A/N: Just want to thank all of you for the reviews/alerts/favorites. In return I give you chapter 2 :). I should be studying right now but I couldn't focus and decided to write a bit instead. That explains the shortness of this chapter for which I apoligize. I also want to apologize in advance for any mistakes. R&R and enjoy!

Disclaimer: Nope not mine. Bummer.

Chapter 1

A few weeks earlier:

Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital was humming with activity. The flu season had arrived causing the clinic to be swamped with patients. Nurses were running around, admitting patient after patient and trying to assign them a free space in the crowded waiting area. Every doctor that had a few minutes of spare time on his or her hands was assigned extra clinic duty and all of them were doing it willingly. Well, all of them but one…

While everyone was giving as much help as they possibly could, Dr. Gregory House could be found in exam room 2, alone. He had been down there for a couple of hours, without seeing a single patient. As this was quite the usual behavior for the cranky doctor, no one would normally care to bother him, not wanting to be on the receiving end of one of his snarky comments.

But today was different since they needed every room they had to be able to cope with all the sick people. Some of the nurses and even one of his own ducklings, Dr. Chase, had already tried to get him out of there, but it was all in vain. They all knew that in moments like this there was only one person who could get through to him: Dr. Lisa Cuddy, their very own Dean of Medicine with whom House shared quite a history.

After having been informed of the 'situation', the fierce doctor sauntered over to the exam room, her high heels angrily clacking on the hospital floor. She burst through the door, startling the blue-eyed doctor from his thoughts. "House! Care to explain why you have been camping out here for hours instead of doing your clinic duty like everyone else?" she shouted at him, but her words didn't seem to carry their usual power. "Why Doctor Cuddy, what has gotten your panties all in a bunch today?" he retorted, pushing her buttons some more, needing to see if his theory was right.

Cuddy sighed knowing that this was going to be another one of their famous standoffs. On any other day she would have been ok with that, but not today. She wasn't in the mood for his antics. This day was already hard enough for her, without her most infamous doctor pulling her pigtails.
House noticed his boss heaving a frustrated sigh before they had even started their sparring match and quickly added that to his mental board of 'symptoms'. He was almost sure something was off. To any normal person she would appear perfectly normal, but not to him. He had noticed the little telltale signs. After all, that was what he was paid for: to notice little details no one else did and by doing so he saved many lives.

But today the brilliant doctor used those talents to observe his boss lady, something he did quite often lately. When he had arrived at the hospital this morning he had been surprised when he 'accidently' ran into her. The always impeccably looking Dean had bags under her eyes, which she had tried to mask with an extra layer of make-up. Even though she had been able to conceal them quite well, House's trained eye didn't fail to notice. Neither had he missed her being slightly distracted and not making her usual fuss about him arriving late for the umpteenth time.

Those had been his first signs that something was wrong and he had made it his personal mission to find out what was off. She has been given the 'privilege' to become his newest puzzle. This was also the reason why he had been camping in the exam room for hours now. He needed to know if his suspicions were true and there was no better way to find out than in one of their famous verbal spats. If she couldn't match his wit today then he would know for sure that he was right and he wouldn't rest before he had gotten to the bottom of it.

"House, answer me!" she hissed, startling him again from his thoughts. "I'm in here because I'm protecting your precious little hospital's greatest asset of course", the obnoxious doctor quickly replied with a blank face. Confusion was etched all over her face now while she was looking around the room. She was trying hard to decipher his little riddle but with her mind being elsewhere today, she couldn't quite figure out what he was getting at. The Dean sighed tiredly again and decided to just get this over with as quickly as possible.

"Don't play me House! There's nothing to protect here. You're in a standard exam room and you've been here alone the entire time." "Ah but you're playing me Cuddles!" he exclaimed, hoping the use of his little pet name for her would finally spur her to up her game and match his wit. Unfortunately, he only received another confused look from his boss in return. "We all know that I'm the biggest asset of this hellhole so I've to make sure I protect myself." House finished smugly, looking quite content with his own reasoning.

"Protect yourself against what?" she scoffed, clearly not buying anything he had just said. "Oh come on Cuddy, are you being intentionally dense?" This got him a glare in return, but still no smart mouthed retort came from his favorite sparring partner. "It seems that you have failed to notice, but flu season broke out Cuddles. There's a bunch of sick people out there", he said while pointing to the door and crinkling his nose at the thought of all those idiots sitting in the waiting room. "We wouldn't want your favorite diagnostician to catch their germs now would we? Imagine what would happen if he couldn't perform his job anymore. Those pompous pricks you call donors would have to find another hospital to give their precious money to", he told her with mock concern evident in his voice. It only earned him another roll of her eyes.

"Seriously though boss, on what planet have you been living today? You seem fairly distracted." For a fraction of a second, the look of a deer caught in headlights appeared on her face and even though it disappeared as soon as it had presented itself and was replaced with annoyance, he hadn't failed to notice. What the hell was going on with her today? Before he even had a chance to confront her she beat him to it. "I don't know what you're talking about House but I don't have time for your little games. Some of us actually do have to work. Now please go be your annoying, obnoxious self somewhere else. We need this room." And just with that she turned around and made her way to the door.

The diagnostician was stunned. She wasn't even going to try to manipulate him into helping out? No attempt to bargain at all? Something had to be wrong. "What, you're not going to throw a tantrum about me not helping the poor sick people? No manipulating, useless threatening and bargaining before you will eventually bend to my will anyway?" Lisa Cuddy just sighed and shook her head before she turned the knob of the door, leaving the exam room with slumped shoulders and without looking back. Oh yes, something was definitely wrong…

Constructive criticism is always welcome!