Title: It Couldn't Please Me More
Author: omfg_yaoi_squee
Prompt: House meets Bones, crossover fic
Pairings: very slight Booth/Bones, Angela/Hodgins established, Kutner/Zack
Word Count: 11,334 across eight parts and an epilogue
Rating/Warning: PG-14. Warnings: Medical stuffs, but nothing to gruesome. Slash.
Summary: When House takes on the case of an FBI agent, Kutner gets more than he bargained for when the meets the agent's partner and, more specifically, her assistant.
Beta: none
Disclaimer I don not own House, MD or Bones because I am neither David Shore nor Hart Hanson.
A/N: This story takes place during Season 5 of House, ignoring, of course episode 5x20 "Simple Explanations", and during Season 3 of Bones. No spoilers. Written for house_of_fanfic on livejournal.
A/N2: Honestly, I'm not sure how many people will read this, just because the pairing is kind of odd.
Chapter 1
Spring had sprung in Washington DC. The sun was shining, the sky a clear azure with the occasional fluffy, white cloud. The trees, having lain dormant for so long, were bursting into new growth. The air was warm, but not stifling, and the softest of barely perceptible breezes was whispering through the brand new leaves. It was such a shame that a gorgeous day like this had to occur in the middle of the week. Children and adults alike stared longingly out of thick-glassed windows, wishing that they could be out there instead of inside their own personal four-walled hell.
Yet, there was a certain group of people who did not share this sentiment. Temperance Brennan and her team of scientists were gladly hard at work inside the brightly fluorescent interior of the Jeffersonian Institute. Though normally Brennan, an anthropologist, would have a forensic case to work on, they had hit a dry spell of murders in the DC area, so she was working on a cleaning a skeleton in order to date it. Dr. Brennan's assistant and, until recently, a grad student, Zack Addy, was seated at a table beside the main body and was using a small pick to clean soil from the tiny finger bones. Zack would then pass the samples to his best friends the entomologist Jack Hodgins for to be analyzed. The forensic artist, Angela Montenegro, had no specific job in this process and was standing off to the side idly sketching the skeleton Brennan was cleaning. Lance Sweets, the psychologist hired by Cam to observe the dynamic between Brennan and the FBI liaison, Booth, was now observing interactions between members of the team without Booth's presence, occasionally recording something down in a yellow legal pad. He sat unobtrusively in the corner and was ignored.
They worked in companionable silence except for the occasional footfall, computer keyboard click, sniffle, or mumble. Suddenly, the slamming of a door broke through their orchestrated silence. Special Agent Seeley Booth, FBI liaison to the Jeffersonian Institute, had shoved the door open and was striding towards the. Angela's pencil stopped, poised over the paper as she looked up at Booth curiously; Hodgins' fingers halted over his keyboard and he looked over, grinning excitedly; Zack, who had dropped his pick in surprise at the loud nose, was scrambling to pick it up; Sweets glanced up briefly then returned to his writing; Brennan, upper body still bent over the skeleton, looked up at her partner with raised eyebrows. Booth glanced around at all of the eager faces
"What?" he asked moodily, "What the hell are you staring at?"
Angela pursed her lips and exchanged glances with Brennan. Booth was never this brusque with them.
"Is there a case?" Brennan asked.
"I wish,"
"You wish that there had been a murder?" Brennan asked incredulously, Booth let out a grumble of annoyance.
"Are you saying," Sweets, ever the psychologist, piped up from his corner, "that the idea of a murder excites you?"
"Shut up, you quack,"
Sweets, looking hurt, noted something in his legal pad.
"Are you okay?" Angela asked, approaching the agent cautiously.
"I'm fine. There's nothing wrong," Booth growled, causing Angela to step back nervously. Booth clutched the bridge of his nose.
"It's juts a headache," he said defensively, though no one had asked. Brennan was undeterred by Booth's odd behaviour.
"Booth, you're acting extremely strangely,"
Booth opened his mouth to deny the accusation, taking a step forward, but his legs buckled beneath him and ended up sprawled on the floor.
"Booth!"
Brennan rushed over to kneel by the agent, Angela and the others close behind. Booth sat up.
"I'm fine I just—,"
He sat, swaying, for a moment then promptly vomited into his lap.
_______________________________
Gregory House was late. As usual. He walked into Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, his coat dripping from the pouring rain outside, leaving wet shoe prints with every step. He wiped the rubber tip of his wooden cane on a nearby rug. House continued over the elevator with uneasy steps. He'd had enough bad experience with wetness to know that if he walked any faster he would end up on his back with the nurses crowded abound. Another reason he hated wet days such as this one was that the fear of falling stopped him from walking fast enough to avoid people he wanted to avoid. As he walked, House counted the steps before he would be past Cuddy's office. House breathed a brief sigh of relief when he arrived at the elevator unhindered.
"House!"
Whoops. Spoke too soon. House turned to see Alison Cameron, a former fellow of his, striding over to him.
"Who modeled for those scrubs?" House asked, looking her over, "Big Bird?"
Cameron tugged at the hem of her bright yellow scrubs top.
