Onward, Chapter 12
Title: Onward, 12/12
Pairings: House/Cuddy, Sam/Wilson
Warnings: Explicit content, at least implied. A little angst, deviation from canon.
Summary: House and Cuddy last. Sam and Wilson are history.
Disclaimer: Seriously? You do know, I am not David Shore, right?
Comments make me happy.
“So nice of you to stop by, Doctor House.” Cuddy had been back at work for all of two hours, but she was apparently making up for lost time.
House, his back to Wilson, lifted a file out of the basket at the nurse’s station. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”
She went from pissed-off to concerned in an instant. “Aren’t you taking the medication Nolan prescribed?”
“I did, and it gave me nightmares again.” He shuddered, opened a patient file and withdrew a pen from his sport coat pocket.
Cuddy bit her lower lip and her brows knit together. “Greg,” she said, so quietly that Wilson could only understand what she was saying by deliberately screening out the other sounds of the clinic. “I’m here. I’m fine. And for the last time, I am not going to eat your head.” She rolled her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, quit watching Animal Planet late at night.”
“It’s the Discovery Channel.”
“Whatever. Why is your medical student parked in Foreman’s spot?”
“I actually have no idea,” House said. He sounded intrigued, but not particularly concerned.
“House, I am serious. I know that I leave you unsupervised for two and a half entire weeks at my own peril, but all - and I do mean all -- of your ongoing shenanigans, whatever they are, will cease and desist immediately.”
“Got it. All shenaniganizing operations now on indefinite hold.”
She cracked an infinitesimal smile. “Dinner tonight? I was thinking we could go to your place. For some reason Marina thinks you walk on water, and she offered to stay late.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“It’s been nineteen days since we had a place all to ourselves.” She fluttered her eyelashes.
“It’s Tuesday,” House repeated, a little less certainly.
“We can break in my new car,” she purred suggestively.
Something told Wilson she was not talking about getting mud on the tire flaps. She flicked her eyebrows up playfully and leaned over the counter --way over the counter - to place a soft kiss on House’s cheek, her chest thrust out, her back foot kicked up over her rump.
“I’ll cancel Wilson.” House’s voice may have cracked a little.
“I’ll meet you right after work,” she said, and tapped his hand.
Judging from the cant of House’s head and his silence, he was getting a fantastic view of her ass as she rounded the counter. Wilson saw his back straighten and his head shake forcefully before he called a patient name and limped toward an exam room.
As Cuddy passed Wilson on her way toward the lobby, she gave him a triumphant grin.
“Nice to see you back,” he said, catching up with her.
“Thank you, but if one more person asks me how I am feeling, I may just tear off one of their limbs and beat them with it.”
Before he could ask about House’s new prescription, she reached the elevator and jabbed the button. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the geriatric oncology proposal. I think I’ve found a donor to fund the startup costs for a department.”
“That’s great.”
“I’d like you to attend the IFA meeting next month to start headhunting for it.”
“The what meeting?”
They entered the elevator car together. “International Federation on Aging. At least six of the top ten senescence research department heads in the world are scheduled to be there, and I have it on good authority that the keynote is well-networked with every MD-PhD program in the country. You’re going to have to submit a list of some candidates for the chief of geriatric oncology position by the end of this year, and that’s the place to start. This year the conference is in Rome.”
“Rome?”
“In November,” she nodded. “You should take a few extra days, and take Sam with you. There’s hardly a more romantic city on Earth.”
They stepped off the elevator, and she called out, “Hold it. Doctor Chase.”
Chase stopped so smoothly, and his shoulders slumped so minutely, that Wilson had to imagine the “damn; I almost got away.”
Cuddy beckoned with her index finger. With a sigh and a game expression, Chase stepped forward. “Doctor Cuddy. Welcome back. How are you …”
“Iced raspberry tea.” She looked disapprovingly at the cardboard tray in his hands.
