Bricks and Beams, Part 3/4
TITLE: Bricks and Beams
AUTHOR:
entropy_comix
PAIRING: Tony/Cuddy
RATING: PG-13 for language and the fact that Tony's mind is constantly in the gutter.
WARNINGS: Takes place after the Iron Man movie and after the season finale of House, but so far no specific spoilers.
SUMMARY: Tony needs a doctor, and thanks to House, PPTH usually needs the money for at least 10 new MRI machines annually.
DISCLAIMER: Just for fun. I don't own anything.
NOTES: Thanks to
spoggly for being my beta for generally being totally awesome.
Part 3 of 4:
Cuddy drove.
Stark rode in the passenger seat.
House sat in the back of Cuddy's BMW, as she was much too preoccupied to get into an argument with him over whether or not he should be there at all, leaning forward, not buckled into a seat belt, and staring shrewdly at Stark. Besides, this particular argument she would probably have lost, and she tried very hard to limit the number of arguments she lost to House.
“Does this happen to you a lot?” asked House.
“Ending my evening in a car with a hot woman?” Tony had two fingers on the side of his neck, eyes on his wristwatch. “Yes, but usually we're both in the backseat.”
“I was referring to you having the approximate resting heart rate of a small rodent.”
“For the past 6 months or so,” Tony replied, sounding adequately honest.
“Do you take any prescription drugs?”
“Only recreationally,” Tony assured him. House retreated backwards, tapping his cane thoughtfully against the seat in front of him.
“Hey, I think I'm feeling better,” he said brightly, lowering his hand..
“PPTH is such a great hospital, just being in the parking lot is enough to cure whatever the hell is wrong with you,” said House very sincerely, nodding in Cuddy's direction.
Cuddy pulled into the most convenient spot she could find, close to the front door.
“This is my spot,” objected House, leaning forward again. He draped his forearms over the front seats in a rather apelike gesture.
“You're not using it,” said Cuddy in her best I-will-tolerate-exactly-zero-arguments-from-you voice. “Also, I'm the hospital administrator, so technically all of these spaces are mine to assign at my discretion.” She turned to Stark. “If you want, I can have an orderly get you a wheelchair--”
He interrupted her with a short bark of laughter, threw open the car door and charged towards the hospital entrance. Cuddy followed closely behind him, hoping his (obviously overdeveloped) sense of vanity wouldn't lead to an unfortunate meeting of his rather handsome face and the pavement anytime soon.
000
Glass, Tony observed. Lots of glass. The whole place was a translucent maze.
“You guys have some kind group fetish for staring at sick people?” asked Tony, as they made their way down a quiet hallway.
“This is a predominantly a teaching hospital.” Cuddy waved a hand towards one of the rooms; House snorted scornfully. “If the patient has no objections, we like our interns to be able to observe as many different procedures as possible.”
“When they're unconscious, they usually don't have any objections,” Dr. House clarified.
“So where do you store the really rich people who don't want to be oogled by med students?”
“Morgue's downstairs,” said Dr. House. “We'll take your checkbook now. Do you want a wing or a floor named after you?” Without pausing to explain, he turned his limping gait, heading in the opposite direction. Under different circumstances, Tony might have been curious about where he was headed, but right now his priorities has narrowed to a bed and an EKG.
“We have a more private ward this way,” Dr. Cuddy assured him, leading him around a corner, and down yet another glass encased hallway. “Here...”
She slid open the door (glass, of course), revealing a rather large room, only one bed, and some basic medical monitoring equipment. The room was sparsely decorated, but Tony assumed that the couch, end table and rather lonely looking vase of flowers were indicative of its 'special' status.
At least it was secluded.
Tony walked in the room and began rifling through the drawers. “I'll need some leads for the monitor,” he said offhandedly. Dr. Cuddy was still standing in the doorway.
“I'll draw up some paperwork for your admittance,” she began in a business-like tone. “Nothing extensive. And I'll bring a nurse in to attach the leads. Just sit down--”
“Actually, it would be great if we could just skip all that...aha.” He pulled a few coiled wires out of one of the drawers and tore open the plastic wrap around them. “I can get these.” He sat down on the bed, both feet still planted firmly on the floor, and took of his jacket.
