A grey eye shut to half-mast. "What'll it take for you to say 'yes' to this? And no, 'banter and boobies' are not applicable answers."
House shrugged, his eyes going a bit wild with glee.
"When did I ever disagree? I told you I planned my own programme."
"Right." Her smile a patische of his own smug crescent.
She hooked a knuckle around her index finger for each of the ensuing examples: "Because reminding Foreman that he's black, insulting the directionality of Chase's toilet flushes and tormenting Cameron with that reproachable sexuality of yours scores big in the workplace sensitivity column."
House gave her a sarcastic thumbs up, more for the tirade than any sort of apt point he believed her to have made. It all sounded a little boo-hoo to him.
"Going on the premise that any of them can't just deal. Sure," he turned his cane slowly between his fingers. "And you're entirely unaffected by me, of course, whatever I consist of in your case."
She managed to extricate the top three sheets of paper from beneath his shoes, frowning as she wiped smudges away from the heretofore neat lines. "I'm just lucky that my health plan paired a TB vaccination with one for annoying diagnosticians."
The Mont Blanc found its way back between her fingers, a few quick scratches against a scratch pad before she devoted the expensive ink to rescued pages.
"You're the one who named my sexuality reproachable; so chances are I'm not just an annoying diagnostician to you. I'm an annoying diagnostician with reproachable sexuality. The distinction's important," he peered at her. "So you had better rustle up a vaccination for that, too."
He finished turning the cane and put it over his lap in a content sort of way. He was not smiling, but there was a strange positioning of his mouth and brows that suggested satisfaction with the comment - and at the fact that he was getting away with distracting her from her work. An outright ordering out was something that he couldn't quite squirm out of without copious amounts of charm.
She had to be in a very good mood - not in the least because she was wearing that blouse.
Either in a good mood or possessed of a very efficient assistant whose flair for Colombian grounds was one of the primary reasons for his hiring. She dipped a finger into the coffee cup at her wrist, came up negative, and winced her mouth to one side. Palms to the edge of the desk, lifting easily to her feet. His self-assured expression was a little too cat-that-got-the-Jewish-canary for comfort.
The eager assistant in the outer office rose to his feet and patted down a Sears-Roebuck tie (that he had told her was Armani) and Cuddy pointed to the coffee cup on her desk. He held up a palm of understanding and circled around his desk to reset the carafe.
A handsome bookshelf lined the far wall and she heaved a thick tome from between the medical journals, returning to thunk the book into his lap. She leaned over him (for extra emphasis) and began leafing through the vellum'd pages. A finger paused over one particular entry.
"Reproachable," she read, "of or related to shame, disgrace or scorn." A laconic smile.
"How's that for a distinction?"
"Ow," he said, as the gargantuan book hit his leg. He sucked air in through his teeth, but struggled through the moment to flick her hand off the page. "And I see you've conveniently chosen meaning number two; one is 'to express disapproval or criticism of', and I could work that out by your tone." He heaved the book off his lap, unscrewed his pill bottle in triumph and took a Vicodin. It was cause for celebration, after all. Nearly everything was, when it came to a drunkard with a pint in his hand, and so it was for House and Vicodin.
Besides, it gave him the pleasant sensation of being relieved from pain as he was insulting Cuddy.
She gathered the book into her arms and snapped it closed (though with some difficulty -- the thing easily weighed twenty pounds), a puff of dust coiling upward to tickle her nose. She experienced a momentary flash of guilt that she'd unloaded a weight onto his leg, but was morally reprieved when she saw him pop a painkiller.
She was fitting the book back onto the shelf when her assistant came in, balancing a refilled coffee carafe and a fresh stack of paperwork. He teetered nervously when he saw House, having been castigated by him before, and offered a weak smile to Cuddy before leaving caffeine and commerce on her desk.
She glanced back at House as she poured. "I guess we all have our vices."
