the first good world II, house/cuddy
Title : The First Good World
Author : firenze083
Rating : PG
Pairing : House/Cuddy
Timeline : AU from the season 3 finale
Summary : Cuddy and House, years later in Vienna.
II.
They have not spoken for a while. She sits across him, watching both him and the view from the window. There is much to see, but the train moves fast and the glass is frosty. She can discern some houses and the early morning bustle of the city outside. Parks, shops, people--all these race from her view in flashes of Christmas lights, and she has the overwhelming urge to wipe the glass with her gloves.
There aren’t too many people on the train--they caught the earliest one out--and the steady hum of it, coupled with the almost eerie silence he is giving her can almost lull her back to sleep. So instead she focuses on him. He has already relaxed the frown etched into his features earlier in the ride--that frown that usually signaled, back home, a mystery disease waiting to be solved. She wonders what conclusion he has come to the casual statement she’d dropped on him.
But his face is unreadable now, and his blue eyes are staring pointedly, stubbornly ahead on the window above her. She almost rolls her eyes at him. No doubt he’s already did his flawless deductive reasoning skills with what he’s observed about her.
She can almost hear what he’s thinking, about the question he’s been bugging her with since the first day--that she could’ve or couldn’t have had a child. She’s still slender, but then again, it’s been years, and he knows she’s obsessive about her weight. She could’ve jogged it all out and eaten nothing but salads for months. It’s hard to say because, as much as she often still imagines herself still all lines and hardness, her figure has gone softer, almost malleable, she thinks.
And she could’ve left the sprog with Wilson while she’s here, his voice argues clearly in her head, and she wrinkles her nose a little at how her brain just bounces off his annoying tone so well. Or her mother. Damn.
She is actually already done observing him, and knew the answer to her question when he first sat down and crossed his arms petulantly, the train tickets on his lap. He had, she saw, a yearly one.
It’s obvious at least, that he’s been here a while, the way he knows about breakfast cakes and offers a tour. But to have been here for a year, or perhaps more, is a little unsettling. She doesn’t know why, for the life of her. She can see, though, that there’s a way to him, the way he sits there wearing his red turtleneck and his thick wool coat, leaning back on the seat--as if he’s been here a long time, long enough to blend in Vienna.
*
‘This? This is where you bring me after dragging me away from that tour?’ She frowns at the structure before her. ‘House, you shouldn’t have.’
His brooding mood forgotten as he stands before her, hands buried deep inside his coat pockets and a triumphant grin on his face. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going chicken on me.’
‘I should’ve known that when you plan to role play, you go all the way.’
‘Hey, you’re the one who suggested that we lock ourselves in an asylum somewhere,’ He says, and starts for the entrance.
When he first brought her to the university grounds, she was intrigued. Maybe he worked there, or perhaps even studied--the possibilities were endless, and she couldn’t help but be curious to see what he did for a living now, and who was willing to put up with him. That was until they walked past all the courtyards and students, and came to a stop in front of a circular, five-storey brick tower, weary with age.
Now she follows him inside the asylum, giving a small nod to the sleepy guard at the gate.
‘Welcome to the Narrenturm, loony bin extravaganza, also home to the Pathological Museum,’ He says, arms wide and gesturing to the glass cases lined on the walls.
She takes in the place, with its harsh lighting and antiseptic smell. The tiles are brown and scrubbed clean, and there are framed pictures of different cadavers in different poses. There are a handful of people in the room with them, leaning over the displays. The displays themselves are morbid, but then again, this is the one museum House brings her willingly, so she really can’t expect anything else. Medically, it does hold her attention, piques her interest at the neat way everything is preserved and kept.
She reaches out a fingertip to graze one of the displays, a fetus in a glass jar filled with formaldehyde. ‘Baby Mandy, Wet Preparation,’ it says.
‘This was the first lunatic asylum in the world,’ House says beside her. ‘There was only one door,’ He gestured the one they just came in from, ‘and those nitwits in 1781 thought that if you keep them locked away from the rest of civilization long enough, sanity will just come to them.’
She stares at a glass-encased skeleton of a baby with an enlarged head and a too-small body. Its features were set in a gigantic grin.
