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cuddy_fest prompt submission (one day early!)
Sep. 9th, 2007 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katernaterTITLE: The Formation Of A Peacock’s Tail
AUTHOR:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katernater
PAIRING: Gen (hints of House/Cuddy, Mulder/Scully)
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Response tocuddy_fest prompt #289: House/X-Files crossover. Mulder is brought into PPTH for treatment, and Cuddy and Scully discuss the troubled geniuses in their lives.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The title is taken from the body of a letter written by Charles Darwin to A.R. Wallace in June, 1864: ”…It is an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock’s tail was thus formed; but, believing it, I believe in the same principle somewhat modified applied to man.”
"Since when did we become lapdogs for the feds?"
"Since the birth of democracy. Talk to Plato if you have a complaint."
"Plato wrote The Republic, not The We're Getting Screwed Into Taking A Case Because Your Hospital Will Lose Money If We Refuse."
"Boy, I wouldn't want to see that title on a library catalog card. Get your feet off my desk, this isn't a detention hall."
"If it were, I might be a little more open to taking your brand of punishment."
"'Ruler with splinters?"
"To start."
"Out, House."
"I'm not treating him. Look at this -- what kind of a name is Fox, anyway?"
"What kind of a name is 'House'?"
"...It's Dutch. What kind of a name is Cuddy? 'A small cabinet or cabin in the belly of a ship or boat'. Your ancestors were sailors. 'Makes sense why you're so comfortable hanging out down at the docks."
“I could make several comments about exactly where your family tree branched, House, but I don’t have time to Wiki the Great Apes. Look. This guy’s partner says that they’ve already been to Georgetown and Sinai. No one can figure out what’s wrong with him. Lachlan says that it’s the weirdest presentation of idiopathic symptoms he’s ever seen.”
“’Lachlan also thinks that the Matrix movies are a moving social commentary.”
“You’re taking the case.”
“Fine, I’m taking the case.”
“What changed your mind?”
“That Great Apes comment. If a roomful of monkeys can pound out Shakespeare, I should be able to diagnose a simple case of food poisoning.”
“Food poisoning? That three other specialists missed? House –“
“Hairy Monkey Fever?”
“No.”
“I can’t slip anything past you, can I?”
“Not even on a banana peel.”
“Oh, har har.”
“You mean ‘oot, oot’.”
--------
Dana Scully has the kind of look about her that other women find intimidating. Schooled red hair curved inward toward her chin, cut so straight that it looks like she’s just come from a stylist who minored in architectural design. A professional haircut to go with her professional dress and professional shoes (heels, Cuddy notices, and good ones), both of which give an extra three inches of psychosomatic height to the five-foot-four government agent standing at the glass. She has a black coat folded over her arm. Hers, but it looks like she’s holding it for someone else. Maybe the man behind the glass, whom she’s not allowed to sit beside in case this thing that’s attacking him has contagious claws and fangs.
Cuddy knows from the case file (delivered by a dour-looking courier in a regulation black suit) that she and her partner had recently been in Krasnoyarsk Krai, in the center of the Siberian wilderness. House had posed several theories related to the location – not the least of which had been an elaborate conspiracy involving Tunguska, Alexander Litvinenko, and a new screenplay written posthumously by Albert R. Broccoli – and had his team buried up to their necks in research about the flora and fauna of the region.
Scully had been tight-lipped about the exact purpose of their business in Russia, which House had attributed to a government gag order, but that Cuddy had sensed was more out of embarrassment than any official sanction. She had been sure when, during the history, House had mentioned “little green men” and the agent had turned her pretty white face toward the window and winced. ”Stranger things have happened,” was all that she told the glass, then asked to be allowed to see a copy of the toxicology report when it came back.
“Agent Scully.” Cuddy approaches with a covered cup of coffee, which the agent accepts with a careful expression. She’s not used to being thought after, but she isn’t a stranger to being given coffee in hospital corridors, either. Cuddy stands at the glass and watches the monitors jump lazily. “How’s he doing?”
“They tell me he’s going to be okay,” the other woman replies, peeling the lid from the coffee to take a cursory sip. This is a lie, and Cuddy knows it. House has no idea what’s wrong with this man. Cameron must’ve gotten hold of her before he had a chance to unscrew her hope from the floor.