“Pomegranate and blackberry, actually. Would you like me to pick you up something? I can go back to the canteen, it’s no trouble.”
But Cuddy was not letting him get away that easily. She licked her left incisor thoughtfully. “This is for April.”
Chase nodded, looking trapped.
“Why are you bringing tea to the medical student, Chase.”
“I’m not hitting on her! Why does everyone always think that?” Chase had taken no small amount of grief from House, at first for dating women who resembled Cameron, and later, for dating what House called “anti-Camerons,” which seemed to mean somewhat vacuous and morally … ambivalent. Sharp and little - like shrapnel -- Miss July was too intelligent to be in the latter category and too devious to be in the former.
“Chase,” Cuddy prodded.
“It’s … my turn to get the drinks?” he tried helplessly.
“To get one drink, for one person. I don’t think so.”
“It’s his fault.” Chase pointed at Wilson. “He’s the one who nipped at her about the bloody engagement ring.”
Wilson turned to Cuddy’s expectant, questioning expression. “House was interfering in my relationship with Sam. You know how he is.”
“I do, actually.” She ignored the everlastingly relieved Chase to address Wilson. “So, about Rome. It would be an absolutely irresistible place for a marriage proposal.”
“I’ll, I’ll clear it with Sam,” he stammered. “Thank you.”
“Chase, whatever you’re up to,” she said over her shoulder, “ knock it off.”
“Well, I can see she’s none the worse for wear,” Chase observed, somewhat bitterly.
Wilson was already on his phone. “Hey, Sweetie, free for lunch?”
“But this is way different,” Miss July asserted. “Surprise presents are good things.”
“Surprise re-modeling presents, are risky.” Foreman insisted. “The potential for disaster is huge. She's talking about knocking out walls in her house. That’s like a nine on the Foreman Flossing Scale of Intimacy. Eight point five, at least.”
She screwed her face up as she calculated. “So, one meeting with a contractor is the same as … carry the six … more than twenty-two trips to the drugstore to buy tampons? I hope she’s sure about this.”
“It’s still someone paying us to keep House away from them. I told you, that was going to bite us in the arse someday,” Chase said again. He toggled the microphone on the imaging panel. “Just relax. Try to stay still.”
“You’re telling me we should not have taken the money, Gladys?” Foreman was watching the splendors and the intricacies of the human body with his usual irritated composed attention.
“I’m telling you, Pip, we should never get between House and Wilson.”
“True dat,” Taub said, and Foreman groaned and scowled at him ferociously. “It’s like a universal law.”
“What’s that?” Chase pointed at the screen.
“His nose, Stupid.”
“That.”
Foreman shrugged. “A calcified booger.”
“No, right there, lower left quadrant. Can we see that again?”
“Just a few more minutes,” Foreman reassured the patient. “Of course I took the money. If someone comes to me with a request like that, I’m going to hose the jerk for everything he’s got. How was I supposed to know he’d be dick enough to tell House about it?”
“I did,” Chase huffed. “He’s … Wilson. And when wasn’t House able to figure things like that out?”
“I still don’t know how we’re supposed to ‘entertain’ House all day on a Saturday,” Taub muttered.
“Wilson never seems to have any trouble doing that. Maybe we could subcontract it to him,” Chase suggested.
Foreman shook his head. “She was very specific about that: she wants House as far away from Wilson as possible.”
“Which brings us right back to violating one of the fundamental laws of nature, for money. We can go to hell in seven cultures for that,” Taub pointed out resentfully. “We can get fired for it, in this one.”
“We can only get fired,” Chase returned, “for doing it badly.”
“Now, see,” the medical student said, “this sort of thing, is why I never talk to people in real life. At least not about anything consequential or controversial. The only downside to that, which I can totally live with, is that a lot of people wonder why I’m so weirdly obsessed with the weather.”
She leaned over Taub’s shoulder. “Ew. I don’t think that’s supposed to be there.”
“It’s not. And it’s definitely, not supposed, to be moving,” Foreman said, his lip curling up.