‘The looniest of them were kept in the basement,’ He widens his eyes at her dramatically. ‘Perfect for your average psycho flick.’
‘You’d have been there too,’ Cuddy says mildly. ‘In the cell furthest from the hall, slamming your head on the wall.’
‘And hitting on the hot, whip-yielding orderlies like you.’
She keeps on walking, stopping once in a while to admire the eerily realistic wax figures resting inside wooden coffins. House follows behind her, or steps beside her once in a while when they look at the same display. They are leaning side by side, staring at a mummified arm when she turns to him.
‘Well, we’re in an asylum. Fire away.’ She turns her gaze back to study each of the fine wrinkles on the greenish fingers, almost nonchalantly. He pauses for a while, and she wonders what for, when she knows he’s so curious about Wilson.
‘What happened to Foreman?’ He finally asks, and he doesn’t take his eyes away from the display as well.
She is a little surprised at first, but then again, his fellow is the catalyst for the changes that had suddenly swept her hospital years ago. She has almost forgotten that, and feels a little resentment towards him.
‘He’s still in New York. He comes over the hospital sometimes to lecture, but he’s never considered coming back, even after you were gone,’ She says. ‘I’m sure you’ve read his articles.’
‘Yeah,’ He says wryly. ‘Never used any of our cases for his subjects. All I keep reading about is boring brainy stuff.’ He reaches into his pocket and pops the cap off his Vicodin.
The action catches her attention, and she focuses on him for a while, throwing his head back, popping the pill dry. So familiar, she thinks again.
‘It doesn’t stop hurting just because I’m in a prettier country,’ He tells her indulgently, as if talking to a child. ‘You see once a clot--’
‘Are you disappointed because it’s so insignificant, what happens to him after?’ She interrupts, not willing to go back to the older memories he, guilt-inducer extraordinaire, is only happy to bring up.
He seems to think for a moment, running his hand over his stubble. ‘Just surprised his pride trumps his ambition. Writing about those cases--telling everyone he worked under me--’ He huffs his chest proudly, she rolls her eyes, ‘--could’ve been a nice stepping stone. But he pretends those three years never existed. Kinda wrong in the head.’
His tone is light, but she knows he is more disappointed than he lets on. That much, she is sure of.
‘Kind of like you?’ She can’t help but say. He narrows his eyes at her, but she goes on. ‘You’re both still more similar than you think.’
‘I’m cooler though. I’m in Vienna.’ He smirks. ‘And were those your first and second questions? You seem to totally not know how this ‘Silence of the Lamb’ thing works.’
She just raises a cool eyebrow at him and walks further down the hall. ‘Stop lagging behind to check out my ass. I can feel your eyes like lasers.’
He snorts. ‘Right, like I’d go near anywhere that saggy piece of flesh.’
She pushes open a wooden door at the end of the hall and steps into a courtyard. The snow had stopped for a while, but the slight breeze sweeping past the bare trees makes her shiver all the same. She crosses her arms and turns to where House is, surveying something on the wall.
‘World’s first lightning rod,’ He says when she stands beside him. ‘Intended to zap them to normalcy a la Frankenstein movies.’
‘My turn,’ She says. ‘Where do you work?’
He eagerly begins to open his mouth when she cuts, ‘You are not a male gigolo.’
His face falls. ‘Party pooper.’ Then he frowns and tugs at his turtleneck. ‘Vienna Gen,’ He says shortly. ‘My boss is just as much a pain as you are. Lectures instead of clinic duty. Idiots speaking another language are still idiots.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Your boss can make you lecture? Is blackmail involved in any way?’
‘As if I would tell you,’ He scoffs. ‘Don’t get all huffy. You still have better cleavage.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘But what does she--’
‘My turn,’ He interrupts smugly. ‘How about Cameron and Chase? Where’s their lurve nest?’
‘Arizona. They’re engaged,’ She replies. ‘And I didn’t know you cared. You’re getting soft in your old age.’
‘I don’t,’ He says gruffly. ‘And there are parts of me that never get soft--’ He leers.
Cuddy lets out a frustrated sound and marches back to the asylum.