“He’s responding well to the antibiotics,” she says, and ‘well’ is a relative term that both women acknowledge and shift their lips around.
“It’s not bacterial,” Scully finally says. She caps her coffee and spends a little time making sure the seal is complete. Her fingernails are well kept and rounded. When she speaks, she folds them into her palm like she’s cuddling defenses. “Not all of it, anyway. Dr. House wants to treat him for radiation sickness, too.” She blinks her ginger eyelashes in Cuddy’s direction. “And syphilis.”
“I’m sure he just wants to rule out every possibility.”
“He asked me if we were in Russia picking up a mail-order bride.”
Cuddy smirks. “If that’s true, I’m sure a lot of taxpayers are going to be writing their congressmen.”
Scully folds the coat around her elbow, pushing her thumb into one of the sleeves. There are lines stamped around the edges of her blue eyes – not laugh lines – that look like they’ve been put there by too many nights and days spent hovering over hospital beds like this one. Her mouth seems more conducive to frowning than it does smiling so when she does turn the edges up, Cuddy is immediately aware that what will follow is more than a defense of government spending.
“He saved my life,” she says. “Again.”
Cuddy waits through the comfortable pause.
“It’s what made him like this. Our work, it’s, well, it’s kind of specialized. He has connections with people who hold higher positions in government, people who owe him favours or whose interest he’s secured, and that allows him to pursue things at his own pace.” Scully looks behind her and puts a hand down on the bench that faces the wall, lowering herself onto the edge. Cuddy sits beside her. “We were in Tunguska, pursuing things at his pace, and ended up two miles beneath the surface of the earth in some kind of mine shaft. I don’t even remember why. I don’t know why we do half the things that we do.” She shifts her thumbs along the outside of the cup. “Some reckless pursuit of the truth, the all-time great Hail Mary, trying to pick apart the universe at the seams while things on earth just keep…” her small white hand lifts and makes a shiftless pass through the air “…they just stay the same.”
Cuddy smiles faintly. “You said he saved your life?”
Scully nods and bends at the waist, tucking the coffee cup against the leg of the bench. “We were trapped in a cave-in. He broke through about an inch and a half of fallen bedrock to get to me and carry me to the surface.” Cuddy notices small, angry bruises around the other woman’s hairline, like misplaced makeup. Scully continues, tone turned sober. “He wouldn’t leave me behind.” She glances over her shoulder to the room and the warm, white body on the bed. “Not after nine years together. He’s so damned stubborn.”
“After nine years together, you wouldn’t recognize him if he weren’t.”
Scully turns around, her expression halfway between a smile and a suggestion. “That’s the thing. After nine years, he’s exactly the same as he was when I first met him. Still driven, still obsessive, still prone to making all the wrong kinds of decisions and damn the outcome. Whereas I,” she tips her fingers toward her chest, “god, I think I’ve gone through at least three incarnations in the last nine years.” She pauses, collecting breath beneath her bones. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s different for men. Women are more fluid. Capable of change. Willing to change. Men like Mulder, they just never fully evolve.”
This makes Cuddy think of apes and monkeys in House shapes, dragging their knuckles through the corridors while flinging diagnoses at tourists. She smiles, then scoops the edges because Scully has given her a look that begs explanation. “I’m sorry,” she says, chagrined, “I didn’t mean to make light of that. It’s just; I can understand it. You devote yourself to a cause or a person – it doesn’t matter if it’s a career or a man – and you pour all that you are into it, expecting reciprocity.” She draws the tips of her fingers along her cheek and softens her tone. “The hardest part is when you realize that you’ve changed, but the thing you’re devoted to hasn’t. It’s like filling up the ocean: one eight ounce glass a time.”
Scully scoops up the metaphor: “You can’t see the difference, even though you know it’s there.”
Cuddy nods. “Exactly.”
The redhead nods, spreading her coat out across her lap. The buttons are toggled: the kind that a ship captain would wear. Agent Dana Scully would be at home on the sea, Cuddy thinks, and wonders why that’s such a strong thought.
“So, what was it for you? A career or a man?”
Cuddy’s taken aback by the question, but she sees nothing in Scully’s eyes that would suggest criticism over honesty. “Career,” she says, then: “and a man. Like you, I find it difficult to separate my professional and personal responsibilities.”