000
Cuddy frowned, and crossed the room. “You know how to attach these?” Stark nodded, and began loosening his bow tie. “Correctly?” she clarified.
“Sure.”
Ok. Fine. She could deal with this. Probably.
“Well if you don't want a nurse to assist you, at least take your shirt off and I'll help you.”
“You know I don't need help with this, as it happens, but there are a few things you could help me with afterward that I wouldn't say no to...”
“You don't really have an off switch do you?” sighed Cuddy. How is it that she constantly managed to surround herself with petulant children masquerading as adults?
“You can always just yank out my battery,” he said cheerily. “Usually shuts me up pretty quickly.” He reached under his shirt as he chatted, attaching the leads in what at least looked like the correct spot. Not that she could verify that without his cooperation.
She squinted as she started at his still present shirt-was there a light shining on it? She looked around. Was there a light underneath it? Very faint, right there in the center...
“Here,” Stark said quickly, his hand darting into his pocket. He pulled out a slightly wrinkled piece of paper. “This is for you! Congratulations, I'm so glad that I could help, good cause, blah blah blah.” He flipped a switch, and the machinery began humming softly.
“So you were actually just...carrying this around in your pocket.” So much money. She felt as if she were holding something impossible, that it might disintegrate into nothing in her hands at any moment.
“I told you,” shrugged Stark. Following suit, Cuddy shoved the check into her purse. “Shut the blinds, will you?”
000
“What happened to Dr. House?” Tony was reclining in the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“He probably went to his office to work on your case.” Dr. Cuddy pulled out a long strip of white paper from the machine and examined it without looking at him.
“Working on my case? What case? And if there was a case, wouldn't it be here, where I currently am?” inquired Tony.
“He does most of his work away from the patient,” she explained.
“Really? 'Cause he was practically stalking me earlier.”
“He's hot and cold,” said Cuddy dryly. She stretched out the paper, looking up and down the length of it. “This actually looks almost normal. There are a few more tests we could run...”
“No, don't worry about it.” Tony held out an expectant hand. “Gimme, gimme, gimme,” he said impatiently, and she complied, rolling her eyes slightly as she did so.
Normal wasn't really a word he would use to describe the current electrical conduction system of his heart, but it still functioned, and that was what was important. He examined the paper.
It wasn't the arc reactor that was the problem (it ran very well, and would probably still be running long after the rest of Tony had withered away into nothing). Most of the issues he ran into concerned the system that translated the mini-power-plant on his chest to an actual human heartbeat, as fucked up and shredded as his heart was to begin with.
His heart rate was 130 now. OK, not horrible. Not bad for the 'walking dead' at least.
000
“Oh...this is bad,” said Stark miserably.
“What?” Cuddy asked in sudden alarm.
“I think my buzz is wearing off,” he said glumly. “You don't by any chance have any scotch hidden in the extra special rich people room, do you?”
“This is a hospital,” she informed him, her alarm turning quickly into exasperation.
“So is that a yes or a no?”
“No.” She had stopped trying to hide her annoyance. And not just because he had already handed over the check. (Because he could, of course, stop payment on it.)
“And as a point of interest, you probably shouldn't be taking any kind of depressant while trying to determine the extent of the irregularities in your elevated heart rate. You don't know what's wrong with you, and you don't want any tests performed., though to be fair I legally can't perform any tests on you anyway, because you refuse to be admitted.”
“I think that just about covers it,” said Stark, nodding serenely. “Now if you don't mind--”
“Mr. Stark.” She glared at him coolly, hoping that her folded arms indicated very clearly that she did mind. “I appreciate your generosity, I appreciate your interest in this hospital, and it was, really, very considerate of you to come all the way out here in person.”
“Hey, no problem. Now if--”
“I'm not done.” She shifted her weight slightly. In her heels, she all but towered over his bedside. “I also appreciate your desire for privacy, and I've tried to accommodate you as much as I can.” He stared at her, looking torn between boredom and amusement.
“However--I promised myself a long time ago that no amount of money--” (Not even 350 million fucking dollars oh dear lord has she finally gone insane?)
“--is enough to make me compromise my principles or the integrity of this hospital. I understand your feelings of...entitlement, but if you do not consent to be admitted I am going to tear your very generous check in half, and have a team of orderlies strap you to the table, wheel you into the parking lot, and leave you there.”