"Coffee? Your vice?" House chuckled and poured her some coffee. This act of generosity was immediately explained by him helping himself to a paper cup of the same. "I see you live life on the edge." Sarcasm, but then he added, "Especially since now you're forcing my drug habit."
He determinedly gave the appearance of being trodden on, and played with the idea, since she was in a good mood, of bringing up the subject of the conference. Frowned slightly at her desk planner.
When he plucked the carafe from her hands she had started, taken a moment to blink, and tried to rearrange the contents of his face into another person. When that proved fruitless she accepted the idea that he'd done something nice for her and murmured her thanks. She offered him a packet of sugar (none of that cancer-causing stuff for Lisa Cuddy, though she suspected he'd be long dead before cancer could touch him -- strangulation was more likely) and poured some into her own cup. A thoughtful sip.
"I live to see you miserable," she said, following the direction of his gaze. Hm. A skirted hip propped to the edge of her desk. "All the really interesting stuff is on my iCal."
"Then you should be very well alive," he said in response to her comment about his misery. "By the way, I think your hip has a claw attached to it," he eyed it as though it were a creature. He emptied several sachets of sugar into his coffee, stirred it with a finger, dipped the finger into the empty sachet to find the remaining granules, then licked it clean. He liked these little invented-on-the-spot rituals. Anyone watching would think he had done it for years, when in fact he'd taken his coffee black the other day.
He had a thought. It was a risk, but it was a thought.
"Hey," he said into the cup, "anything stronger than this about? For when Cuddy's at her wit's end with the doctor of reproachable sexuality?"
One of her manicured eyebrows looked prepared to jolt itself upward off her brow and into the stratosphere. She was glad that the rim of the coffee cup caught her dropped jaw. She tongued a bit of java from the corner of her mouth before answering:
"What, like a bottle of KahlĂșa stashed in the bottom drawer of my desk?"
"Exactly," he didn't even blink. "Or rum - rum's my crisis drink." His smile was very cheerful. "And I have some crisis drink now. I mean, seriously - " He tipped his Vicodin bottle upside down and shook it forlornly. Nothing came out. "What's a cripple to do but drink rum when he has the afternoon off?" he added, in case she fired him then and there for misconduct.
He threw the pill bottle obediently into the wastebasket - looking up for approval as he did so - then pulled out a nice, large, silver flask.
"What's yours?"
She'd been kidding about the liqueur in the desk; she imagined he knew that. Good old, straight arrow Cuddy, who could be the postergirl for responsible living if 'responsible living' meant being a workaholic.
A look of utter horror flashed across her face, white-hot anger quick to replace it as she felt a storm of needlepricks up and down her arms. "House..." she began, her voice terse "...there had better be nothing more than apple juice in that flask."
"Are you afraid of rum?" he hadn't meant to distract from the point, but this was too rich. "No, never mind - I carry apple juice in a flask to scare everyone. No lie." He took a swig, grimaced, and then nodded. "Gets easier. Want some? In your coffee?"
He grinned and poised it over the mug.
She whisked her mug out of his way as if the flask was full of concentrated anthrax. "Sure! You want me to make some mixers for your peer review? I'm sure if you give Dr. Collins a buttery nipple he'll make nice and forgive you for getting drunk on the job."
She grabbed the nearest file -- which just happened to be the one for the Tahiti conference -- and whacked him on the shoulder with it.
House made a soothing gesture with both hands, and flicked a lock of her hair about in a thinking fashion. It was interesting, appearing casual while concentrated.
"I don't get drunk on the job," he couldn't refrain from informing her. "Work can be fun, you know." In fact, the hope of an interesting case was one hell of a beacon for a Vicodin-and-diagnostics addict, but he didn't want to crawl on the ground. He made an exaggerated glance at his watch.
"Oh, look. Ten past six. You're officially off. One swig, and I'll do two hours of team training." An obedient underling smile, still not completely devoid of House-like qualities.
It was true that he wanted to see her sip straight rum. But he was also facing in a certain direction.
This was college all over again.
