A/N: This started as an RPG. It was quite a cool little scene, so I wanted to post it as fanfiction. The game's fun, so email me if you like prose RPGs, are obsessed with House, and want to find out about it. That's my pimping for the day. House in this was written by me, and Cuddy by Kate. (katernater at livejournal).
House hated the lift. Every day he stood there for the same thirty seconds, and sometimes there was music. The absolute worst music anyone had ever heard; and it was played somewhere where you couldn't just walk away from it. You were trapped in a rectangle about four times the size of a coffin and it was the same latest hip-hop tune again and again. There was a little dent in the metal door with the emergency stop button behind it, where he hit the wall with his cane thirty times, once for each second of boredom. It was like the ass groove in Homer Simpson's couch. Just not as comfortable.
One day when he was on his way up for pills, and getting all twitchy, he'd press the emergency stop button, search the whole place for a speaker, and stab it to mincemeat with his sword-cane.
'Cause by then he'd have one, and he'd threaten everything from patients to birds with it.
But right now, he was on his way to the harpy's office, so he'd endure. Though he did consider the chance of a patient dying in the lift, and this being the last thing they'd hear. Pitiful.
Cuddy's office was the first on the right. He went in without knocking. She was on the phone, but was halfway through dialing.
"Yo. Cuddy," it was all the rap's fault. If his speech was unprofessional. All because they played bad rap in the lifts. He had a letter in his hand, and was flicking it in a circle with two fingers. Another letter was sticking out of his pocket. Cameron delivery. She filled out and sent back the familiar forms, but had given him these two.
Cuddy's finger was poised above the nine on the keypad when he'd entered: bold as the brass his cane rotation sometimes adopted. Nine. One digit for every year that he'd been under her perview. Nine for the number of times today -- okay, and yesterday -- that she'd had to subvert some legal eagle about his tenuous record. The dialtone thudded lamely in her ear. She couldn't stall him by copping some excuse about being on the line with a financier or board member; he'd see through it. So she replaced the phone on its cradle and gave him her best 'This had better be damned important, House' look (complete with the signature furrow between the eyes).
"Fine, thank you. And yes, this is a new blouse. Sweet of you to notice." She folded her elbows on top of her desk and tipped her head to one side, playing the attentive indulgent. "What do you need, House?"
He cast a hurt look at her expression.
"I know you were on the phone, but you hadn't finished dialing yet, had you?" he said, and instantly all apology left him. As he spoke, he turned his cane about slowly, then relocated it to make a new circle in the nice Dean-of-Medicine carpet. "I'm just wondering if all these 'Team Building' pamphlets were forwarded from you. And this very anonymous note in your handwriting with, 'One hour's all that required. Choose the programme that you like. Try not to kill them.' What I'm wondering is, why didn't you sign it? Don't want to be an accessory to murder?"
He paused, and eyed her front.
"And there, I've admired your new blouse. Very nice." And then he relocated his innocent gaze to the curtains. His smirk barely got to his lips before the loud cough parted them.
From her closet of House-related facial expressions, Cuddy chose the fitting 'I'm still in charge of your paycheck' smirk. She squared the edges of her paperwork against the desk.
"Dr. Martin is a board-recognized occupational psychologist. We're lucky to get him. Last year's Life Is Like A Leaning Tower Of Office Furniture conference sold out Princeton General. Besides," she said, negotiating the cap onto her Mont Blanc pen, "I have a feeling that it never takes you an entire hour to do anything."
"As it happens, I didn't choose that programme," House said, promptly throwing it across the room. "I spend too much time brainwashing my ducklings to have all my good work unraveled. I'm running my own programme. Hand-picked some icebreakers and team games from the internet. I don't think some of these ones you've offered, or forwarded, whether you looked at them or not, quite meet my professional standards."
He made a show of unfolding one of the papers.
"There's this cat character - Fantasticat - he can do anything...Sometimes it's easier to see your dreams through someone else - like a funny cat character who can do anything. If you think like Fantasticat does - then you can do anything too. As a reflective tool, Fantasticat can help someone to see what's good in themselves, as if they were Fantasticat, which for some people is a lot easier than seeing it in themselves."
He glanced up in thought. "Actually, that sort of sounds like someone trying to get me - specifically me - to feel good about myself. Maybe their lame alarm was switched off at the time. I don't know."
She fit her chin into the cup of her palm, plaid elbow resting on the desktop. "Does Fantasticat do clinic duty? Because that's where you'll be spending your time if you don't pick up an hour of team training -- sanctioned team training -- before the month is out." She fanned her fingers outward from her cheek.
"Your call."
"Fantasticat turns every task into something fantastic," House said, despite the fact that he was tearing up the Fantasticat leaflet as he said it. "Besides, it's getting a bit old, threatening me with clinic duty whenever I try to think outside the square. Let's at least try the thumbscrews that I know you have."
He glanced about the office in a wary fashion, then raised his cane slightly from the ground, determined to obtain the least hideous form of the impending task. "So, when you say, 'sanctioned', that means I have to run my programme through you?"
He raised his brows.
She didn't deny the thumbscrews; merely broadcast a charmingly smug smile. She had worse methods of torture and she tipped her hand to say so: "It's allergy season. This place is a revolving door system for worried moms who think their kids' reaction to ragweed is really SARS or the avian flu. I can spare you that."
She nudged the wire wastecan around the corner of her desk for him to dispose of the shredded leaflet. "And yes, 'sanctioned'. We all have to answer to someone, House, and the buck stops here."