*
They walk in a silence that’s between comfortable and awkward, although she’s grateful that the many shops they pass by distract either of them from saying much. She has never seen a more spectacular Christmas. All the trees are decorated with shiny baubles or silk ribbons, and every house has its own unique wreath hanging on its door. Colorful posters are taped on walls, announcing that a boys’ choir would be performing at the Konzerthaus, along with a full orchestra. Every corner they turn is filled with a cluster of huts--’Christmas markets,’ House tells her--with people shoving bottles of wine and intricate handicrafts right under her nose.
‘Later,’ He always tells her impatiently whenever she spies a gift perfect for her mother or Wilson or her twin nieces.
She glares at him, annoyed, but he steers her away, saying he’ll bring her somewhere ‘real Christmas-ey’ later on. She doesn’t know if he has an itinerary in mind. But knowing him, he’s probably just making it up as he goes along. She recognizes the street they passed earlier on, the one with a girl who’s maybe nine or ten, wrapped up in her winter clothes and playing the violin in the corner. They’ve been gone for hours and she’s still here; Cuddy wonders if her tiny fingers are nerveless from the cold.
Vendors line the streets selling coffee or roasted chestnuts. He doesn’t venture into any of the stalls, only suddenly stops once at a well-worn corner stall and gruffly tells her to get some hot chocolate.
‘Don’t you have a job?’ She snaps as she hands him his cup.
‘You do,’ He says, shrugging. ‘Call this the tour guide fee.’
Any protest dies on her lips as she sips the liquid in the cup. It is richer than anything she has ever tasted, and yet not too much, and when it touches her tongue and her palate she feels as if she should close her eyes.
‘Told ya so,’ He says smugly.
‘Shut up, you’re ruining it,’ She says, closing her eyes at the light mint aftertaste.
They continue on, passing a row of houses in a quiet neighborhood.
‘That’s mine,’ He says gruffly, bare pausing as they walk by.
‘Okay,’ She looks as disinterested as he is, but she does throw a backward glance at the door, green like everyone else’s, but the only one without a wreath. Does he have a Wilson to come over and watch TV with? She wonders. A team or a boss to pound on his door in the middle of the night?
She shoves the thought to the back of her mind. It’s none of her concern, anyway.
*
She shouldn’t be surprised, really, that he brings her to an amusement park.
‘Not just any amusement park,’ He defends. ‘It’s the amusement park. Six Flags--pfft. This is the real deal.’
‘It’s freezing,’ She complains. ‘I hope you’re not planning to ride bumper cars. Or, god forbid, the ferris wheel.’
Just as she utters the last word, House stops in front of a magnificent, towering one and turns to her with a wide grin.
‘House. We’ll die.’
‘Cuddy. It’s all good.’ He motions to the carts, which she now notices are cozy and enclosed. ‘Besides, this way you can say I showed you the whole city in a day.’
He speaks to the operator in rapid German. She squints her eyes suspiciously at him when he puts on his best concerned face and gestures to her urgently. From some leftover college German, she recognizes ‘sick’ and ‘contagious’ and ‘deadly’. When House finishes, the operator looks a little green, and opens the door to a cart quickly and curiously holds his breath as she passes by.
‘I don’t even want to know what you said,’ She says as she sits on the bench in the middle of the cabin.
House leans on one of the windows as the cabin starts to glide upwards. ‘Hmm? Okay then. You have to pay them thrice the normal amount though. But it has nothing to do with you having a deadly airborne disease which anyone can contact by looking in your eyes.’
She glares at him.
‘What? Did you want to get stuck with that old rhuemy lady behind us?’ He asks incredulously.
He does have a point, but she’ll rather jump down the ferris wheel to admit it. She stands and walks to the other side of the cabin, admiring the view from the window. The sun is setting, and the sky is all shades of violet and pink just as everything below is covered in white. The houses are getting smaller, and the people running around Prater, smaller still.
‘Calculating how many dots you could afford to spare?’ He asks.
‘Free income tax.’ She doesn’t look at him but her voice is smiling. The glass is freezing beneath her palm when she presses against it.
‘Tell me,’ He says gruffly and a little hesitantly, ‘about Wilson.’