“Yikes,” said Stark. “So...what would I need to sign?”
“The papers are in my office,” she said, working to keep her voice even. “And I assure you we do take patient privacy very seriously here at Princeton-Plainsborough. I'll be right back.”
As she turned to leave, Stark ripped off the EKG leads and sat up, obviously intending to follow her. “It would probably be better if--” Cuddy sighed. “My office is right down the hall,” she revised, deciding to take one victory at a time.
000
So Tony's sex life hadn't changed too much since he'd had a rather large piece of hardware permanently installed on his chest. The key, he'd discovered, was to predominantly accept blow jobs, (adequate for now), and occasionally fuck girls who were too (how could he put this delicately?) abysmally stupid to ask any meaningful questions about what the hell the round glowing thing was doing on his chest.
He was just thinking about it because right now he was pressed up fairly tightly against Doctor Cuddy, (by his own maneuvering of course) who was pressed up against the front of her desk, pointing to a line on a sheet of paper for him to sign.
And even though she wasn't objecting and the fabric of her dress was smooth in all the right places and he doubted very much that she was wearing panties, he had the feeling that “Hey, how about a blow job?” was not going to be the next thing out of her mouth.
(Though a man could dream, couldn't he?)
She lifted up the last sheet in a short stack of documents. “And initial here.”
Damn.
“And we're done.” She lifted the whole stack and shuffled them neatly into a symmetrical pile, sounding pleased.
“Hey, how about a blow job?” said Tony casually.
“For me, or for you?” she asked, without blinking.
He shrugged. “Either one.”
She set the stack of papers down on the desk, resting one hand on her hip and the fingertips of her other hand on the edge of the desk. “Until we figure out what-if anything-is wrong with your heart, I recommend that you don't deliberately tax it in any way.”
“Ok.” He stepped towards her, closing the very brief distance between them and reached out, gently brushing the hair off the side of her neck. She met his gaze, and didn't pull away. He ran the pads of his fingers lightly across her shoulder blade and then down the remaining distance of her delightfully bare arm, tugging on the strap of her dress with his thumb as he went.
“I can take things slow.”
Part 4
AUTHOR:
entropy_comix
PAIRING: Tony/Cuddy
RATING: PG-13 for language and the fact that Tony's mind is constantly in the gutter.
WARNINGS: Takes place after the Iron Man movie and after the season finale of House, but so far no specific spoilers.
SUMMARY: Tony needs a doctor, and thanks to House, PPTH usually needs the money for at least 10 new MRI machines annually.
DISCLAIMER: Just for fun. I don't own anything.
NOTES: Thanks to
spoggly for being my beta for generally being totally awesome.
Part 3 of 4:
Cuddy drove.
Stark rode in the passenger seat.
House sat in the back of Cuddy's BMW, as she was much too preoccupied to get into an argument with him over whether or not he should be there at all, leaning forward, not buckled into a seat belt, and staring shrewdly at Stark. Besides, this particular argument she would probably have lost, and she tried very hard to limit the number of arguments she lost to House.
“Does this happen to you a lot?” asked House.
“Ending my evening in a car with a hot woman?” Tony had two fingers on the side of his neck, eyes on his wristwatch. “Yes, but usually we're both in the backseat.”
“I was referring to you having the approximate resting heart rate of a small rodent.”
“For the past 6 months or so,” Tony replied, sounding adequately honest.
“Do you take any prescription drugs?”
“Only recreationally,” Tony assured him. House retreated backwards, tapping his cane thoughtfully against the seat in front of him.
“Hey, I think I'm feeling better,” he said brightly, lowering his hand..
“PPTH is such a great hospital, just being in the parking lot is enough to cure whatever the hell is wrong with you,” said House very sincerely, nodding in Cuddy's direction.
Cuddy pulled into the most convenient spot she could find, close to the front door.
“This is my spot,” objected House, leaning forward again. He draped his forearms over the front seats in a rather apelike gesture.