“Someone you worked for?”
“Someone I knew a long time ago.”
“Professionally?”
“Not at first.”
“And therein was the problem.”
Cuddy smirks. “There were several problems.”
Scully draws her titian brows to fine points. “Such as?”
“Such as, if we were ever trapped in a mine shaft together, he’d save me, but I’m pretty sure it’d just be so he could cop a feel while he was carrying me topside.”
“One of those guys, huh?”
“He sets the precedent.”
Scully smiles and folds the sleeve of her coat inward, leaning forward on her elbows like she’s about to begin some great discourse and needs to rest her spine to be able to do so. “You wouldn’t recognize him if he didn’t.”
--------
“So. When’s the photo op with J. Edgar? I’ve got an ‘Obama ‘08’ t-shirt I want to break in.”
Cuddy half turns on a heel. “I didn’t think you voted.”
House shrugs, approaching the glass with his cadenced thump of rubber soles and cane. “Who doesn’t want to see a black man in office? Free drugs and grape soda for everyone. ‘Sounds like paradise to me.” He lets enough time elapse so Cuddy can memorize the comment and contact the NAACP later, then he nods to the room. “’You hear?”
“Food poisoning.”
“Yep. Stay away from the goulash.” He shakes two pills into his palm.
“How did you know?”
“Please. ‘Guy carries around a name like ‘Fox’, there’s no telling what he’s willing to stick in his mouth to deal with the humiliation. That’s deep-seated insecurity right there.” He claps his hand over his lips and nudges the pair of tablets past his tongue.
Cuddy indicates the bottle in his palm, her smirk fishy. “And right there.”
House frowns. “Well you’re chipper.”
“I’m thinking,” she says defensively.
“A dangerous pastime, I know.” He tongues opiate chalk away from his teeth and turns his attention to the pair beyond the glass. “About?”
“Why we ever came out of the ocean at all,” she says quietly.
House’s brows tuck up into his hairline. He doesn’t recognize philosophical Cuddy and thinks that, if she has to pontificate, she’d be better off doing it in a low-cut toga. He smirks at her profile. “To evolve,” he offers.
Cuddy tips her eyes and disbelief in his direction. House shrugs.
“Oot, oot.”
AUTHOR:
katernaterPAIRING: Gen (hints of House/Cuddy, Mulder/Scully)
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Response to
cuddy_fest prompt #289: House/X-Files crossover. Mulder is brought into PPTH for treatment, and Cuddy and Scully discuss the troubled geniuses in their lives.AUTHOR'S NOTE: The title is taken from the body of a letter written by Charles Darwin to A.R. Wallace in June, 1864: ”…It is an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock’s tail was thus formed; but, believing it, I believe in the same principle somewhat modified applied to man.”
"Since when did we become lapdogs for the feds?"
"Since the birth of democracy. Talk to Plato if you have a complaint."
"Plato wrote The Republic, not The We're Getting Screwed Into Taking A Case Because Your Hospital Will Lose Money If We Refuse."
"Boy, I wouldn't want to see that title on a library catalog card. Get your feet off my desk, this isn't a detention hall."
"If it were, I might be a little more open to taking your brand of punishment."
"'Ruler with splinters?"
"To start."
"Out, House."
"I'm not treating him. Look at this -- what kind of a name is Fox, anyway?"
"What kind of a name is 'House'?"
"...It's Dutch. What kind of a name is Cuddy? 'A small cabinet or cabin in the belly of a ship or boat'. Your ancestors were sailors. 'Makes sense why you're so comfortable hanging out down at the docks."
“I could make several comments about exactly where your family tree branched, House, but I don’t have time to Wiki the Great Apes. Look. This guy’s partner says that they’ve already been to Georgetown and Sinai. No one can figure out what’s wrong with him. Lachlan says that it’s the weirdest presentation of idiopathic symptoms he’s ever seen.”
“’Lachlan also thinks that the Matrix movies are a moving social commentary.”
“You’re taking the case.”
“Fine, I’m taking the case.”
“What changed your mind?”
“That Great Apes comment. If a roomful of monkeys can pound out Shakespeare, I should be able to diagnose a simple case of food poisoning.”
“Food poisoning? That three other specialists missed? House –“
“Hairy Monkey Fever?”
“No.”