She smiles again. ‘His practice is doing very well.’
After a few moments of silence, he growls, ‘Well since everyone really cares about his practice. Kills people left and right, and it’s doing well.’
‘He married Bonnie again,’ She finally tells him what he seemed to be trying to ask all day. God forbid he doesn’t actually ask. Or call Wilson himself once in a while.
‘You,’ She hears him stop, shuffles awkwardly as if asking personal questions was his version of hell, and start again. ‘You said he took it hardest.’
‘He married Bonnie again,’ She repeats, smirking. The truth is, she’s not so ready to delve into the gory details of What They Did When House Ran for the Hills.
This gets a low chuckle for him, even if he senses her evasion. ‘Probably went crying to him after getting fired. Worst realtor in New Jersey marries worst doctor in New Jersey. Don’t worry, you were close to getting the title. But then I thought his patients die on a much more regular basis--’
‘My turn,’ She says abruptly, and turns to face him. ‘Have you been living here all this time? I saw your train ticket.’
He faces her as well. ‘Gold star for the the junior Sherlock. Yeah, I’ve been here a year.’
She gestures for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she makes a face. ‘You know, if you do some simple math, you’ll realize you’ve actually been gone for a bit longer.’
‘I’ll bet all the other kids wanted to pummel you during recess, too.’ Then he frowns and looks out the window. ‘Went back to Egypt for a while. Then before that, a few months in Paris. A year or so in London. Before before that,’ He squints, trying to remember. ‘Idaho.’
‘Idaho?’ She can’t honestly tell if he’s serious. When she sees him now, she realizes there’s a lot about him she still doesn’t understand, even with decades between them.
‘The baked potatoes were good,’ He replies, studying her face. A beat, and then, ‘Closed my eyes and swore to go where my finger landed,’ He confesses with a smirk. ‘I am Mr. Spontaneous.’
She is determined not to let him see how much she is surprised by this new facet of him. She has been sitting on her desk, taking care of her hospital--once in a while, wondering if one day she would find out he were dead--while he was off in places halfway around the world. She suddenly feels old and wrinkled, like something left out in the hospital walls for too long.
‘Why?’ She asks.
‘It was time for a change,’ He replies. ‘Everyone’s changed.’
‘I haven’t,’ She says before she can stop herself.
He narrows his eyes at her, calculatingly. ‘Yeah, you have.’
She shrugs and turns away to look at the view below. His shortcut worked--what better way to see everything than above? She spies the snow-covered tops of churches, houses, buildings. It occurs to her that she has missed that afternoon program after all.
*
It is late in the evening when he takes her to a Christmas market at the Rathaus. She is transfixed at first, deeply regretting not taking a camera, although House points out that she did expect to stay in Vienna cooped up in the hotel with all the boring speakers in the first place, so what could she have thought to take pictures of? She threatens to stuff his mouth with her scarf if he doesn’t shut up, to which he hastily complies.
The town hall is magnificent, stretched out as the backdrop for the market, all of its windows alight. She finds herself buying a ton of lovely, delicate glass figurines, and arrays of candied fruits and two bottles of wine.
‘Where the hell are you planning on putting these?’ House grumbles, trying to juggle his cane, a bag of hot chestnuts and the box of glass fairies she unceremoniously dumped in his arms. ‘I understand your weird compulsion for supporting every single one of the working members of society, but--oof!’ He reels as she shoves the paper bag of small, hand-carved wooden soldiers to his chest.
She makes sure House isn’t looking when she takes in all the elaborately decorated trees, the dancing lights, the rich aroma of mulled wine and even the cold, and smiles a little. Later, when they are sitting on a bench, House resting his leg, and both holding onto cups of hot punch, she clears her throat and starts, ‘I had a g--’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ House mutters, quickly sipping his drink, face hidden in the rim.
TBC
A/N : All of these places are real of course, but all inconsistencies or mistakes are all my fault. I haven't actually stepped foot in Vienna, and all of these are based on research and pictures. The ferris wheel is the Riesenraad, and the dots thing House and Cuddy talk about is a reference to 'The Third Man', which included a famous scene featuring said ferris wheel. And sorry for the insanely long update time. At this rate, I'll probably finish by Christmas.