“You're not using it,” said Cuddy in her best I-will-tolerate-exactly-zero-arguments-from-you voice. “Also, I'm the hospital administrator, so technically all of these spaces are mine to assign at my discretion.” She turned to Stark. “If you want, I can have an orderly get you a wheelchair--”
He interrupted her with a short bark of laughter, threw open the car door and charged towards the hospital entrance. Cuddy followed closely behind him, hoping his (obviously overdeveloped) sense of vanity wouldn't lead to an unfortunate meeting of his rather handsome face and the pavement anytime soon.
000
Glass, Tony observed. Lots of glass. The whole place was a translucent maze.
“You guys have some kind group fetish for staring at sick people?” asked Tony, as they made their way down a quiet hallway.
“This is a predominantly a teaching hospital.” Cuddy waved a hand towards one of the rooms; House snorted scornfully. “If the patient has no objections, we like our interns to be able to observe as many different procedures as possible.”
“When they're unconscious, they usually don't have any objections,” Dr. House clarified.
“So where do you store the really rich people who don't want to be oogled by med students?”
“Morgue's downstairs,” said Dr. House. “We'll take your checkbook now. Do you want a wing or a floor named after you?” Without pausing to explain, he turned his limping gait, heading in the opposite direction. Under different circumstances, Tony might have been curious about where he was headed, but right now his priorities has narrowed to a bed and an EKG.
“We have a more private ward this way,” Dr. Cuddy assured him, leading him around a corner, and down yet another glass encased hallway. “Here...”
She slid open the door (glass, of course), revealing a rather large room, only one bed, and some basic medical monitoring equipment. The room was sparsely decorated, but Tony assumed that the couch, end table and rather lonely looking vase of flowers were indicative of its 'special' status.
At least it was secluded.
Tony walked in the room and began rifling through the drawers. “I'll need some leads for the monitor,” he said offhandedly. Dr. Cuddy was still standing in the doorway.
“I'll draw up some paperwork for your admittance,” she began in a business-like tone. “Nothing extensive. And I'll bring a nurse in to attach the leads. Just sit down--”
“Actually, it would be great if we could just skip all that...aha.” He pulled a few coiled wires out of one of the drawers and tore open the plastic wrap around them. “I can get these.” He sat down on the bed, both feet still planted firmly on the floor, and took of his jacket.
000
Cuddy frowned, and crossed the room. “You know how to attach these?” Stark nodded, and began loosening his bow tie. “Correctly?” she clarified.
“Sure.”
Ok. Fine. She could deal with this. Probably.
“Well if you don't want a nurse to assist you, at least take your shirt off and I'll help you.”
“You know I don't need help with this, as it happens, but there are a few things you could help me with afterward that I wouldn't say no to...”
“You don't really have an off switch do you?” sighed Cuddy. How is it that she constantly managed to surround herself with petulant children masquerading as adults?
“You can always just yank out my battery,” he said cheerily. “Usually shuts me up pretty quickly.” He reached under his shirt as he chatted, attaching the leads in what at least looked like the correct spot. Not that she could verify that without his cooperation.
She squinted as she started at his still present shirt-was there a light shining on it? She looked around. Was there a light underneath it? Very faint, right there in the center...
“Here,” Stark said quickly, his hand darting into his pocket. He pulled out a slightly wrinkled piece of paper. “This is for you! Congratulations, I'm so glad that I could help, good cause, blah blah blah.” He flipped a switch, and the machinery began humming softly.
“So you were actually just...carrying this around in your pocket.” So much money. She felt as if she were holding something impossible, that it might disintegrate into nothing in her hands at any moment.
“I told you,” shrugged Stark. Following suit, Cuddy shoved the check into her purse. “Shut the blinds, will you?”
000
“What happened to Dr. House?” Tony was reclining in the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“He probably went to his office to work on your case.” Dr. Cuddy pulled out a long strip of white paper from the machine and examined it without looking at him.
“Working on my case? What case? And if there was a case, wouldn't it be here, where I currently am?” inquired Tony.
“He does most of his work away from the patient,” she explained.
“Really? 'Cause he was practically stalking me earlier.”
“He's hot and cold,” said Cuddy dryly. She stretched out the paper, looking up and down the length of it. “This actually looks almost normal. There are a few more tests we could run...”
“No, don't worry about it.” Tony held out an expectant hand. “Gimme, gimme, gimme,” he said impatiently, and she complied, rolling her eyes slightly as she did so.