“I can’t slip anything past you, can I?”
“Not even on a banana peel.”
“Oh, har har.”
“You mean ‘oot, oot’.”
--------
Dana Scully has the kind of look about her that other women find intimidating. Schooled red hair curved inward toward her chin, cut so straight that it looks like she’s just come from a stylist who minored in architectural design. A professional haircut to go with her professional dress and professional shoes (heels, Cuddy notices, and good ones), both of which give an extra three inches of psychosomatic height to the five-foot-four government agent standing at the glass. She has a black coat folded over her arm. Hers, but it looks like she’s holding it for someone else. Maybe the man behind the glass, whom she’s not allowed to sit beside in case this thing that’s attacking him has contagious claws and fangs.
Cuddy knows from the case file (delivered by a dour-looking courier in a regulation black suit) that she and her partner had recently been in Krasnoyarsk Krai, in the center of the Siberian wilderness. House had posed several theories related to the location – not the least of which had been an elaborate conspiracy involving Tunguska, Alexander Litvinenko, and a new screenplay written posthumously by Albert R. Broccoli – and had his team buried up to their necks in research about the flora and fauna of the region.
Scully had been tight-lipped about the exact purpose of their business in Russia, which House had attributed to a government gag order, but that Cuddy had sensed was more out of embarrassment than any official sanction. She had been sure when, during the history, House had mentioned “little green men” and the agent had turned her pretty white face toward the window and winced. ”Stranger things have happened,” was all that she told the glass, then asked to be allowed to see a copy of the toxicology report when it came back.
“Agent Scully.” Cuddy approaches with a covered cup of coffee, which the agent accepts with a careful expression. She’s not used to being thought after, but she isn’t a stranger to being given coffee in hospital corridors, either. Cuddy stands at the glass and watches the monitors jump lazily. “How’s he doing?”
“They tell me he’s going to be okay,” the other woman replies, peeling the lid from the coffee to take a cursory sip. This is a lie, and Cuddy knows it. House has no idea what’s wrong with this man. Cameron must’ve gotten hold of her before he had a chance to unscrew her hope from the floor.
“He’s responding well to the antibiotics,” she says, and ‘well’ is a relative term that both women acknowledge and shift their lips around.
“It’s not bacterial,” Scully finally says. She caps her coffee and spends a little time making sure the seal is complete. Her fingernails are well kept and rounded. When she speaks, she folds them into her palm like she’s cuddling defenses. “Not all of it, anyway. Dr. House wants to treat him for radiation sickness, too.” She blinks her ginger eyelashes in Cuddy’s direction. “And syphilis.”
“I’m sure he just wants to rule out every possibility.”
“He asked me if we were in Russia picking up a mail-order bride.”
Cuddy smirks. “If that’s true, I’m sure a lot of taxpayers are going to be writing their congressmen.”
Scully folds the coat around her elbow, pushing her thumb into one of the sleeves. There are lines stamped around the edges of her blue eyes – not laugh lines – that look like they’ve been put there by too many nights and days spent hovering over hospital beds like this one. Her mouth seems more conducive to frowning than it does smiling so when she does turn the edges up, Cuddy is immediately aware that what will follow is more than a defense of government spending.
“He saved my life,” she says. “Again.”
Cuddy waits through the comfortable pause.
“It’s what made him like this. Our work, it’s, well, it’s kind of specialized. He has connections with people who hold higher positions in government, people who owe him favours or whose interest he’s secured, and that allows him to pursue things at his own pace.” Scully looks behind her and puts a hand down on the bench that faces the wall, lowering herself onto the edge. Cuddy sits beside her. “We were in Tunguska, pursuing things at his pace, and ended up two miles beneath the surface of the earth in some kind of mine shaft. I don’t even remember why. I don’t know why we do half the things that we do.” She shifts her thumbs along the outside of the cup. “Some reckless pursuit of the truth, the all-time great Hail Mary, trying to pick apart the universe at the seams while things on earth just keep…” her small white hand lifts and makes a shiftless pass through the air “…they just stay the same.”
Cuddy smiles faintly. “You said he saved your life?”