Taub turned to Miss July. “Want to do a lumbar puncture?”
“Woot.”
“Rome?” Sam asked again. “Really?”
“Rome.” Wilson grinned. “The good news, is, Cuddy is happy for us, and wants us to be together. If House wants to keep sleeping with her, then he’ll get out of our way.” With House safely and happily occupied removing wriggling parasites from his unfortunate patient’s spinal cord, he was free to break the good news to her in peace.
He wished they were at home, where they could celebrate the success of Operation Liberty From Gregory House properly, but there would be plenty of time for that, later.
“Of course she is,” Sam said slowly, and her pretty face clouded. “She’s very happy for us, and wants us to be together. And I know why.”
She stood up numbly, put her plate down on Wilson’s desk, and, with him following, walked purposefully into the office next door.
“You,” she said to their boss, and his best friend’s girlfriend. Her lips rounded in a disgruntled ‘o’, and her hands went to her hips. “You’re sending us to Rome?”
“That’s the plan.”
“You. You, bitch.”
Cuddy leaned back and propped her feet, first the right, and then the left, onto House’s desk. “I’m not sure,” she said, although she had never seemed, in Wilson’s long experience of her, more confident. “What your issue is, here.”
Wilson had not the foggiest idea of that, either.
“Sam?” he asked.
“I know how you people work: not one of you does anything, out of the simple goodness of your hearts.”
Cuddy met the other woman’s gaze. “Oh, you might be surprised about that.”
“You’re pimping me out to James for a reason,” Sam said warily.
“’Pimping’?” he asked.
“Wilson cares about you. He moved you into the center of his life, moved House to the periphery of it. All I’m doing,” Cuddy argued patiently, “is my part, to make sure it stays that way.”
“That,” Wilson said, “is a good thing, Sam.”
“Yes, it is,” Cuddy agreed pleasantly. “For all concerned.”
Sam closed in on Cuddy and put her hands down on the surface of the desk. Except for a nearly invisible flinch, Cuddy didn’t waver.
“Right,” Sam said dangerously. “You want James to be free to care about me, the way he has always cared about House. And you don’t expect me to have a problem with that?”
Wilson squinted, and replayed that part of the conversation over, vainly trying to make sense of it.
“You’re happy,” Sam said with a scary certainty, “because you are unloading, a lemon.”
"I'm being supportive."
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Sam’s chest heaved, twice, hard and fast. Wilson saw her pulse throbbing in her neck. “Oh, my God, that’s it. You think James is toxic to your boyfriend, and you’re pushing him toward me, to keep him away from Greg.”
Cuddy replied without a scintilla of remorse or doubt in her voice. “Greg’s psychiatrist seems to believe that to be the case. He told me last week that he has, how did he put this, ‘grave reservations’ about James as the best friend of a man with Greg’s trust and abandonment issues. I don't see why that should concern you.”
“Not unless I have trust and abandonment issues of my own,” Sam shot back. “From, oh, let’s just say, being married to him, and then being slowly abandoned by him, and cheated on by him, once already.” She jerked her thumb at Wilson.
“You must not still have those problems,” Cuddy returned with studied dignity. “Or you wouldn’t have re-initiated a relationship with him.”
Wilson watched his girlfriend’s mouth drop open. . He couldn’t even figure out where he had been before he got lost: he was that lost.
“Right?” Cuddy’s reasonable veneer was inviolable.
“You know damned fucking well,” Sam declared, “that he is, going to do to me exactly what he did to Greg. And you don’t care.”
“Prescribe painkillers to which you’re addicted, and then bail on you when you fail to sacrifice your life for his latest conquest in a dangerous procedure, all of which contributes to PTSD and psychosis?” Cuddy slammed back, very quietly. “I very much doubt that.”
“House brought his. His, problems on himself,” Wilson stuttered.