Normal wasn't really a word he would use to describe the current electrical conduction system of his heart, but it still functioned, and that was what was important. He examined the paper.
It wasn't the arc reactor that was the problem (it ran very well, and would probably still be running long after the rest of Tony had withered away into nothing). Most of the issues he ran into concerned the system that translated the mini-power-plant on his chest to an actual human heartbeat, as fucked up and shredded as his heart was to begin with.
His heart rate was 130 now. OK, not horrible. Not bad for the 'walking dead' at least.
000
“Oh...this is bad,” said Stark miserably.
“What?” Cuddy asked in sudden alarm.
“I think my buzz is wearing off,” he said glumly. “You don't by any chance have any scotch hidden in the extra special rich people room, do you?”
“This is a hospital,” she informed him, her alarm turning quickly into exasperation.
“So is that a yes or a no?”
“No.” She had stopped trying to hide her annoyance. And not just because he had already handed over the check. (Because he could, of course, stop payment on it.)
“And as a point of interest, you probably shouldn't be taking any kind of depressant while trying to determine the extent of the irregularities in your elevated heart rate. You don't know what's wrong with you, and you don't want any tests performed., though to be fair I legally can't perform any tests on you anyway, because you refuse to be admitted.”
“I think that just about covers it,” said Stark, nodding serenely. “Now if you don't mind--”
“Mr. Stark.” She glared at him coolly, hoping that her folded arms indicated very clearly that she did mind. “I appreciate your generosity, I appreciate your interest in this hospital, and it was, really, very considerate of you to come all the way out here in person.”
“Hey, no problem. Now if--”
“I'm not done.” She shifted her weight slightly. In her heels, she all but towered over his bedside. “I also appreciate your desire for privacy, and I've tried to accommodate you as much as I can.” He stared at her, looking torn between boredom and amusement.
“However--I promised myself a long time ago that no amount of money--” (Not even 350 million fucking dollars oh dear lord has she finally gone insane?)
“--is enough to make me compromise my principles or the integrity of this hospital. I understand your feelings of...entitlement, but if you do not consent to be admitted I am going to tear your very generous check in half, and have a team of orderlies strap you to the table, wheel you into the parking lot, and leave you there.”
“Yikes,” said Stark. “So...what would I need to sign?”
“The papers are in my office,” she said, working to keep her voice even. “And I assure you we do take patient privacy very seriously here at Princeton-Plainsborough. I'll be right back.”
As she turned to leave, Stark ripped off the EKG leads and sat up, obviously intending to follow her. “It would probably be better if--” Cuddy sighed. “My office is right down the hall,” she revised, deciding to take one victory at a time.
000
So Tony's sex life hadn't changed too much since he'd had a rather large piece of hardware permanently installed on his chest. The key, he'd discovered, was to predominantly accept blow jobs, (adequate for now), and occasionally fuck girls who were too (how could he put this delicately?) abysmally stupid to ask any meaningful questions about what the hell the round glowing thing was doing on his chest.
He was just thinking about it because right now he was pressed up fairly tightly against Doctor Cuddy, (by his own maneuvering of course) who was pressed up against the front of her desk, pointing to a line on a sheet of paper for him to sign.
And even though she wasn't objecting and the fabric of her dress was smooth in all the right places and he doubted very much that she was wearing panties, he had the feeling that “Hey, how about a blow job?” was not going to be the next thing out of her mouth.
(Though a man could dream, couldn't he?)
She lifted up the last sheet in a short stack of documents. “And initial here.”
Damn.
“And we're done.” She lifted the whole stack and shuffled them neatly into a symmetrical pile, sounding pleased.
“Hey, how about a blow job?” said Tony casually.
“For me, or for you?” she asked, without blinking.
He shrugged. “Either one.”
She set the stack of papers down on the desk, resting one hand on her hip and the fingertips of her other hand on the edge of the desk. “Until we figure out what-if anything-is wrong with your heart, I recommend that you don't deliberately tax it in any way.”
“Ok.” He stepped towards her, closing the very brief distance between them and reached out, gently brushing the hair off the side of her neck. She met his gaze, and didn't pull away. He ran the pads of his fingers lightly across her shoulder blade and then down the remaining distance of her delightfully bare arm, tugging on the strap of her dress with his thumb as he went.
“I can take things slow.”
Part 4