"I'm working in Pede's today. Cuddy wants you in her office.
"Good for her,"
House turned and pressed the up button by the elevator with the tip of his cane, willing it to go faster.
"It's about a case," Cameron revealed in a sing-song voice.
As if on cue, the elevator dinged and the doors slip open. House entered the elevator car and turned back to face the other doctor.
"If it's important enough, she'll find me," he said as the doors snapped shut.
Once Cameron was out of view, House leaned against the back wall, twirling his cane idly. When the doors opened again, House pushed off the wall, walked out into the hallway, and down to his department. He could see Foreman, Thirteen, Kutner, and Taub waiting in the glass-walled conference room. He walked past aforementioned conference room and his own office to stop by a wooden door at the end of the hall House raised a fist, ready to knock directly underneath the gold lettering that spelled "James Wilson, M.D.", then, with a shrug, he just opened the door. Wilson was sitting at his desk doing some paperwork and looked up when he heard the door open.
"You're dripping," Wilson observed calmly.
"Really? I hadn't noticed,"
Wilson rolled his eyes and returned to the work.
"Your team is waiting for you," Wilson commented, making a note on one of his charts.
"Yup," House said cheerfully, settling on the couch.
"Stop soaking my furniture, House, or get out. I have work,"
Without a word, house stoop and walked to the door, deliberately dragging a wet sleeve across Wilson's wooden desk. At the door, House halted and looked back.
"Lunch?"
"Sure," Wilson replied.
Not bothering to stop his work. House exited Wilson's office and made his way to his own department, pushing the glass door open and entering the conference room. Foreman, who was reading a newspaper, looked up.
"You're late,"
"Thank you Sir Points-Out-the-Obvious,"
Taube, who had been doing the crossword from aforementioned newspaper, glanced up briefly then returned to his puzzle. House looked over to where Thirteen and Kutner were playing hangman on the whiteboard.
"The answer is 'sternocliedomastoid'," he said, hanging up his still dripping coat.
Kutner happily filled in the rest of the letters. He began to draw another game underneath the first, mumbling each letter inaudibly as he made the blank spaces.
"Latisimus dorsi," House guessed immediately.
"Nope," Kutner said with a grin. He drew a head on the hangman.
This was the position that Dean of Medicine Lisa Cuddy found her diagnostics team when she walked in to the conference room. Foreman was reading a different section of the newspaper, Taub was close to completing his crossword puzzle, Thirteen was lost in thought, Kutner was grinning excitedly with the marker dangling between his fingers, and House was staring at the game of hangman with the same intensity his eyes usually held when looking at lists of symptoms. The hangman now also had a body and legs. Cuddy cleared her throat and all five doctors looked up. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed and scrutinizing them in annoyance. Beside her stood a woman that they didn't recognize who was dressed in dark jean and a pale pink blouse that complimented her caramel skin. Her dark brown hair was in a high ponytail.
"I don't pay you to lounge around in your conference room," Cuddy intoned angrily, though there was a touch of amusement in her voice.
"But mommy," House mock whined, "it's so fun."
Cuddy rolled her eyes.
"Right. Didn't Doctor Cameron tell you that I wanted to see you in my office?"
"And when have I ever listened to Cameron?"
"In any event," Cuddy continued, ignoring House, "I have a case for you. This is Cam Saroyan,"
Cuddy said, indicating the woman beside her, "we used to be neighbors during high school. Cam, this is my diagnostic team: Doctors Gregory House, Eric Foreman, Chris Taub, Remy Hadly, and Lawrence Kutner."
Cuddy pointed to each of them in turn.
"Cam is a pathologist at the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington DC. One of her coworkers is sick and no doctor in the DC area has been able to figure out what it is," Cuddy said, handing the file folder to Taub, who passed it over to House.
House signaled for Kutner to erase the whiteboard and opened the file. Cuddy ushered Can into the room, whispering in her ear, and the two women stood off to the side. House grabbed his cane and limped over to the whiteboard, taking the marker from Kutner's fingers.
"Male, aged thirty seven," House began, writing on the board, "complaining of headaches and dizziness, presenting with nausea, weakness of limbs, high blood pressure, and personality disturbances."
"Head CT?" Thirteen asked.
"Already done," House replied, "Clean."
"Could be spontaneous intracranial hypotension," Kutner suggested, "Headaches, nausea, it fits."
"CT was clear," Taub countered.
"Doesn't explain limb weakness or personality disturbances. Plus, no vision problems. Blurriness is a major symptom of SIH," Foreman added, "Might be carbon monoxide poisoning. A leak in the home or workplace."
"Both of which are in Washington DC," House commented, "Moving on."
No one said anything.
"Right," House said finally, "Well, I guess we need to g see the patient."
The team stared at him incredulously.
"You never willingly go see patients," Taub pointed out.
"Any friend of a friend of Cuddy's is a friend of mine," House replied with raised eyebrows.
He limped put the door, leaving the shocked team behind him.
"House going to see a patient?" Kutner repeated, "I don't know who I am anymore!"