Hey guys, ok I'm giving you another update before I go away for a couple of days - I'm going down to London for my girlfriend's interview for Reading University! I'm really glad you all liked the last chapter, and I'm honestly so happy that you're all reading this, and thank you so much for your reviews! I'm sorry, but you are going to have to put up with Lucas for a little while longer, but he does really play a central role in the plot... And hopefully you'll all forgive me for it as time goes on.
Anyway, please please pretty please leave me reviews for when I come back - the only internet access I'll have when I'm away is from my phone so I may be able to check out your reviews, but I also might not! And when I come back, I'll finally be getting round to writing more of the story, so I can still update at a steady pace. I'll see you all when I'm back on Friday, and, enjoy! xxxxxx
IV
When Wilson walked into his best friend's office, he found House apparently hanging upside down from his computer chair, his head barely centimetres from the floor and his face turning a slightly concerning shade of puce. It was just before noon the next day and Wilson immediately forget why he'd entered the room out of pure shock of the sight that greeted him. "You… It… What are you doing?" He spluttered, exasperated by the sheer idiocy of what he saw.
"I read on the internet somewhere that a Japanese scientist has proposed by hanging upside down and allowing gravity to aid the pumping of blood to our brains, we can grow brain cells twice as fast as usual. So I'm proving, or disproving, his theory." His voice was audibly strained by the pressure the blood was exerting on his head, but he spoke as if it was the most normal thing in the world to be doing.
Wilson's jaw dropped and he just gaped for a second, before shaking his head in disbelief and deciding not to argue, instead taking a seat in front of House's desk. "You paged me?"
Deciding it wasn't going to be practical to conduct a whole conversation upside down, due to the fact that he couldn't really open his mouth much more without the over whelming urge to throw up, or the possibility of passing out, House carefully, but with the grace of a professional gymnast half his age and female, spun himself upright to face Wilson and shook his head ever so slighty, as if to dislodge any excess blood in his head and begin it flowing properly again. "Yes, I paged you. I paged you to tell you next time you have one of your little match making plans, keep it to yourself please."
"You talked to her?" Wilson's jaw dropped again, wondering if the hanging upside down had done something mind altering, or personality altering, to his friend. "How did it go, what did she say?" He leaned forward almost like a small school boy waiting to hear the gossip from a friend's first date.
"No, I didn't talk to her. Well, I did, only after she talked to me, without really saying anything… The point is, you talked to her!" House waved an accusing finger in Wilson's face.
He sighed, completely exasperated. "Yes, I talked to her, because someone needed to talk to her and you clearly weren't going to! But, wait a minute, what do you mean you only talked to her after she talked to you but she didn't talk to you…" Wilson raised his eyebrow, thoroughly confused.
"She came to my house last night about a patient, and she was being really over emotional about the patient yet completely cold with me. She threatened to fire me then I tried to work out what was going on in her head, then I realised you'd talked to her and convinced her that you, for once in your life, actually knew what you were talking about and were worth listening to." House explained, all completely carelessly, as if reeling off a well rehearsed speech that was of no interest to him when he knew his audience was trying desperately trying to catch every word he said.
He stayed silent at this point, expecting the explanation to continue. When it didn't, he spoke. "And… Is that it? Then what happened?"
And as it wasn't the most important part of the story but in fact something completely irrelevant, he added. "Oh, and then we kissed, and she ran off crying. I didn't think I was that bad at kissing…" House looked incredulously at Wilson, almost with the attempted innocence of that small boy spilling the gossip of his first date.
"You kissed? House, that's huge! That's a step in the right direction! Now, we've just got to make sure it doesn't reduce her to tears next time it happens…" And with that Wilson trailed off, apparently pondering on how they could achieve this goal.
"Next time? There isn't going to be a next time, that is the last time I listen to you and your crazy theories. Now she's going to be all weird with me and I'm going to be all weird with her and it's going to be all messed up and I don't even get to see her naked for my trouble, so thank you very much."
"Oh, no, come on, you can't give up now!"