“Bullshit, Wilson,” Cuddy replied, without taking her eyes from Sam. “House lost Amber, you, Kutner, and his father, all in the same year he had his skull drilled open at your behest. That, I am told, is, in psychiatric terms, serious crazymaking shit.”
“What he’s going to do with you, is what he tried to do with Greg,” she told Sam. “Make you a better person. Which is not, when you think about it, all that terrible.”
“And you would like me to make a lifetime commitment to this guy!?” Sam shouted. “What the hell have I ever done to you?”
“Even if it doesn’t last, you have nothing to lose. Most likely,” Cuddy placated Sam, who had gone white with fury, “you’ll benefit.”
“Because it’s such a privilege to be improved by James Wilson. And all I have to do for it is have sex with him.”
“His other ex-wives and girlfriends all seem to have come out ahead; they’re all still on speaking terms with him."
“Except for the one who died. "
"Oh, he talked to her, too, up until about two months before he started dating you,” Cuddy informed her blandly. “Strangely enough, about things I can’t imagine Amber having the slightest interest in when she was alive, let alone after she’d died. But he said it made him feel better than talking to his - living --- best friend, at the time.”
Sam whirled on Wilson, who glared at Cuddy.
Cuddy gave him a tight smile. “News flash James: when a man who had a psychotic break less than a year ago believes he is having hallucinations, it is. Not. All. About. You.”
The cold wrath in her voice resounded in his solar plexus and made him gulp and take a step backward.
She turned back to Sam. “Either stay with him, or dump him. It’s your decision. I swear, I’ll throw the full weight of my position as dean and my personal partnership with Greg - who loves him unconditionally, and always will -- behind you both, either way. But whatever you choose, don’t either one of you dare to even try to make House responsible for any part of it. This one, I’m warning you both, is all on you.”
Twenty minutes later, House came plundering back into his office with a peeved look on his face. “The hell is the matter with Wilson?” he demanded.
Cuddy shrugged and took a sip of her mochacinno. “I gave him a trip to Rome.”
Epilogue
Pairings: House/Cuddy, Sam/Wilson
Warnings: Explicit content, at least implied. A little angst, deviation from canon.
Summary: House and Cuddy last. Sam and Wilson are history.
Disclaimer: Seriously? You do know, I am not David Shore, right?
Comments make me happy.
“So nice of you to stop by, Doctor House.” Cuddy had been back at work for all of two hours, but she was apparently making up for lost time.
House, his back to Wilson, lifted a file out of the basket at the nurse’s station. “Didn’t sleep well last night.”
She went from pissed-off to concerned in an instant. “Aren’t you taking the medication Nolan prescribed?”
“I did, and it gave me nightmares again.” He shuddered, opened a patient file and withdrew a pen from his sport coat pocket.
Cuddy bit her lower lip and her brows knit together. “Greg,” she said, so quietly that Wilson could only understand what she was saying by deliberately screening out the other sounds of the clinic. “I’m here. I’m fine. And for the last time, I am not going to eat your head.” She rolled her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, quit watching Animal Planet late at night.”
“It’s the Discovery Channel.”
“Whatever. Why is your medical student parked in Foreman’s spot?”
“I actually have no idea,” House said. He sounded intrigued, but not particularly concerned.
“House, I am serious. I know that I leave you unsupervised for two and a half entire weeks at my own peril, but all - and I do mean all -- of your ongoing shenanigans, whatever they are, will cease and desist immediately.”
“Got it. All shenaniganizing operations now on indefinite hold.”
She cracked an infinitesimal smile. “Dinner tonight? I was thinking we could go to your place. For some reason Marina thinks you walk on water, and she offered to stay late.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“It’s been nineteen days since we had a place all to ourselves.” She fluttered her eyelashes.
“It’s Tuesday,” House repeated, a little less certainly.
“We can break in my new car,” she purred suggestively.
