CHAPTER THREE
Wilson stared in amazement. "I…I…" he couldn't speak. All he could do was blink with his mouth hanging open.
House waited patiently while his friend to processed what he was seeing.
"She's going to kill you!" Wilson finally regained his speech and managed to utter the words that had been teasing his tongue since he walked into House's office and saw a miniature recreation of Cuddy's office shoved up against House's own space.
"Probably, but now she won't be able to avoid me." House wasn't too worried about the death threat. Cuddy would never really kill him. If she were capable of it, she'd have accomplished the deed long ago.
"Does this mean I'm fired?" Wilson was somewhat bitter about the role of messenger that his two friends had put him in. Since they weren't speaking, he was left to run between them like the Wells Fargo Express. It was maddening, but it did have the benefit if his being kept in the loop, to an extent.
"I'm sure I can find you a new job." House smirked. He would always have a use for Wilson.
Wilson took a step toward Cuddy's desk and picked up the crystal paperweight he recognized from her real office. "You're attention to detail is impeccable." Everything was exactly as Cuddy had it, only less spread out, do to having all House's belongings occupying the same space.
House beamed proudly. It hadn't been easy. He'd had to bribe the weekend maintenance crew. Surprisingly, they didn't seem to like him any more than the weekday maintenance crew, and it took quite a bit of bribing to get them to do his dirty work. But in the end, when he'd stood back and admired his handy work, he felt it was worth it. This was quite possibly the greatest prank ever pulled at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, and that was saying something, since Gregory House had been working there for nearly nine years.
Wilson jumped when he heard the door open, nearly shattering the expensive paperweight as he hurried to put it back in place. House laughed, letting his friend know it was a false alarm. He turned to see not Cuddy glaring back, but Kutner looking slightly confused.
Kutner surveyed the room quickly. He knew it was different, and he knew what was different about it. He had no idea why, nor did he ask. He walked in and handed House a folder. "The tests we ran on Carly Peterson. Nothing is conclusive, but she seems to have a Bartholin's Cyst. It's benign and I don't think it's diagnostically relevant, but 13 thinks it might have lead to some kind of infection. I asked her what kind, but she said to come see you."
As House inspected the test results, Kutner looked around. There was no doubt in his mind that this was Cuddy's desk. It looked just like Cuddy's desk. And that was clearly a picture of Cuddy, probably with her parents, on graduation day. "Odd," he mumbled more to himself than anyone, but House was so eager to show off that he jumped on the barely audible statement.
"What's odd?" House handed back the folder.
"The cyst." Kutner had just had a thought. "It wasn't there when we ran our preliminary tests. I'm sure of it."
House's pager went off and he looked down at the number and smiled. It was the moment he'd been waiting for. "Yeah, that's great. Go talk to the rest of the team about it. Wilson, go with him." House was looking past his visitors, toward the glass doors that marked the entry to his office.
"Why do I…"
"Unless you want to be here when Cuddy comes in?" House was craning his neck trying to see around Wilson's big head.
Wilson pushed Kutner toward the side door that led to the diagnostics meeting room. House's was one of the only offices in the building that had an attached meeting room. It was something Wilson was occasionally envious of, but was also just another sign of Cuddy's favoritism of the world class diagnostician.
He used to believe her when she said it was because of House's unparalleled skills, that she showed him special favor, but since finding out about the kiss, he wasn't to sure what to think. All he knew at the moment was that he didn't want to be around for whatever fight his two friends and colleagues were about to get into.
He frowned slightly as he watched the blinds on House's side of the glass wall, snap shut. At least he would still be able to hear through the paper thin walls.
Cuddy strode briskly through the hospital corridors. She barely noticed as the new oncology nurse picked up the phone and began to dial not so stealthily, though, clearly, she was trying to be stealthy. Mandy Hahn was fresh out of nursing school and eager to work in the cancer ward. Cuddy didn't care for her much, but had left the hiring decision in Wilson's hands. She should have known better. Hahn was young, attractive and needy, Wilson's ideal mate.
Mandy was also easily bought, and in exchange for an introduction to a certain sexy member of his team, she was willingly acting spy for Dr. House. She had just paged him the warning that Cuddy was coming. She still giggled when she thought about the numbers he'd asked her to send as a warning. 80085. She studied Dr. Cuddy as she walked past. She did have very nice boobs.
"House!" Cuddy burst into the crowded office. "What the hell did you do?"
"Isn't it obvious?" House looked around. He thought it was pretty obvious, but then again, Cuddy wasn't always that bright.
Cuddy stumbled over her words. "Why are all my things in your office?"