Author : firenze083
Rating : PG
Pairing : House/Cuddy
Timeline : AU from the season 3 finale
Summary : Cuddy and House, years later in Vienna.
II.
They have not spoken for a while. She sits across him, watching both him and the view from the window. There is much to see, but the train moves fast and the glass is frosty. She can discern some houses and the early morning bustle of the city outside. Parks, shops, people--all these race from her view in flashes of Christmas lights, and she has the overwhelming urge to wipe the glass with her gloves.
There aren’t too many people on the train--they caught the earliest one out--and the steady hum of it, coupled with the almost eerie silence he is giving her can almost lull her back to sleep. So instead she focuses on him. He has already relaxed the frown etched into his features earlier in the ride--that frown that usually signaled, back home, a mystery disease waiting to be solved. She wonders what conclusion he has come to the casual statement she’d dropped on him.
But his face is unreadable now, and his blue eyes are staring pointedly, stubbornly ahead on the window above her. She almost rolls her eyes at him. No doubt he’s already did his flawless deductive reasoning skills with what he’s observed about her.
She can almost hear what he’s thinking, about the question he’s been bugging her with since the first day--that she could’ve or couldn’t have had a child. She’s still slender, but then again, it’s been years, and he knows she’s obsessive about her weight. She could’ve jogged it all out and eaten nothing but salads for months. It’s hard to say because, as much as she often still imagines herself still all lines and hardness, her figure has gone softer, almost malleable, she thinks.
And she could’ve left the sprog with Wilson while she’s here, his voice argues clearly in her head, and she wrinkles her nose a little at how her brain just bounces off his annoying tone so well. Or her mother. Damn.
She is actually already done observing him, and knew the answer to her question when he first sat down and crossed his arms petulantly, the train tickets on his lap. He had, she saw, a yearly one.
It’s obvious at least, that he’s been here a while, the way he knows about breakfast cakes and offers a tour. But to have been here for a year, or perhaps more, is a little unsettling. She doesn’t know why, for the life of her. She can see, though, that there’s a way to him, the way he sits there wearing his red turtleneck and his thick wool coat, leaning back on the seat--as if he’s been here a long time, long enough to blend in Vienna.
*
‘This? This is where you bring me after dragging me away from that tour?’ She frowns at the structure before her. ‘House, you shouldn’t have.’
His brooding mood forgotten as he stands before her, hands buried deep inside his coat pockets and a triumphant grin on his face. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going chicken on me.’
‘I should’ve known that when you plan to role play, you go all the way.’
‘Hey, you’re the one who suggested that we lock ourselves in an asylum somewhere,’ He says, and starts for the entrance.
When he first brought her to the university grounds, she was intrigued. Maybe he worked there, or perhaps even studied--the possibilities were endless, and she couldn’t help but be curious to see what he did for a living now, and who was willing to put up with him. That was until they walked past all the courtyards and students, and came to a stop in front of a circular, five-storey brick tower, weary with age.
Now she follows him inside the asylum, giving a small nod to the sleepy guard at the gate.
‘Welcome to the Narrenturm, loony bin extravaganza, also home to the Pathological Museum,’ He says, arms wide and gesturing to the glass cases lined on the walls.
She takes in the place, with its harsh lighting and antiseptic smell. The tiles are brown and scrubbed clean, and there are framed pictures of different cadavers in different poses. There are a handful of people in the room with them, leaning over the displays. The displays themselves are morbid, but then again, this is the one museum House brings her willingly, so she really can’t expect anything else. Medically, it does hold her attention, piques her interest at the neat way everything is preserved and kept.
She reaches out a fingertip to graze one of the displays, a fetus in a glass jar filled with formaldehyde. ‘Baby Mandy, Wet Preparation,’ it says.
‘This was the first lunatic asylum in the world,’ House says beside her. ‘There was only one door,’ He gestured the one they just came in from, ‘and those nitwits in 1781 thought that if you keep them locked away from the rest of civilization long enough, sanity will just come to them.’
She stares at a glass-encased skeleton of a baby with an enlarged head and a too-small body. Its features were set in a gigantic grin.