Something told Wilson she was not talking about getting mud on the tire flaps. She flicked her eyebrows up playfully and leaned over the counter --way over the counter - to place a soft kiss on House’s cheek, her chest thrust out, her back foot kicked up over her rump.
“I’ll cancel Wilson.” House’s voice may have cracked a little.
“I’ll meet you right after work,” she said, and tapped his hand.
Judging from the cant of House’s head and his silence, he was getting a fantastic view of her ass as she rounded the counter. Wilson saw his back straighten and his head shake forcefully before he called a patient name and limped toward an exam room.
As Cuddy passed Wilson on her way toward the lobby, she gave him a triumphant grin.
“Nice to see you back,” he said, catching up with her.
“Thank you, but if one more person asks me how I am feeling, I may just tear off one of their limbs and beat them with it.”
Before he could ask about House’s new prescription, she reached the elevator and jabbed the button. “Listen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the geriatric oncology proposal. I think I’ve found a donor to fund the startup costs for a department.”
“That’s great.”
“I’d like you to attend the IFA meeting next month to start headhunting for it.”
“The what meeting?”
They entered the elevator car together. “International Federation on Aging. At least six of the top ten senescence research department heads in the world are scheduled to be there, and I have it on good authority that the keynote is well-networked with every MD-PhD program in the country. You’re going to have to submit a list of some candidates for the chief of geriatric oncology position by the end of this year, and that’s the place to start. This year the conference is in Rome.”
“Rome?”
“In November,” she nodded. “You should take a few extra days, and take Sam with you. There’s hardly a more romantic city on Earth.”
They stepped off the elevator, and she called out, “Hold it. Doctor Chase.”
Chase stopped so smoothly, and his shoulders slumped so minutely, that Wilson had to imagine the “damn; I almost got away.”
Cuddy beckoned with her index finger. With a sigh and a game expression, Chase stepped forward. “Doctor Cuddy. Welcome back. How are you …”
“Iced raspberry tea.” She looked disapprovingly at the cardboard tray in his hands.
“Pomegranate and blackberry, actually. Would you like me to pick you up something? I can go back to the canteen, it’s no trouble.”
But Cuddy was not letting him get away that easily. She licked her left incisor thoughtfully. “This is for April.”
Chase nodded, looking trapped.
“Why are you bringing tea to the medical student, Chase.”
“I’m not hitting on her! Why does everyone always think that?” Chase had taken no small amount of grief from House, at first for dating women who resembled Cameron, and later, for dating what House called “anti-Camerons,” which seemed to mean somewhat vacuous and morally … ambivalent. Sharp and little - like shrapnel -- Miss July was too intelligent to be in the latter category and too devious to be in the former.
“Chase,” Cuddy prodded.
“It’s … my turn to get the drinks?” he tried helplessly.
“To get one drink, for one person. I don’t think so.”
“It’s his fault.” Chase pointed at Wilson. “He’s the one who nipped at her about the bloody engagement ring.”
Wilson turned to Cuddy’s expectant, questioning expression. “House was interfering in my relationship with Sam. You know how he is.”
“I do, actually.” She ignored the everlastingly relieved Chase to address Wilson. “So, about Rome. It would be an absolutely irresistible place for a marriage proposal.”
“I’ll, I’ll clear it with Sam,” he stammered. “Thank you.”
“Chase, whatever you’re up to,” she said over her shoulder, “ knock it off.”
“Well, I can see she’s none the worse for wear,” Chase observed, somewhat bitterly.
Wilson was already on his phone. “Hey, Sweetie, free for lunch?”
“But this is way different,” Miss July asserted. “Surprise presents are good things.”
“Surprise re-modeling presents, are risky.” Foreman insisted. “The potential for disaster is huge. She's talking about knocking out walls in her house. That’s like a nine on the Foreman Flossing Scale of Intimacy. Eight point five, at least.”
She screwed her face up as she calculated. “So, one meeting with a contractor is the same as … carry the six … more than twenty-two trips to the drugstore to buy tampons? I hope she’s sure about this.”
