20.

Cuddy picked up her tray from in front of the cashier and made her way to an empty table across the cafeteria, which was bustling with the midday rush. Lunch consisted of her usual tofu salad, today accompanied by a tub of yoghurt, a banana, and orange juice. The salad looked fresh and appetising and as soon as she sat down she picked up her fork and started in with pleasure. It was so nice to have an appetite again, and she was relishing every meal - even the sometimes less than stellar cafeteria food. She was just happy to be hungry, and to be able to eat without immediately wanting to throw it right back up again.

Her appetite returning wasn't the only recent change. Her stomach, once flat and trim, was definitely beginning to curve outwards now, noticeable even under the layers of her clothing. On top of that she was having to leave her jacket on all day - something House had picked up on almost the minute she'd started doing it - because she didn't particularly want anyone seeing the safety pin holding up her skirt now that the zipper wouldn't fasten all the way up anymore.

She really had made her announcement just in time - people would have started guessing on their own soon anyway.

There was always more than enough pain and suffering to go around in a hospital. People liked good news, and she'd been encountering well-wishers all over the hospital since word from the board meeting had gotten out. It was nice, of course it was nice - although it was impossible to be unaware of an underlying curiosity from all sides, the thing no one had the guts to come right out and ask her about.

She wasn't talking. It wasn't anyone's business, whether she and House had a strictly professional relationship or were in fact planning to follow up this baby with six more, along with a dog and a cat and a summer home in the Hamptons. If the truth actually fell somewhere in between those two extremes, well she was happy to keep that to herself, too.

House, she had been glad to find, wasn't providing any fodder for the rumour mill either. He was a private person really, his love of gossip and innuendo extending only so far as to cover everyone besides himself. The kind of attention he was getting at the moment was not the kind he liked. She didn't think he'd have to put up with it for too much longer, though. People would get used to the idea, they'd get bored with speculating, they'd find something new to gossip about - they always did.

Of course, House standing ten feet away from her in the middle of the cafeteria, arguing with Wilson about where they were going to sit, wasn't going to help matters. She rolled her eyes, watching them bicker until Wilson apparently won the dispute and headed towards her table. House followed a moment later with a sour expression on his face.

Wilson pulled up a chair while House dumped his tray down unceremoniously and sat opposite her.

"Wilson was just saying how nice you look today," he said by way of greeting.

Wilson gave House a look which told her he had actually said nothing of the sort. "You do look very nice," he agreed hastily at her raised eyebrow.

"He particularly likes your top," House added.

"It's a nice top."

And now they were both smirking. She rolled her eyes at them, knowing full well it wasn't her blouse they were referring to, but the way she was filling it out. Of course, along with the start of a baby bump, other things were also starting to expand. And of course, if anyone was going to point this out it was House and his trusty sidekick.

"I'd tell you both to grow up but I know a lost cause when I see one."

"We're only trying to pay you a compliment." House took on a wounded expression. "It's a lovely top. Really suits you. Brings out your -"

"Eyes," Wilson filled in quickly.

House frowned at him. "That's not what I was going to say."

"We know what you were going to say." She didn't bother hiding her amused smile, nor her subsequent huff of frustration. "I do realise none of my clothes fit me anymore - it's not like I have a lot of time for shopping."

House scoffed at that. "The turn-over rate of your wardrobe tells me you usually make time, no matter how busy you are."

"Not this weekend, I can't."

This weekend, of course, was going to be spent entertaining their respective parents.

House made a face at the reminder. "I'm just concerned about the health risk you pose to the general public right now. One deep breath, those buttons start popping off - someone's going to lose an eye."

"If you're worried about your eyes, maybe you should try averting them," she suggested.

He shrugged. "I'm a risk-taker."

"You could always break out the protective goggles," Wilson said.

"Ooh, safety-conscious and fun. I like it."

"Both of you stop talking," she ordered, having had more than enough of their comedy routine by now.

In the ensuing silence she calmly picked up her plastic knife and began slicing banana into her yoghurt. Anything else at this point would only have encouraged them.