"You can consider it OUR office. At least until the exterminator deals with the infestation in your office."
"What infestation?" She didn't like the sound of this at all. Nor did she like the strange glow coming from her most difficult employee.
"You're not going to believe this…" House began, stopping as Cuddy confirmed that he was right, she wasn't going to believe a word he said. "Over the weekend, it appears, your office became overrun by fire ants." He pretended to be shocked.
"Fire ants?"
House shrugged in response. "The exterminator said it will take about a week to get rid of them."
"And how do you know about this?" And why didn't she? Something was up, she just wasn't sure what. It couldn't be what she was thinking. Not even House was that bold.
"They said they tried calling you." He shrugged.
Cuddy wasn't as angry as she should have been. She wasn't as angry as she would have been had the perpetrator been anyone but Dr. Gregory House. Instead, a small part of her was jealous that he'd come up with something this outrageous when she never would have, and another part of her was impressed that the lazy diagnostician could actually pull it off.
He could see her weakening. He'd seen it many times before. She had a soft spot for him and he knew it, and worked it every chance he could. It might not be the most ethical thing to do, but with an opponent like Lisa Cuddy, he needed to use every weapon in his arsenal to keep her unbalanced. If he didn't, she might notice how unbalanced she made him.
"I told them you were probably having a weekend long shag and…" House ducked as a staple remover came whizzing past his head. "You could poke an eye out with that thing!"
"I'm not that lucky," Cuddy mumbled, her hand running slowly over the items on her desk. Everything was where she'd left it Friday night when she left work and headed to her empty house for her dinner alone.
"So, roomie, why don't you sit down and get some work done?" House grinned. He was leaning back in his chair, confident that she would do as he asked and yet startled when she did.
Cuddy sat in her chair, behind her desk, but instead of a view of the clinic she had a view of House's smug face. She fought the urge to jump over the two desks, placed head to head, and throttle him. Instead she picked up the phone and dialed the four digit extension for maintenance.
"This is Dr. Cuddy. I need my furniture moved from House's office to the empty office on the ground floor." She listened as Frank, the head of maintenance explained that the office in question was being repainted and wouldn't be ready for habitation for a few more days. "I didn't authorize that room to be repainted." She sighed with annoyance as he told her he had her signed request in his files. "What about the small conference room on two?" This time she listened to the story of a leaky pipe that had caused a flood in the small conference room that took up the far back left corner of the second floor. "Really?" She glared at House. "Let me know when you find a place to move my office." She hung up before Frank could mention that he thought she'd found a place, in Dr. House's office.
"Problems?" House looked innocently up from his comic book.
"I know that you forged my signature on the paint request, but please tell me you didn't tamper with the pipes in the ceiling."
"I didn't." It was true. He paid Sal the night watchman to do it for him. Ah commerce.
"It's not a coincidence House." She was losing patience.
"No. It's not." He wasn't going to deny setting this all up. What would be the point in that? But he also wasn't going to just hand her the answer on a silver platter either. Where's the fun in that?
"Do you have to be such an asshole about everything?"
"It's clearly the only way to get your attention." House was still cool, at least on the outside. It was too soon to show that she was ruffling his feathers.
"You want my attention, you've got it." She had moved closer to him and was now in his face in a challenging manner.
Now that House had it, he wasn't sure what to do with it. He wanted to kiss her. He knew it was cliché, he knew that all bad Harlequin romances had this scene, when the heroine and hero are arguing heatedly and end up in a passionate embrace, lips forced together, tongues fighting for dominance, and he didn't want to be a cliché, but man did he want to kiss her.
It was that flash of fire in her eyes and the way her cheeks flushed when she got angry that just turned him on. He knew it shouldn't, but he was a rebel. He prided himself on doing things he shouldn't do. And he fantasized about ripping her bodice off, like the Harlequin heroes, exposing her heaving bosom as his throbbing manhood burned between them like a fiery rod about to thrust through her garden gates.
He shook the thoughts out of his head. This was no time to reenact Tamed by the Barbarian for the zillionth time with he and Cuddy as the leads. And don't dare ask him how he knew the plot to Tamed by the Barbarian. It was a gag gift from Wilson last Christmas, it was a rainy night, the cable had gone out and he had nothing else to do. It really wasn't his fault.
"I'm waiting." Cuddy was growing impatient, and very nervous under his lascivious gaze.
"I'm leaving." House pulled himself out of his chair, ignoring the sharp pain that shot up his leg. With great effort, he hurried out of the office before she could say anything to stop him. He needed time to think.