“It’s still someone paying us to keep House away from them. I told you, that was going to bite us in the arse someday,” Chase said again. He toggled the microphone on the imaging panel. “Just relax. Try to stay still.”
“You’re telling me we should not have taken the money, Gladys?” Foreman was watching the splendors and the intricacies of the human body with his usual irritated composed attention.
“I’m telling you, Pip, we should never get between House and Wilson.”
“True dat,” Taub said, and Foreman groaned and scowled at him ferociously. “It’s like a universal law.”
“What’s that?” Chase pointed at the screen.
“His nose, Stupid.”
“That.”
Foreman shrugged. “A calcified booger.”
“No, right there, lower left quadrant. Can we see that again?”
“Just a few more minutes,” Foreman reassured the patient. “Of course I took the money. If someone comes to me with a request like that, I’m going to hose the jerk for everything he’s got. How was I supposed to know he’d be dick enough to tell House about it?”
“I did,” Chase huffed. “He’s … Wilson. And when wasn’t House able to figure things like that out?”
“I still don’t know how we’re supposed to ‘entertain’ House all day on a Saturday,” Taub muttered.
“Wilson never seems to have any trouble doing that. Maybe we could subcontract it to him,” Chase suggested.
Foreman shook his head. “She was very specific about that: she wants House as far away from Wilson as possible.”
“Which brings us right back to violating one of the fundamental laws of nature, for money. We can go to hell in seven cultures for that,” Taub pointed out resentfully. “We can get fired for it, in this one.”
“We can only get fired,” Chase returned, “for doing it badly.”
“Now, see,” the medical student said, “this sort of thing, is why I never talk to people in real life. At least not about anything consequential or controversial. The only downside to that, which I can totally live with, is that a lot of people wonder why I’m so weirdly obsessed with the weather.”
She leaned over Taub’s shoulder. “Ew. I don’t think that’s supposed to be there.”
“It’s not. And it’s definitely, not supposed, to be moving,” Foreman said, his lip curling up.
Taub turned to Miss July. “Want to do a lumbar puncture?”
“Woot.”
“Rome?” Sam asked again. “Really?”
“Rome.” Wilson grinned. “The good news, is, Cuddy is happy for us, and wants us to be together. If House wants to keep sleeping with her, then he’ll get out of our way.” With House safely and happily occupied removing wriggling parasites from his unfortunate patient’s spinal cord, he was free to break the good news to her in peace.
He wished they were at home, where they could celebrate the success of Operation Liberty From Gregory House properly, but there would be plenty of time for that, later.
“Of course she is,” Sam said slowly, and her pretty face clouded. “She’s very happy for us, and wants us to be together. And I know why.”
She stood up numbly, put her plate down on Wilson’s desk, and, with him following, walked purposefully into the office next door.
“You,” she said to their boss, and his best friend’s girlfriend. Her lips rounded in a disgruntled ‘o’, and her hands went to her hips. “You’re sending us to Rome?”
“That’s the plan.”
“You. You, bitch.”
Cuddy leaned back and propped her feet, first the right, and then the left, onto House’s desk. “I’m not sure,” she said, although she had never seemed, in Wilson’s long experience of her, more confident. “What your issue is, here.”
Wilson had not the foggiest idea of that, either.
“Sam?” he asked.
“I know how you people work: not one of you does anything, out of the simple goodness of your hearts.”
Cuddy met the other woman’s gaze. “Oh, you might be surprised about that.”
“You’re pimping me out to James for a reason,” Sam said warily.
“’Pimping’?” he asked.
“Wilson cares about you. He moved you into the center of his life, moved House to the periphery of it. All I’m doing,” Cuddy argued patiently, “is my part, to make sure it stays that way.”
“That,” Wilson said, “is a good thing, Sam.”
“Yes, it is,” Cuddy agreed pleasantly. “For all concerned.”