Scully nods and bends at the waist, tucking the coffee cup against the leg of the bench. “We were trapped in a cave-in. He broke through about an inch and a half of fallen bedrock to get to me and carry me to the surface.” Cuddy notices small, angry bruises around the other woman’s hairline, like misplaced makeup. Scully continues, tone turned sober. “He wouldn’t leave me behind.” She glances over her shoulder to the room and the warm, white body on the bed. “Not after nine years together. He’s so damned stubborn.”
“After nine years together, you wouldn’t recognize him if he weren’t.”
Scully turns around, her expression halfway between a smile and a suggestion. “That’s the thing. After nine years, he’s exactly the same as he was when I first met him. Still driven, still obsessive, still prone to making all the wrong kinds of decisions and damn the outcome. Whereas I,” she tips her fingers toward her chest, “god, I think I’ve gone through at least three incarnations in the last nine years.” She pauses, collecting breath beneath her bones. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s different for men. Women are more fluid. Capable of change. Willing to change. Men like Mulder, they just never fully evolve.”
This makes Cuddy think of apes and monkeys in House shapes, dragging their knuckles through the corridors while flinging diagnoses at tourists. She smiles, then scoops the edges because Scully has given her a look that begs explanation. “I’m sorry,” she says, chagrined, “I didn’t mean to make light of that. It’s just; I can understand it. You devote yourself to a cause or a person – it doesn’t matter if it’s a career or a man – and you pour all that you are into it, expecting reciprocity.” She draws the tips of her fingers along her cheek and softens her tone. “The hardest part is when you realize that you’ve changed, but the thing you’re devoted to hasn’t. It’s like filling up the ocean: one eight ounce glass a time.”
Scully scoops up the metaphor: “You can’t see the difference, even though you know it’s there.”
Cuddy nods. “Exactly.”
The redhead nods, spreading her coat out across her lap. The buttons are toggled: the kind that a ship captain would wear. Agent Dana Scully would be at home on the sea, Cuddy thinks, and wonders why that’s such a strong thought.
“So, what was it for you? A career or a man?”
Cuddy’s taken aback by the question, but she sees nothing in Scully’s eyes that would suggest criticism over honesty. “Career,” she says, then: “and a man. Like you, I find it difficult to separate my professional and personal responsibilities.”
“Someone you worked for?”
“Someone I knew a long time ago.”
“Professionally?”
“Not at first.”
“And therein was the problem.”
Cuddy smirks. “There were several problems.”
Scully draws her titian brows to fine points. “Such as?”
“Such as, if we were ever trapped in a mine shaft together, he’d save me, but I’m pretty sure it’d just be so he could cop a feel while he was carrying me topside.”
“One of those guys, huh?”
“He sets the precedent.”
Scully smiles and folds the sleeve of her coat inward, leaning forward on her elbows like she’s about to begin some great discourse and needs to rest her spine to be able to do so. “You wouldn’t recognize him if he didn’t.”
--------
“So. When’s the photo op with J. Edgar? I’ve got an ‘Obama ‘08’ t-shirt I want to break in.”
Cuddy half turns on a heel. “I didn’t think you voted.”
House shrugs, approaching the glass with his cadenced thump of rubber soles and cane. “Who doesn’t want to see a black man in office? Free drugs and grape soda for everyone. ‘Sounds like paradise to me.” He lets enough time elapse so Cuddy can memorize the comment and contact the NAACP later, then he nods to the room. “’You hear?”
“Food poisoning.”
“Yep. Stay away from the goulash.” He shakes two pills into his palm.
“How did you know?”
“Please. ‘Guy carries around a name like ‘Fox’, there’s no telling what he’s willing to stick in his mouth to deal with the humiliation. That’s deep-seated insecurity right there.” He claps his hand over his lips and nudges the pair of tablets past his tongue.
Cuddy indicates the bottle in his palm, her smirk fishy. “And right there.”
House frowns. “Well you’re chipper.”
“I’m thinking,” she says defensively.
“A dangerous pastime, I know.” He tongues opiate chalk away from his teeth and turns his attention to the pair beyond the glass. “About?”
“Why we ever came out of the ocean at all,” she says quietly.
House’s brows tuck up into his hairline. He doesn’t recognize philosophical Cuddy and thinks that, if she has to pontificate, she’d be better off doing it in a low-cut toga. He smirks at her profile. “To evolve,” he offers.
Cuddy tips her eyes and disbelief in his direction. House shrugs.
“Oot, oot.”