The next day Cuddy had a lunch meeting off-campus, and when she returned went straight back to her office ready for an exciting afternoon of paperwork. There was something lying on her chair, however, she discovered when she went to sit down at her desk.

It was a wall calendar - but not one she would ever put up in her office. Or anywhere, for that matter.

'Big, Busty, and Beautiful!' the front cover proclaimed. And totally naked, Cuddy saw as she flipped through a couple of the months. Her eyes widened as she took in the largely-proportioned and graphically-posed women on display.

Perplexed, although with a lurking suspicion as to how such a thing came to be in her office, she closed the calendar and looked up just in time to spot a familiar, grizzled figure ducking out of sight out in the clinic.

She sighed and tossed the thing in the trash. Then, realising she wasn't keen for any visitors to see a pornographic calendar sticking out of her trash can, she hastily retrieved it and stashed it in her desk to be disposed of later in a more discreet fashion.

The day after that, on Wednesday morning, Marla came in with her mail which happened to include a large package sent by express delivery. She turned it over to inspect it. It was light, and the originating address seemed to be an online store - one she'd never heard of, let alone ordered anything from.

Common sense told her how unlikely it was to be a bomb, so she opened it, only to reveal fold upon fold of garish floral-print fabric. Baffled, she held it up in front of her, having to stand to do so, it was so big. The pattern was hideous, it was the size of a tent. It was, she realised, a mumu.

House had sent her a mumu. Because of course it was House - who else?

Torn for a moment between the urge to laugh, and to track down the man and strangle him, she went with the laughter as she stuffed the voluminous dress back in its box and set it on the floor so that she could get some work done. Though later, when House showed up for clinic duty, she couldn't resist going out to the desk where he was signing in.

"I got your... gift this morning. I really just don't know how to thank you," she drawled.

"No buttons," he quipped, giving her the barest hint of a smile before grabbing the first patient file in the rack and heading for an exam room.

She went back to her office wondering what she was supposed to do with a mumu. At least, she reflected somewhat gratefully, it wasn't more porn.

On Thursday, House accosted her outside the lecture theatre where she was about to go in and greet the latest batch of med students. He thrust a form under her nose and demanded she sign it. Which she did, after likewise demanding that the patient be fully informed of the extreme risks posed by the test House wanted to perform.

It all seemed perfectly innocuous.

Half an hour later, though, she was heading into her office when Marla jumped up from behind her desk to stop her as she passed. The older woman reached around and pulled something off her back.

She thought she was just being paranoid - that med students on their first day were a nervous bunch, that the spattering of muffled laughter that followed her out of the room, and subsequently all the way back here, had been nothing to worry about. But no, walking around with a bright yellow 'Baby on Board' sign taped to her back would have just that effect, she realised with chagrin.

She didn't know how he'd done it without her noticing, though no doubt it had been when he was distracting her with his complaints about the sheer idiocy of most patients and therefore the redundancy of consent forms in general. If it wasn't so irritating she might have been impressed.

"I suppose it's funny," Marla said, clearly unamused herself. "If you've got a really juvenile sense of humour."

"Oh trust me, he does," she replied.

To round out the week she found a box sitting on her desk Friday afternoon, small and white, topped with a shiny pink bow. She eyed it warily for a moment. Again there was no indication who it was from, but there hardly needed to be at this point.

Opening it revealed a coffee mug. She snorted as she read the words emblazoned across it in large, eye-catching print: World's Greatest MILF.

She propped her chin in one hand and stared at it.

The mumu was going to find itself stuffed in a Goodwill charity bin very soon, and the Baby on Board sign had been stashed in the glove compartment in her car - that at least would one day come in useful.

But what, she wondered, was she going to do with this? She was hardly going to use it here at work. And she couldn't take it home with her mother arriving tomorrow - the woman would unerringly find it and want to know what a 'MILF' was. She tried to picture herself saying the words 'Mom I'd Like to Fuck' out loud in her mother's presence, and just couldn't do it.