‘The looniest of them were kept in the basement,’ He widens his eyes at her dramatically. ‘Perfect for your average psycho flick.’
‘You’d have been there too,’ Cuddy says mildly. ‘In the cell furthest from the hall, slamming your head on the wall.’
‘And hitting on the hot, whip-yielding orderlies like you.’
She keeps on walking, stopping once in a while to admire the eerily realistic wax figures resting inside wooden coffins. House follows behind her, or steps beside her once in a while when they look at the same display. They are leaning side by side, staring at a mummified arm when she turns to him.
‘Well, we’re in an asylum. Fire away.’ She turns her gaze back to study each of the fine wrinkles on the greenish fingers, almost nonchalantly. He pauses for a while, and she wonders what for, when she knows he’s so curious about Wilson.
‘What happened to Foreman?’ He finally asks, and he doesn’t take his eyes away from the display as well.
She is a little surprised at first, but then again, his fellow is the catalyst for the changes that had suddenly swept her hospital years ago. She has almost forgotten that, and feels a little resentment towards him.
‘He’s still in New York. He comes over the hospital sometimes to lecture, but he’s never considered coming back, even after you were gone,’ She says. ‘I’m sure you’ve read his articles.’
‘Yeah,’ He says wryly. ‘Never used any of our cases for his subjects. All I keep reading about is boring brainy stuff.’ He reaches into his pocket and pops the cap off his Vicodin.
The action catches her attention, and she focuses on him for a while, throwing his head back, popping the pill dry. So familiar, she thinks again.
‘It doesn’t stop hurting just because I’m in a prettier country,’ He tells her indulgently, as if talking to a child. ‘You see once a clot--’
‘Are you disappointed because it’s so insignificant, what happens to him after?’ She interrupts, not willing to go back to the older memories he, guilt-inducer extraordinaire, is only happy to bring up.
He seems to think for a moment, running his hand over his stubble. ‘Just surprised his pride trumps his ambition. Writing about those cases--telling everyone he worked under me--’ He huffs his chest proudly, she rolls her eyes, ‘--could’ve been a nice stepping stone. But he pretends those three years never existed. Kinda wrong in the head.’
His tone is light, but she knows he is more disappointed than he lets on. That much, she is sure of.
‘Kind of like you?’ She can’t help but say. He narrows his eyes at her, but she goes on. ‘You’re both still more similar than you think.’
‘I’m cooler though. I’m in Vienna.’ He smirks. ‘And were those your first and second questions? You seem to totally not know how this ‘Silence of the Lamb’ thing works.’
She just raises a cool eyebrow at him and walks further down the hall. ‘Stop lagging behind to check out my ass. I can feel your eyes like lasers.’
He snorts. ‘Right, like I’d go near anywhere that saggy piece of flesh.’
She pushes open a wooden door at the end of the hall and steps into a courtyard. The snow had stopped for a while, but the slight breeze sweeping past the bare trees makes her shiver all the same. She crosses her arms and turns to where House is, surveying something on the wall.
‘World’s first lightning rod,’ He says when she stands beside him. ‘Intended to zap them to normalcy a la Frankenstein movies.’
‘My turn,’ She says. ‘Where do you work?’
He eagerly begins to open his mouth when she cuts, ‘You are not a male gigolo.’
His face falls. ‘Party pooper.’ Then he frowns and tugs at his turtleneck. ‘Vienna Gen,’ He says shortly. ‘My boss is just as much a pain as you are. Lectures instead of clinic duty. Idiots speaking another language are still idiots.’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Your boss can make you lecture? Is blackmail involved in any way?’
‘As if I would tell you,’ He scoffs. ‘Don’t get all huffy. You still have better cleavage.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘But what does she--’
‘My turn,’ He interrupts smugly. ‘How about Cameron and Chase? Where’s their lurve nest?’
‘Arizona. They’re engaged,’ She replies. ‘And I didn’t know you cared. You’re getting soft in your old age.’
‘I don’t,’ He says gruffly. ‘And there are parts of me that never get soft--’ He leers.
Cuddy lets out a frustrated sound and marches back to the asylum.