There was a note of finality and defiance in House's voice when he spoke. "Yes, I can." And then he looked up to the glass door to his office and saw a female in a figure hugging suit and killer patent leather red heels walking towards it. Without a warning he ducked under his desk just in time for his boss to walk through the door and give Wilson a withering look.
Wilson almost jumped backwards, looking extremely taken aback. "Me, what did I do?"
If looks could kill, Cuddy made sure he was dead four times over as she stalked into the room. "You couldn't stop yourself interfering, that's what." And then she turned and apparently addressed House's desk. "As stupid as you may think I am, House, I know where you are. And even though hiding behind a desk after kissing me reflects your level of emotional maturity, it would be appreciated if you could attempt to be professional instead of acting like a child."
House peeked over the top of his desk as if he was scared of his boss, but then with difficulty got back into his chair and faced her with feigned politeness. "If professional is what you want Dr. Cuddy, professional is what you will get."
"I just wanted to say that whatever may have happened last night, you seem to have a habit of catching me at vulnerable times, and old habits die hard apparently. So you should just forget it happened and we won't speak of it. Consider it one of those rare emotional connections you manage to make at odd times." She looked almost awkward, but spoke in a very matter of fact and proficient way. "And I also wanted to check on your patient, with the AI, and to make sure you'd actually begun looking for the cause, since I asked you to last night and you refused."
"You mean, you asked me to just before we kissed?"
She glared, clearly unimpressed. "Yes."
"Oh right, then, yes, well I just had to clarify, you know…" Her eyes flashing warningly were enough to even make him shut up and actually answer her question. "I'm waiting for my team to come back and tell me why her heart started leaking, and then we'll be on it like stink on cheese. Happy?"
"Ecstatic." She answered sarcastically as she walked towards the door of his office. "Let me know when you decide on a diagnosis and what the prognosis is. And you," she added, indicating Wilson, "instead of causing trouble, keep an eye on him and actually try and keep him under control rather than enabling him. Mummy has things to do and can't babysit both of you every minute of every day, but you're only marginally more responsible than him at the moment." And with that she left his office, the door swinging behind her.
Wilson turned back around in his chair from staring in shock and wonder at the door to staring in shock and wonder at House. "Wow… She's… Wow. She's mad. We're dead."
"I told you talking to her was a stupid idea."
"If Mohammed will not come to the mountain… The mountain must go to Mohammed." House entered the microbiology lab and held his arms out to his fellows. "So the mountain has come. I have been waiting all morning for one if not all of you to appear with the answer to our patient's aortic insufficiency, and not one of you has come. So to get the incredibly vast ass of the Administrator off my poor little ass that she spanked red raw this morning, I decided to come and find out what the hell happened last night, seen as you three seem to be incapable of doing so."
Foreman withdrew his nose from down a microscope, and ignored his boss' arrogance. "I was right, it is auto immune. She has Reiter's Syndrome."
"So it's taken you almost 24 hours and the patient's heart springing a leak for you to tell me that two plus two does actually equal four. Well done, and I you've really proved that all those years at medical school were worth their while!"
Thirteen immediately got defensive of her boyfriend. "This is the first chance we've had to do any testing since we decided it was auto immune, her condition declined and then she had the AI so we prioritised and were slightly preoccupied by the task of not letting her die in the meantime…"
"Don't worry, I'm sure your boyfriend can defend himself, he's worked with me long enough o have the time to learn so you don't need to earn yourself sexual favours from him." And before either Thirteen or Foreman could open their mouths to argue with him, he rushed on to talk about the patient. "So as Foreman cleverly deduced, she has Reiter's Syndrome. So we put her on steroids for the auto immune until we find out which infection caused the reaction. We can rule out the usual chlamydia on the grounds that, whatever her parents wish to believe, she is gay."
Possibly just for arguments sake, Taub interrupted. "Are you saying gay people don't have sex?"
"No, of course not!" House answered in a voice that was seemingly supposed to sound hurt at the suggestion of him being so prejudiced. "We know that's not true, anyway, just ask Foreman… Because Thirteen would lie – it's her duty to all fellow lesbians to keep every heterosexual man's dream alive."
"I'm not gay." Stated Thirteen, almost bored of this repeated argument about her sexuality.