But she found she didn't want to just throw the mug out either - it was an odd sort of compliment, but a compliment nonetheless.

Coming from House, it was downright sweet.

With a wry smile she tucked the mug away in a drawer. These silly gifts and a harmless prank - she didn't know what he was up to. She just hoped that whatever House was doing, it wasn't going to carrying on over to the following night's dinner with the parents. She was nervous enough about that already, worrying what her mother was going to make of House. And then there was her own trepidation about seeing House's parents again.

She'd met them first years ago, when House was still in the hospital recovering from the infarction. And she assumed they knew of her since then only as the pain-in-the-ass boss House complained about - probably using her as a convenient excuse to avoid visits. Now she was being introduced to them in a new capacity, not as doctor or supervisor, but something else entirely.

Throw House into the mix, being his usual unpredictable self - she had good reason to be nervous.

On Saturday it was the middle of the afternoon by the time she finally had a moment to herself. The morning had been taken up with driving out to the airport, collecting her mother and bringing her home, followed by catching up over lunch, which was really more like a session with the Grand Inquisitor.

Fortunately, her mother hated travelling more than she loved giving her eldest daughter the third degree, and so after they'd eaten and tidied up she had retired to the guest room to take a nap.

Which gave Cuddy the chance to call House and make sure he wasn't trying to weasel his way out of their dinner plans.

Calling his home number got her one of his creative answering machine messages. She decided to try his cell next. It was switched off. Before she called him back at home and left a message on the off chance that if he was actually there, and bored enough, he might deign to finally answer the phone - she dialled his office number, which rang exactly once before it was picked up.

"I will pay you a million dollars if I don't have to go," he barked down the line at her.

She blinked at the abrupt greeting. "Sorry," she managed a moment later, "no amount of money is going to get you out of this."

"I'll give you my first-born child."

"House."

"I guess that one's not going to work so well on you, is it?"

"Nothing's going to work on me. You're going, and that's final."

He changed tracks quickly. "I'm bringing Wilson, then. He'll make a great buffer. He's well-groomed and polite - parents love him."

"You can't bring Wilson."

"Why not?"

"Because my mother already thinks this whole situation is strange enough without you bringing your boyfriend to dinner."

"Couldn't you tell her we're just really, really good friends? My parents buy it."

"Sometimes I don't even buy it. He can't come. Now, we're meeting at seven, right?" He made a non-committal sound. She could tell he was pouting. "Seven o'clock, House. Don't be late. And don't even think about creating some fake emergency that keeps you at the hospital. You will be there, at the restaurant, at seven. Now, did your parents get in okay?"

"They called from the hotel," came the grudging reply. "All body-parts and baggage accounted for."

She frowned slightly. "You didn't pick them up from the airport?"

"They like to be self-sufficient. Besides, I told them I was working."

"I thought you didn't lie to your -"

"I am working. The only way I can lie to my mother is if it isn't a lie. I'm sitting here, in my office, doing paperwork okay?'

"You're kidding." She started to laugh.

"No."

"Wow, desperate times, huh?'

"I'm hanging up."

"Wait, House!"

There was a moment's pause, as he no doubt debated whether or not to bring the phone back to his ear. She heard an irritated huff and then, "What?"

"Just... please try to be nice. I know you can be nice when you want to. And it wouldn't kill you to shave." There was more silence, throughout which she could practically feel the derision aimed her way pouring over the line. "Fine, then you can at least be nice."

"What's in it for me?"

"What? You do not need a reason to be nice."

"If you want me to behave myself all through dinner, a little incentive might go a long way."

"What do you want?" she asked reluctantly, and with the distinct suspicion that she wasn't going to like his answer.

"How about... dessert?"

She could actually hear the suggestive smirk in his voice. She made sure he could hear the disapproval in hers. "House."

"Seems only fair - you get dinner, then I get -"

"Pick something else."

She could picture the smirk growing wider as he said, "I'll let you know."

"Hold on, I don't think -" The dial tone sounded in her ear. He'd already hung up.

What, she thought as she put down the phone, had she gotten herself in for?