place. Man and child exchanged calculating glances and tried to breathe silently. Perhaps they would have escaped detection, had the batteries not suddenly failed in the portable game the boy carried and the paused image on the screen flickered, then faded out completely.
"Aw, man!" the young boy exclaimed, slapping a hand to his forehead in a pained manner. "I was so close…"
Gregory House sighed, looking up just as the door opened sharply to reveal the hospital's very own Dean of Medicine. "Uh-uh," he hushed the woman before she could speak. "We need to observe a minute of silence…we were on the verge of a historic moment; the kid was actually mere seconds away from overcoming every last obstacle on the final level of-"
"I do feel terrible for interfering with the progress of your childish pursuit," Lisa Cuddy interrupted his dissembling with an icy tone.
"You feel-? Oh, no, no, no," he waved away her comment. "Your arrival had nothing to do with this unfortunate loss. Batteries needed replacing. Thought they would have lasted longer, but we have been playing for-" House made the pretence of considering the detail, before simply shrugging, "a while. And how has your day been?"
"Don't ask me that in front of a child," Cuddy snapped, her dark curls practically quivering with suppressed anger. "Jason, follow me," she addressed the chubby cheeked, redheaded boy who was pretending not to be inhabiting the same room as the object of her ire. "Your mother's been worried sick about you."
Jason Beckworth sighed heavily, but held his tongue, sensing tension in the air. With the canny manner of children who do not wish to draw unwanted attention to themselves, he melted into the background, an unobtrusive figure watching the interplay between the feuding adults with interest.
House was under no similar constraints to refrain from critical comments. With a groan, the gaunt faced doctor rose to his feet, stamping his cane for extra emphasis as he drawled, "Don't tell me the mother's kicking up a fuss."
"What do you expect?" Cuddy rounded on the other doctor. "You disappear with her child for over two hours, no one knows where he's been taken, your pages go unanswered- of course she's frantic with worry over his safety!"
"I was trying to be thorough in dealing with her concern," House returned. "She had this hysterical belief that her twin boys, of which Jason here is one half, are experiencing some sort of eerie twin bond where they have a connection that transcends mere physical boundaries. My experiment, if you will, required that they be separated so that the other boy could utilize this link between them to locate his twin. Since over two hours, as you say, have elapsed, I can safely conclude that no such mysterious, paranormal bond exists between the two boys and the mother can now sleep peacefully at night. Case solved. Don't I earn brownie points for that?"
House waited with anticipation for his boss's rejoinder, but she only regarded him coldly for a moment or two. The silence began to grow uncomfortable but before he formulated an appropriately sarcastic response of some sort, Cuddy simply turned on her heel and stalked down the corridor, boy in tow. Left behind, he could only stare after her shapely posterior with confusion.
This isn't the way it's supposed to work.
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