House, thoroughly put out, lobbed the leaflet at the wastecan. It bounced off the side and rolled over the floor.
"Oops," he said. "And I wish I could tell you that I can bend down without agonizing pain, but I can't." He heaved a long sigh. "Well, I'll jot down my ideas and tuck them down your cleavage a little later. After all, I assume that that's the function that neckline serves." Pause. "Come to think about it, I should really be lobbing my trash in there."
His look was one of innocent concern for her cleavage. He turned to hobble away, but threw over his shoulder, "By the way, am I sanctioned to consult my unbuilt team about Fantasticat, or do you think team-building will only build up morale if it's a surprise?"
In the seemingly infinite moment when his back was turned, Cuddy glanced down to her suspect blouse and plucked the center of it upward, attempting to dampen his arsenal by correcting "the problem".
She knew that 'consult' was Houseian code for 'torture unmercifully until Foreman rolls his eyes so hard that his entire head moves and either Cameron or Chase are crying'. She knew him well enough not to have to carry around her pocket-sized 'House-to-English' dictionary anymore. A starboard skew of her mouth at his question and a wry kind of humour in her reply:
"Legal can't afford any more of your 'surprises', House."
"No, don't worry, I'll even find something to correct 'my' problem," House said, his gesture soothing. "I saw some tape in a storeroom about 'Bedside Manner' - surely you'd like me to fish it out?"
He smiled and put both his hands on the cane. He had large eyes; the look would be sincere on anyone else.
And those large eyes would have worked on anyone else had they not been directed at Cuddy. But she was long initiated to the mischief that hid behind the seemingly sincere and she knew that he had no intention of ingratiating himself to her -- unless it got him something in return.
She steered her heels toward her desk and made a few distracted keystrokes with her left hand, glancing up at him from the half-light of the computer screen. "If I could be sure that you'd take it seriously?" The fissure between her eyes deepened exponentially.
"You can never be sure of anything," House found the ball of paper on the floor with his cane and knocked it about a bit, giving up on his cow eyes. Cuddy was just slightly more difficult to charm than everyone else, and if he bothered he could do it, but right now there was something fun to do with his cane. "So that's your call, isn't it? Now, what you can be more sure of is that I'll do my damndest to avoid clinic duty; I think we had better stick with that. Safer."
He accidentally-on-purpose hit the ball toward her.
"Oh, damn, you closed your shirt up." He frowned. "No fun."
Then, thinking that was just a little much to go lightly, he made a show of sighing and looking longingly at her breast. If there was one thing that would charm Cuddy, it was making her feel sexy.
Well there was that. Spending most of the day cloistered in budgetary meetings with dry bagels (and even drier company) didn't do much for a woman's sex appeal. She just counted herself lucky that she didn't place a high level of importance on being physically appealing. Right. It was a power-play anyway and, on certain days and in certain pairs of heels, Cuddy had the members of the board eating lox out of her palm. Fortunate for House, whose name frequently appeared on the discussion itinerary.
She deflected the paper ball with a folder, banking it into the wastecan. A triumphant little smile. "You'll do it and you'll like it," she said, a note of finality in her voice, "or I'll have Wilson conveniently step out of the hospital every time you need a Vicodin fill-up."
How was that for hardball?
House looked up sharply and nibbled the nails of one hand in a slight parody of deprived edginess. He briefly forgot that that was how he actually looked when stripped of his bon-bons for too long.
"You do know that Wilson's more likely to do what I say, 'cause he knows I can smush his feelings harder?"
This point made, he paused to consider.
"That said, if you can give me a single reason why it might be humanly possible to enjoy team-building, then there'll be a better chance I will."
The look on his face made it quite clear that he'd probably create a torture-house for himself and his team no matter what she might have to say about it. Though to anyone unpracticed in Houseisms, it might just have seemed like patience.
"Because it'll make me happy," she replied and, lest she accuse him of actually trying to pursue that altruistic objective, she followed it up with: "which will means that I'll be in a better position to make you happy."
Whatever 'happy' actually was for Gregory House. She sensed his shift in posture and knew that the floor had been opened up for negotiations. She was as skilled at this aspect of the job as he was at his off-the-cuff diagnoses. She curled her fingers beneath her chin and gave him her prairie-level regard.
"Agree to an hour of team building and I'll give you the rest of the afternoon off."
"I don't want the afternoon off. Since when have I wanted an afternoon off when I'm not on clinic duty?" he smirked. "Do you really think I have anything useful to do out of work?"
Out of his usual habit of finding the least painful position in a situation, he slumped down into the chair in front of her desk, and then regretted the action.
Sitting down would set him up for the usual complaints about his conduct; ah, but at least he could put his leg up on her papers, and had a level view of her bosom.
Cuddy's gaze veered upward and to the left in a 'Moses help me' plea for mercy.
"Thank you for sparing me the effort of making some contrived comment about your social life -- or 'voluntary lack thereof' --" she attempted to pull a stack of finance reports from beneath his ankles "-- but I know you'd rather be at home catching up on your TiVo quotas than stuck filling out discharge papers."
If she wasn't going to get her paperwork back (and he showed no sign of moving those Nike'd feet), she'd play into his visual vanities. Arms folded beneath her breasts; a casual forward lean.
"You see, this is why I'd rather stay here for the afternoon," House leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, watched, and picked at his teeth with a thumbnail. "Banter and boobies."