Sam closed in on Cuddy and put her hands down on the surface of the desk. Except for a nearly invisible flinch, Cuddy didn’t waver.
“Right,” Sam said dangerously. “You want James to be free to care about me, the way he has always cared about House. And you don’t expect me to have a problem with that?”
Wilson squinted, and replayed that part of the conversation over, vainly trying to make sense of it.
“You’re happy,” Sam said with a scary certainty, “because you are unloading, a lemon.”
"I'm being supportive."
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Sam’s chest heaved, twice, hard and fast. Wilson saw her pulse throbbing in her neck. “Oh, my God, that’s it. You think James is toxic to your boyfriend, and you’re pushing him toward me, to keep him away from Greg.”
Cuddy replied without a scintilla of remorse or doubt in her voice. “Greg’s psychiatrist seems to believe that to be the case. He told me last week that he has, how did he put this, ‘grave reservations’ about James as the best friend of a man with Greg’s trust and abandonment issues. I don't see why that should concern you.”
“Not unless I have trust and abandonment issues of my own,” Sam shot back. “From, oh, let’s just say, being married to him, and then being slowly abandoned by him, and cheated on by him, once already.” She jerked her thumb at Wilson.
“You must not still have those problems,” Cuddy returned with studied dignity. “Or you wouldn’t have re-initiated a relationship with him.”
Wilson watched his girlfriend’s mouth drop open. . He couldn’t even figure out where he had been before he got lost: he was that lost.
“Right?” Cuddy’s reasonable veneer was inviolable.
“You know damned fucking well,” Sam declared, “that he is, going to do to me exactly what he did to Greg. And you don’t care.”
“Prescribe painkillers to which you’re addicted, and then bail on you when you fail to sacrifice your life for his latest conquest in a dangerous procedure, all of which contributes to PTSD and psychosis?” Cuddy slammed back, very quietly. “I very much doubt that.”
“House brought his. His, problems on himself,” Wilson stuttered.
“Bullshit, Wilson,” Cuddy replied, without taking her eyes from Sam. “House lost Amber, you, Kutner, and his father, all in the same year he had his skull drilled open at your behest. That, I am told, is, in psychiatric terms, serious crazymaking shit.”
“What he’s going to do with you, is what he tried to do with Greg,” she told Sam. “Make you a better person. Which is not, when you think about it, all that terrible.”
“And you would like me to make a lifetime commitment to this guy!?” Sam shouted. “What the hell have I ever done to you?”
“Even if it doesn’t last, you have nothing to lose. Most likely,” Cuddy placated Sam, who had gone white with fury, “you’ll benefit.”
“Because it’s such a privilege to be improved by James Wilson. And all I have to do for it is have sex with him.”
“His other ex-wives and girlfriends all seem to have come out ahead; they’re all still on speaking terms with him."
“Except for the one who died. "
"Oh, he talked to her, too, up until about two months before he started dating you,” Cuddy informed her blandly. “Strangely enough, about things I can’t imagine Amber having the slightest interest in when she was alive, let alone after she’d died. But he said it made him feel better than talking to his - living --- best friend, at the time.”
Sam whirled on Wilson, who glared at Cuddy.
Cuddy gave him a tight smile. “News flash James: when a man who had a psychotic break less than a year ago believes he is having hallucinations, it is. Not. All. About. You.”
The cold wrath in her voice resounded in his solar plexus and made him gulp and take a step backward.
She turned back to Sam. “Either stay with him, or dump him. It’s your decision. I swear, I’ll throw the full weight of my position as dean and my personal partnership with Greg - who loves him unconditionally, and always will -- behind you both, either way. But whatever you choose, don’t either one of you dare to even try to make House responsible for any part of it. This one, I’m warning you both, is all on you.”
Twenty minutes later, House came plundering back into his office with a peeved look on his face. “The hell is the matter with Wilson?” he demanded.
Cuddy shrugged and took a sip of her mochacinno. “I gave him a trip to Rome.”
Epilogue