Disclaimer: Yes. I own it all. Take that, David Shore.
"Okay, uhm… would you rather be eaten slowly by lions or quickly by ants?" House asked as he made a right turn off the interstate.
Cuddy rolled her eyes. "Either would be better than being stuck in the car with you," she quipped, examining her newly French-manicured nails.
The two were carpooling to a conference in Memphis, Tennessee. They were nearing their third hour in the car together and House was thinking of new and creative ways to drive his boss absolutely insane. For the last ten minutes it had been "would you rather" questions. They had been alternatively gross ("Would you rather sneeze grape jelly or bleed maple syrup?") or annoying ("Would you rather sleep with Foreman or Chase?")All of which she had answered while simultaneously insulting him. He had to admire her; she hadn't yelled at him once.
"So, would you—"
Cuddy slammed her hand down on the seat with surprising force. "House. It is bad enough that I have to be stuck riding with you in this extremely cramped car—which smells like sweat, by the way—to a conference that I don't want to go to, but I have to go to because I'm the Dean of freaking Medicine, but you keep incessantly pestering me with your stupid, childish games and questions!"
House blinked. She had said this in a minimum of two breaths. So much for not yelling. "Yes, boss." They sat in silence for a few minutes when House patted his pocket to see if his Vicodin was in it. It wasn't. He took his eyes off of the road for two seconds to see where it could be, and he spotted a bright orange bottle by Cuddy's right foot. He quickly leaned down to grab it and the car swerved a little. Cuddy gasped and he sat upright and grabbed the wheel. "Relax. I'm a good driver."
"Good driver my—GREG!" she screamed. There was a man bent over looking under the hood of his car in the side of the road, not paying attention to the traffic at all. House grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the left as hard as he could. Too hard, as it turned out. The car veered to the left and slammed into a tree in the forest by the road.
The airbags knocked the wind out of the two doctors. They sat there for a moment in shock. They had just been in a wreck. It was a long time before either of them moved. House reached into his jean pocket to get his phone and call the police, but he pulled it out in two separate pieces. "Crap," he muttered, leaning back into the car seat. He turned to Cuddy, who was staring off into the distance, an unreadable expression on her face. "Do you have your phone with you?" he asked softly.
"No," she answered after thinking. "I left it at home. I don't need anyone calling me while I'm away."
He groaned. "What kind of a person doesn't bring their phone to a conference?"
"The kind of person with a lot on their mind," she muttered, rubbing her temples. House sighed.
"We—we have to call the police, somehow," she said, her voice shaky.
"How can we? My phone has conveniently snapped in half and you don't have yours."
"We could go and ask the guy who made us crash…"
He snorted. "Subtle. Besides, I don't think he'd stay much longer after he saw that we crashed because of him."
She rolled her eyes as she shoved her body up against the smashed car door in an unsuccessful attempt to open it. "House, not everyone is as evil and ill-intended as you make humanity out to be." She grunted as she pushed even harder against the door.
It was House's turn to roll his eyes. He shifted his weight with much effort—his leg was hurting, a lot—and leaned over, placing his hand on the door. This put him basically on top of Cuddy and she blushed. "You can giggle about it later; right now you need to push. Hard." She did, and with their combined efforts, the door fell off of its hinges suddenly. House worked his way off of his boss and out of the car. As he got out, he smirked and pointed to the empty space where the man and his car used to be. "You're right. Not everyone is as 'ill-intended' as I make them out to be, but he is."
He squinted in both directions. There seemed to be nothing anywhere. "Short of hitchhiking, there's nothing we can do."
Cuddy shook her head. "No. No way am I getting into a car with some grubby, flee-ridden hobo."
"What's it called when you judge someone before meeting them?" he replied snidely.
She didn't reply for a long time. "You know, when I first saw you I thought you were nice. Polite. I mean, you had all these girls surrounding you. Pretty girls. I figured that if they liked you that much then you must be the perfect gentleman. But then I met you and you were rude and arrogant and a jerk. And I had no idea how any girl would like you, but now I realize… it's because you're an arrogant jerk that they liked you."
He was quiet. "That…is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. We hate rude, arrogant jerks. It's in our DNA. Nice people, we like. Mean people, we don't. Simple as that."
"Really? 'Cause you're mean. And an awful lot of people like you."
"No. People put up with me. Because I'm a good doctor. I tell them good things, sometimes they love me. If their daughter will die within the week of ovarian cancer, most times they tell me I'm wrong. Then they can't look at me when I'm right. It's how it works. It's instinct. It's human.
"You're nice to your plastic surgeon before you go under the knife. After the surgery's done and you see what a crappy job they've done on your mouth or any other appendages, you want to kill them. They haven't changed as a person. They just didn't give you what you wanted." Cuddy scowled and House shrugged. "Plus, I might say, I have mad skills with the ladies."
She laughed loudly at this and he smiled. He never really got to hear her laugh anymore. It was nice, not just because he rarely heard it, but because they had just been in a wreck. The Cuddy he knew would be freaking out, not laughing at his jokes. She had changed. House didn't know how, or why, but she had. This unnerved him because it defied his number two rule about people: they don't change. (Number one was everybody lies.)
He lay down on the grass by the trees to think, placing his hands under his head. Cuddy was pacing in short, quick steps. House suddenly opened his eyes and she noticed they were almost the same shocking blue as the sky. "We have to walk," he declared, motioning for her to help him up. She did so. "It's the only way. We can't just wait for a car or trucker to come and pick us up.
She nodded. "Darn right we can't."
"So let's go. Let's walk to civilization. You don't want to go to this conference. I don't want to, either. We'll just go to a bed-and-breakfast and take a break from work. God knows we both need one."
Cuddy contemplated this. She wasn't one to take breaks—but then again, it was because she never had the time. She squinted at him suspiciously. "And we'll have separate rooms?" she asked.
He winked as he limped over to the car. "Why pay for an extra bed if we're only going to sleep in one?"
She rolled her eyes. "We're getting two rooms, or I sleep on the floor."
House grabbed his cane out from under his seat then pointed with it in the way the road was headed. "Well. Let's get going before a trucker decides he'd like to hit that. And I don't mean with his truck." He started to limp down the road with Cuddy following quickly behind.