*
They walk in a silence that’s between comfortable and awkward, although she’s grateful that the many shops they pass by distract either of them from saying much. She has never seen a more spectacular Christmas. All the trees are decorated with shiny baubles or silk ribbons, and every house has its own unique wreath hanging on its door. Colorful posters are taped on walls, announcing that a boys’ choir would be performing at the Konzerthaus, along with a full orchestra. Every corner they turn is filled with a cluster of huts--’Christmas markets,’ House tells her--with people shoving bottles of wine and intricate handicrafts right under her nose.
‘Later,’ He always tells her impatiently whenever she spies a gift perfect for her mother or Wilson or her twin nieces.
She glares at him, annoyed, but he steers her away, saying he’ll bring her somewhere ‘real Christmas-ey’ later on. She doesn’t know if he has an itinerary in mind. But knowing him, he’s probably just making it up as he goes along. She recognizes the street they passed earlier on, the one with a girl who’s maybe nine or ten, wrapped up in her winter clothes and playing the violin in the corner. They’ve been gone for hours and she’s still here; Cuddy wonders if her tiny fingers are nerveless from the cold.
Vendors line the streets selling coffee or roasted chestnuts. He doesn’t venture into any of the stalls, only suddenly stops once at a well-worn corner stall and gruffly tells her to get some hot chocolate.
‘Don’t you have a job?’ She snaps as she hands him his cup.
‘You do,’ He says, shrugging. ‘Call this the tour guide fee.’
Any protest dies on her lips as she sips the liquid in the cup. It is richer than anything she has ever tasted, and yet not too much, and when it touches her tongue and her palate she feels as if she should close her eyes.
‘Told ya so,’ He says smugly.
‘Shut up, you’re ruining it,’ She says, closing her eyes at the light mint aftertaste.
They continue on, passing a row of houses in a quiet neighborhood.
‘That’s mine,’ He says gruffly, bare pausing as they walk by.
‘Okay,’ She looks as disinterested as he is, but she does throw a backward glance at the door, green like everyone else’s, but the only one without a wreath. Does he have a Wilson to come over and watch TV with? She wonders. A team or a boss to pound on his door in the middle of the night?
She shoves the thought to the back of her mind. It’s none of her concern, anyway.
*
She shouldn’t be surprised, really, that he brings her to an amusement park.
‘Not just any amusement park,’ He defends. ‘It’s the amusement park. Six Flags--pfft. This is the real deal.’
‘It’s freezing,’ She complains. ‘I hope you’re not planning to ride bumper cars. Or, god forbid, the ferris wheel.’
Just as she utters the last word, House stops in front of a magnificent, towering one and turns to her with a wide grin.
‘House. We’ll die.’
‘Cuddy. It’s all good.’ He motions to the carts, which she now notices are cozy and enclosed. ‘Besides, this way you can say I showed you the whole city in a day.’
He speaks to the operator in rapid German. She squints her eyes suspiciously at him when he puts on his best concerned face and gestures to her urgently. From some leftover college German, she recognizes ‘sick’ and ‘contagious’ and ‘deadly’. When House finishes, the operator looks a little green, and opens the door to a cart quickly and curiously holds his breath as she passes by.
‘I don’t even want to know what you said,’ She says as she sits on the bench in the middle of the cabin.
House leans on one of the windows as the cabin starts to glide upwards. ‘Hmm? Okay then. You have to pay them thrice the normal amount though. But it has nothing to do with you having a deadly airborne disease which anyone can contact by looking in your eyes.’
She glares at him.
‘What? Did you want to get stuck with that old rhuemy lady behind us?’ He asks incredulously.
He does have a point, but she’ll rather jump down the ferris wheel to admit it. She stands and walks to the other side of the cabin, admiring the view from the window. The sun is setting, and the sky is all shades of violet and pink just as everything below is covered in white. The houses are getting smaller, and the people running around Prater, smaller still.
‘Calculating how many dots you could afford to spare?’ He asks.
‘Free income tax.’ She doesn’t look at him but her voice is smiling. The glass is freezing beneath her palm when she presses against it.
‘Tell me,’ He says gruffly and a little hesitantly, ‘about Wilson.’
She smiles again. ‘His practice is doing very well.’