"I'll believe that when your boyfriend tells me so." And House gave her a very over exaggerated wink.
Getting impatient, Taub pressed on with his point. "What I'm saying is, why are we ruling out chlamydia just because she's gay? She could still have it."
"Okay, fine, if it'll stop your whining go and test for chlamydia. And you can buy me a dry Reuben, hold the pickles, when you're wrong." When he didn't move, House pointed towards the door. "Go on, now, go and get the sample, go! The test won't run itself!" Once he had left the room, visibly disgruntled, House turned back to Thirteen and Foreman.
Both his remaining fellows took this as a cue to continue the ddx. "It's usually salmonella or shigella, if it's not chlamydia. At least some form of food poisoning or gastroenteritis… We should test her for all of those."
House nodded before turning to the door himself. "Come and find me when you've got the results."
She was doing everything she possibly could to stop herself thinking, because every time she stopped to think, the pit of guilt in her stomach bubbled up and made her feel extremely nauseous. She was almost, for the first time, willing House to do something completely crazy or insane, to take her mind off her own sins. But instead she was in her office, alone, reading through copious applications from ophthalmology for a promotion to head of department when the current one retired. It wasn't exactly enthralling work, so her mind kept wandering and her head wasn't a good place to be right now. It was a huge relief when she heard her office door swing open, but she didn't even look up from the paperwork in front of her. "No, you can't give her total body irradiation because you can't find the infection that's causing her auto immune disease. Just because you haven't found it, doesn't mean it isn't there. So keep looking."
"I haven't got the faintest idea what any of that means, but I love that my girlfriend is so intelligent, it's really sexy…" Lucas gently let the office door close behind him and tilted the blinds slightly that hung over it.
"Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting you, I was expecting House…" Cuddy was surprised to hear her boyfriend's voice and even though every minute she spent with him at the moment whilst she was still sick with guilt was torture, there was still something distinctly calming about his voice and his presence, just like there had been the night before. She looked up and smiled softly at him. "What are you doing here?"
Dropping into one of the seats in front of her desk, he smiled back at her. "Well, I hate to think of you all alone at work, cooped up in your office half the time doing paperwork and the other half of the time cleaning up House's messes, so I decided to come and visit you." But he had a slightly cheeky grin on his face that regardless of how terrible she felt, it was contagious.
"Is that all?" She raised her eyebrow questioningly, but she was resisting the urge to laugh.
He got up and walked round the desk towards her, smiling mischievously. "Maybe… Or it could have had a little bit to do with the fact that I couldn't wait until you got home to kiss you…" And then he lifted her chin and placed a kiss on her lips.
Pulling away quickly but reluctantly, still giggling, she pushed him away and back towards the seats. "Lucas, I'm at work, someone might see!"
"I swear you're ashamed of me… So what if anyone sees?"
She reached over the desk and smacked him playfully with a patient file. "I am not ashamed of you! I just… Well, I don't publicise my personal life, but apart from that, I don't think House is quite ready to know I've moved on yet, and I don't want to send him back to the beginning and undo all the good work that rehab did… You know that."
"It's a good job I believe you, isn't it?" He pulled a face at her and but then continued talking, and she immediately realised this was something he'd been waiting to tell her since he came in and was the real reason why he'd come to see her at work. "I've got a surprise for you when you get home tonight."
At this, Cuddy had to contain her desire to grin like an excited school child and instead gave him a composed and apprehensive but intrigued smile. "A surprise, oh really? Are you going to enlighten me any more than that?"
Lucas got up from his chair and indicated to the door to show he was going to leave. "Nope, you'll have to be patient, but I think it'll be worth the wait. But I will tell you one thing."
"Oh really, what's that?" She smiled, surveying him with interest and approval and letting her mind wander to all the things he could have planned for her.
It was almost as if he could read her mind and knew exactly what she was thinking. "It doesn't involve repaying sexual favours – well, it might do, just not directly." He grinned, smirking slightly.
It was her turn to pull a face at him this time, although she pouted, as if she was disappointed then picked upon of Rachel's soft toys that was left on her desk from the last time her daughter visited her at work and threw it at him as he left the room.