Memories of a certain evening down in the Village: a desperately-lit bar and a round of twenty-one shots for her twenty-first birthday. Her tab had been paid by none other than the Medical Miracle Man himself and he wouldn't let her hit the floor until twenty-one shot glasses preceded her. She'd spent that night (and most of the next morning) wrapped around the base of her toilet. Please, god, let me live through this long enough to punish him.
She'd hoped to have done that much by becoming his boss. And still he pushed.
"Are you out of your mind?" A pause and a hand to fend off his response. "Don't answer that. I'm liable."
House glanced to the side, shook his head in a casual fashion. Twitched a little, then blinked, amazed that he could feel pain again so soon. Took a small swig.
"And why would I be out of my mind? You're off work. This is rum. You're so sober it's almost depressing." He raised his brows.
"Some people have the remarkable ability to manage pain responsibly and without the use of alcohol or narcotics," she cut, this time feeling no pity for his discomfort.
He couldn't wheedle her like he used to. Get her to turn over her mind as easily as a dog rolled over to have its stomach scratched. She circled round her desk again and began collecting her files, the abruptness of each gesture clarifying her agitation.
"Pain?" House ran a tentative finger about the bottle rim. "I didn't know workaholics had pain. I always thought them a breed that could have fun and fund their lives at once."
He gently prodded the flask across the desk toward her.
"And since you are a workaholic, and your conscience is telling you that one swig of rum is worth two hours of House's irritation and boredom..."
She hauled her briefcase onto the desk and snapped open the latches, throating a dry laugh. "'Conscience', right. I'm surprised you can say that word without soliciting an appearance from a guy with hooves and a pitchfork."
Gall left bitterly bright spots of taste on her tongue and she took another sip of coffee to wash it away.
House, thoroughly irritated and a little tipsy, wandered around her desk. And then he put his head down on it. And then, eased himself across it. Files fell off the other end.
"Oh, come on," he said, tapping out a little tune on the mahogany beside the flask.
He lay still for a moment, looking at her, and then said,
"I do have a conscience, I just deal. Everyone ought to deal, and because they don't, they're a pain in the ass. Everyone's hypochondriac, everyone's melodramatic. Drink your rum, Leese." He chuckled, and waited for her reaction to that.
While he waited, he folded his fingers across his stomach. The rum wasn't particularly helping his leg. He had secretly known that - in technical medical terms - but of course, all things would pass away with a few light sips.
And then he realised that he had told her that he had a conscience - and now she would look for signs of it. He would have to be careful. Ve-ry.
Cuddy knew that House was no stranger to lying. It hadn't hitherto, however, involved him lying on her desk. And Gregory House was a tall man, which meant that every available inch of mahogany was currently occupied with a limb of some sort. Her briefcase and precious (distracting!) files were trapped beneath him. She sighed, resisting the urge to squeeze the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
"Don't call me that," she muttered, but her voice had lost some of its usual acerbity. She was tired; too tired, even, to collect the scattered files. When Lisa Cuddy didn't immediately trip over herself to put all things in order, something was grating.
"Rum," House said, as though he were being filmed for a commercial. "That's the answer. Don't worry, I won't try to foist any Vicodin on you, pained as you might look."
He unscrewed the top of the flask.
"And hey; you know it's sexy when I've sipped out of it."
Watching her expression with yellowed eyes, he suddenly said, "So, what file do you want, workaholic harl - ?" Stop. And burrowed underneath himself.
She was about to say something clever -- at least she thought it so -- about the salivary transmission of "jerk", but was distracted by a feverish pecking on the glass of her door. She glanced up, expecting a board member (or the Grand High Inquisitor), but was met instead with the panicked whey-face of her assistant. He was standing stick-straight with shoulders so rigid that they could have been measured with a T-square.
He was pointing to the man on her desk and mouthing 'Should I call security?' with fish-faced exaggeration. Cuddy shook her head, passed an 'This is par for the course' shrug and dropped into her chair, a hand over her face.
"PIM Conference?" It was a weak suggestion.