After a few moments of silence, he growls, ‘Well since everyone really cares about his practice. Kills people left and right, and it’s doing well.’
‘He married Bonnie again,’ She finally tells him what he seemed to be trying to ask all day. God forbid he doesn’t actually ask. Or call Wilson himself once in a while.
‘You,’ She hears him stop, shuffles awkwardly as if asking personal questions was his version of hell, and start again. ‘You said he took it hardest.’
‘He married Bonnie again,’ She repeats, smirking. The truth is, she’s not so ready to delve into the gory details of What They Did When House Ran for the Hills.
This gets a low chuckle for him, even if he senses her evasion. ‘Probably went crying to him after getting fired. Worst realtor in New Jersey marries worst doctor in New Jersey. Don’t worry, you were close to getting the title. But then I thought his patients die on a much more regular basis--’
‘My turn,’ She says abruptly, and turns to face him. ‘Have you been living here all this time? I saw your train ticket.’
He faces her as well. ‘Gold star for the the junior Sherlock. Yeah, I’ve been here a year.’
She gestures for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she makes a face. ‘You know, if you do some simple math, you’ll realize you’ve actually been gone for a bit longer.’
‘I’ll bet all the other kids wanted to pummel you during recess, too.’ Then he frowns and looks out the window. ‘Went back to Egypt for a while. Then before that, a few months in Paris. A year or so in London. Before before that,’ He squints, trying to remember. ‘Idaho.’
‘Idaho?’ She can’t honestly tell if he’s serious. When she sees him now, she realizes there’s a lot about him she still doesn’t understand, even with decades between them.
‘The baked potatoes were good,’ He replies, studying her face. A beat, and then, ‘Closed my eyes and swore to go where my finger landed,’ He confesses with a smirk. ‘I am Mr. Spontaneous.’
She is determined not to let him see how much she is surprised by this new facet of him. She has been sitting on her desk, taking care of her hospital--once in a while, wondering if one day she would find out he were dead--while he was off in places halfway around the world. She suddenly feels old and wrinkled, like something left out in the hospital walls for too long.
‘Why?’ She asks.
‘It was time for a change,’ He replies. ‘Everyone’s changed.’
‘I haven’t,’ She says before she can stop herself.
He narrows his eyes at her, calculatingly. ‘Yeah, you have.’
She shrugs and turns away to look at the view below. His shortcut worked--what better way to see everything than above? She spies the snow-covered tops of churches, houses, buildings. It occurs to her that she has missed that afternoon program after all.
*
It is late in the evening when he takes her to a Christmas market at the Rathaus. She is transfixed at first, deeply regretting not taking a camera, although House points out that she did expect to stay in Vienna cooped up in the hotel with all the boring speakers in the first place, so what could she have thought to take pictures of? She threatens to stuff his mouth with her scarf if he doesn’t shut up, to which he hastily complies.
The town hall is magnificent, stretched out as the backdrop for the market, all of its windows alight. She finds herself buying a ton of lovely, delicate glass figurines, and arrays of candied fruits and two bottles of wine.
‘Where the hell are you planning on putting these?’ House grumbles, trying to juggle his cane, a bag of hot chestnuts and the box of glass fairies she unceremoniously dumped in his arms. ‘I understand your weird compulsion for supporting every single one of the working members of society, but--oof!’ He reels as she shoves the paper bag of small, hand-carved wooden soldiers to his chest.
She makes sure House isn’t looking when she takes in all the elaborately decorated trees, the dancing lights, the rich aroma of mulled wine and even the cold, and smiles a little. Later, when they are sitting on a bench, House resting his leg, and both holding onto cups of hot punch, she clears her throat and starts, ‘I had a g--’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ House mutters, quickly sipping his drink, face hidden in the rim.
TBC
A/N : All of these places are real of course, but all inconsistencies or mistakes are all my fault. I haven't actually stepped foot in Vienna, and all of these are based on research and pictures. The ferris wheel is the Riesenraad, and the dots thing House and Cuddy talk about is a reference to 'The Third Man', which included a famous scene featuring said ferris wheel. And sorry for the insanely long update time. At this rate, I'll probably finish by Christmas.