Disclaimer:

I do not own House MD or any of the characters, but I sure as hell wouldn't mind owning Hugh Laurie!

A/N: Hello! I'm back, half-way through the week, not too bad, huh? Well, here's another chapter. I like it. Also, I think that those of you who've been saying that you like the way my story shows all the emotions will like it too. There's also a mention of our favourite disease, you know, the one that it never actually is …

It isn't a very eventful chapter, actually, if we were to think about it, it probably only accounts for more or less 5 minutes of time in the story … that's kinda strange, now that I think about it :P

But I think it's setting up to some good House/Wilson/Cuddy scene … maybe.

I love Wilson … the truth of the matter is that, when you're writing Huddy fanfics and you get stuck with what to do, the best thing to do is bring in our favourite oncologist. :D (Gotta love that guy …)

So, thanks so much for all your lovely, amazing reviews :D


Enjoy!

"So…" said Wilson after a few seconds of silence. He wasn't sure what to say exactly. Of course plenty could have happened between House and Cuddy in the hours they'd spent together, and they could be completely playing him, or they could be as clueless as they looked about the other's feelings. That last option seemed more plausible. Wilson knew House well enough to know that, even when he was in the same house as the woman of his dreams, he wouldn't act, he wouldn't do anything. He was too scared. He was too scared to act in public where everyone could see and judge him, where his emotions would be visible, and he wasn't comfortable enough to act on them when he was alone with her and had no way of escaping the issue once it was out.

Cuddy had to find it ironic that House was perfectly fine being around her and that, aside from the shoulder scrape on the bed, there had been barely any awkwardness, however, when his best friend was in the room, House was as quiet as ever. It was actually kind of cute.

House was literally panicking. This wasn't part of the plan. The plan was, visitor (aka Wilson) walks in, House says something dripping with innuendo, visitor thinks diagnostician and administrator got it on, administrator is embarrassed, house proceeds to embarrass her further. The plan, however, did not include sitting on the same couch as said administrator, the same couch where they'd been making out mere hours earlier, none the less, sipping hot drinks and making small talk with the head of oncology. That was not only not on the plan, but House was pretty sure it would never be on any plan he'd come up with.

"How are things at the hospital?" asked Cuddy. Safe topic.

"Fire, floods, an epidemic, and I hear they found a ghost living on the fifth floor conference room" he said with a smile, which Cuddy gladly returned.

"So, basically the same …" she said sarcastically with a smile, looking out the corner of her eye at House "speaking of Hospital" it had just dawned on her "don't you have a patient?" she asked the diagnostician turning her head in his direction.

When her eyes met his, House flinched a little, he had been pretty much zoned out of the conversation thus far, and the thoughts he'd been having combined with her blue-grey eyes weren't really what he would have wanted in this situation "Nope. Solved my last case … haven't got a new one" he said leaning back so that Cuddy couldn't see him meet Wilson's eye, basically telling him to keep quiet or get hit with a wooded cane somewhere very, very painful.

"Yes you do…" said Cuddy looking at Wilson who, never a good actor, failed miserably at looking innocent "… I handed you a pile full of files a few weeks ago. Now, I know you haven't solved all those cases" she said looking back at House who was scowling at Wilson, even though the poor oncologist had had nothing to do with him being caught.

"But …" he whined in a childish voice "…those are all boring!" he said with a pout that was designed to look adorable and that, in Wilson's view failed and in Cuddy's succeeded, but she'd never let him know.

"House …" she said menacingly.

"But moo-om!" he whined again, this time getting a small laugh from Wilson "they're all boring! Stroke, Asthma, bone cancer, multiple sclerosis, Chlamydia, and even, I suspect, a case of Lupus …" he said rattling out all the diagnosis he had come up with for those particular patients after reading their files.

"And, have you actually told any of these patients what's wrong with them?" asked Cuddy sounding as if she were talking to a child, a very, very slow one "you know, that's why they come to doctors, to find out what's wrong with them, and how to cure it … particularly that poor one with Chlamydia …" she said looking at Wilson for help.

Wilson wasn't about to help her. He knew how pointless it was to try and get House out of her house. Sure, she didn't know it, but he was there, and Wilson was pretty sure he was there to stay. There was something in his friend's eyes as he and Cuddy entered their usual arguing/flirting dialogue that he had never seen there, something that looked strangely unfamiliar and at the same time immensely comforting. It was a particular glint, not the sarcastic menacing one either; it was, just, pure.

"Now why would I tell them?" he asked looking at Wilson with a face like Cuddy was out of her mind; he liked this kind of argument, he could always win it, and he could always get on Cuddy's nerves at the same time. Win win.

"What about the lupus patient?" she asked him "you know as well as I do that it's never lupus …" on that she was right. She had lost count of how many times over the years she'd heard House or one of his team members say 'it's lupus' only turn around minutes later and correct that to, 'actually, it was a massive internal haemorrhage that the MRI missed which led to septicaemia caused by a drawing pin the patient stepped on while walking bare foot through a primary school supply closet'. With House and his team, it was never the simplest option. Occam's Razor just never applied. Normally, doctors would go with, "If you hear hoofs, assume horses, not zebras" but House and his fellows always, inevitably looked for, and found Zebras. And not just Zebras either, they tended to be pink and orange zebras, with yellow spots and, on occasion, glittery hoofs that allowed them to fly away from all the lions. It was a fact of life that she'd learnt to deal with. If House said that a patient presenting with a runny nose actually had some rare, barely documented disease that only existed in the middle of the Sahara desert, he was probably right.

And after all that thinking, she came to another, completely different, but not entirely unrelated thought. Why on earth was she trying to get rid of House? Sure, she was his boss and he had to do his job. But she'd read the files before handing them to him. Even the "lupus" patient wasn't in a dire, dire situation. She could perfectly well have Foreman take on the case. She didn't want House to go. She liked him there, she liked the few little moments where he became human and made her love him more. It was great. And yet, she was pushing him to go to work.

House was in a trap. Did he go or did he stay? Staying implied giving Cuddy way too many reasons to suspect that he wasn't just there to annoy the crap out of her, you know, because there was still a small chance that she hadn't actually caught on to the kisses and tear wiping. Yea, right …

But if he went, he wouldn't be there with her. He wouldn't be, accidentally, feeling his foetus kick at Cuddy. And he wanted to be there.

But she'd mentioned lupus. She'd mentioned the one disease he knew it never was. That one file that had been sitting on his desk and that he had been desperately trying to avoid, something that was, lets face it, really quite hard for a puzzle-obsessed diagnostician. The little voice inside of him that he had recently named 'Greg' was whispering "stay". The other, larger voice that everyone knew as 'House' was yelling "GO!" … what to do?

Cuddy, still lost in her thoughts about the man whose baby was kicking her insides, didn't see the look on his face as he thought all this. But Wilson did. And he was damned if he was going to let that part of House win. Oh no, he was so not leaving that house …

TBC

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