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Always Get What You Want
by leiascully
She had such a serious mouth, Cuddy thought, looking askance at the other woman. Such a serious mouth despite the pretty curve of the lips and she wondered if she looked that way too, solemn and chilly as the morgue, needing a differential diagnosis to figure out a smile. The other woman was short, with fine high cheekbones and a nose that made Cuddy put two fingers to the bridge of her own, hiding the strong curve that matched the other woman's. Dark sensible fashionable suit, but a white blouse underneath it unbuttoned almost to the point of impropriety. Blue eyes, when she looked around the room. Red hair that blazed in the chill of the room.
Cuddy checked her program. Dana Scully, M.D., FBI, presenting on some kind of mutant retrovirus that she'd never heard of. At least it would probably be interesting for the shock value. Her own presentation was nothing special: they'd asked her to talk about House, about the chemical coma and the removal of the muscle, and she felt guilty about all of it but hadn't been able to refuse. At least he was up and walking these days, with his limp and his cane.
Dr. Scully was brushing off her skirt, preparing to rise, as the speaker at the podium droned on through a list of her credentials and the astounding privilege the audience was receiving by being graced with her presence. Cuddy fought the urge to yawn, and then Scully got up and clicked across the stage in her high heels and began to speak. She had a startling low voice, too sexy for a presentation except that it was held down to a precise monotone, and Cuddy listened attentively, watching the muscles move in the woman's calves as she talked at length about her mutant retrovirus, shifting now and again from foot to foot and leaning over the podium.
Scully was smart, whip-smart, and tough. That was easy enough to see. She was well put together, too, and for a moment Cuddy almost wished that she weren't Dean, so that she could take this woman out for dinner and listen to her talk medicine in that husky voice, and then take her back to her hotel room and ply her with wine until they could talk about things that weren't medicine. There weren't enough women in the profession to begin with, and fewer still that Cuddy could actually talk to, but something in the way this woman held her shoulders made Cuddy feel that Scully knew about loneliness and the value of conversation. It had been long enough that Cuddy wasn't even aching for sex, just words and the way mouths shaped them and the flutter of gesturing hands in low light.
She had worked so damn hard to get where she was and sometimes she still thought it was nowhere. Like now, watching her best doctor turned into a bitter man with a vicious limp under her hand, and nothing more she or Wilson could do, with Stacy flirting with leaving and no way to heal any of his hurts. Like now, sitting lonely at a conference, her knees pressed together to preserve her dignity, making up all kinds of theories about a woman just because of the way she seemed to have the same weariness about her despite the fine cut of her clothes.
Scully finished her talk, thanked the audience for their polite applause, and settled back into her chair, which meant it was Cuddy's turn. Cuddy got up and moved to the podium, leaning into the microphone with that peculiar numbness that she always got from speaking to a large group of people. She gave her presentation without really listening to herself, thinking about how the audience would never know the real, lasting effects of the surgery, however successful it seemed to be on paper. She imagined she could feel Scully's eyes on her. Scully was still watching her when she finished and came back to her seat to gather her notes, but Cuddy couldn't gauge the look. She gave Scully her professional smile and Scully smiled back, almost, and they both looked away.
They had been the last presentations of the day. Cuddy went to the hotel bar afterwards, lost in her guilt and the usual strange isolation of conferences: she didn't know many of the other doctors, and didn't really want to talk to the ones she was acquainted with. She sat at the bar by herself, cradling a vodka tonic. The bar was crowded, so she didn't look up when someone took the stool next to her, just aware of the warmth of new proximity and a subtle perfume.
"Scotch and soda," said Scully in her throaty voice, and Cuddy glanced at her. Scully gave her that smile again, more recognition than happiness, a quick compression of the lips.
It was such a clich, Cuddy thought helplessly, meeting in the bar, but she was glad to see Scully.
"That was an interesting presentation," she said. "Where'd you come across that monster?"
Scully laughed but it was a harsh sound. The bartender brought her drink. "Doctor Cuddy, right?"
"Call me Lisa." Cuddy held out her hand, and they shook.
"Dana Scully. As for the virus, I don't think you'd believe me if I told you."
"Try me. I've seen some strange medicine in my time," Cuddy said, thinking of House and his outlandish approach to patient care.
Scully gave her a sizing up sort of look and sipped her drink. "Unfortunately, the details are classified. I'm lucky enough the FBI let me present on the virus, much less going into the circumstances under which we encountered it. I was getting bored as hell sitting at that desk." She gazed off into the row of bottles across the bar. Her blue eyes were so tired. Cuddy had the feeling that that was more words than Scully usually put together for a stranger, but hell, they'd never see each other again. At least they were strangers with some kind of common background.
"Do you want to leave?" she asked abruptly, and Scully arched one eyebrow at her. "Not like that," Cuddy said, a little hastily. "It's just crowded in here. We could get a bottle of wine and go compare notes on how boring all the other presenters are."
Scully gave her a real smile then, a slow lovely grin that gathered all the light from the bar. "I'd like that."
They finished their drinks. Cuddy coaxed a bottle of wine out of the bartender, who seemed sad to watch them go, and they stood awkwardly in the elevator as it climbed to Cuddy's floor, and they pulled the curtains wide to let the lights of New York in. Cuddy turned the tv on low, background noise in case of faltering conversation, and Scully found the glasses and they realized no one had a corkscrew and ended up prying the cork out in pieces with the pathetic pseudocorkscrew on Scully's Swiss Army knife and laughing about it, and then things were easier.
The wine sloshed into the glasses with a glopping noise, and they fished little pieces of cork out and toasted each other. Scully let out her breath as if she'd been holding it for years, half lounging on the end of the bed.
"So that patient of yours," she said. "Is there more to the story? Forensic pathology doesn't get me many repeat customers and it might be nice to hear about a little continuity."
Cuddy tilted her glass to look at the legs on the wine and took a long sip before she answered. "He's up and around. Hobbling about, terrorizing his patients and his team. Refusing PT. Popping Vicodin for the pain because he's a stubborn bastard who insisted on us not just taking the damn leg."
"He's a doctor?" Scully leaned forward, her fingers curled around the glass very pale next to the red wine.
"One of mine," Cuddy said with a wry twist to her mouth. "Son of a bitch is maybe the best diagnostician in the world and all people think is that I hired him because I had a college crush."
Scully settled back, leaning on her elbows, managing not to spill her wine. She lifted the glass to her lips with a lazy satisfaction. "I thought there might be a madman in your life."
Cuddy wanted to ask if it was the way she held her shoulders or the tension in her calves when she talked about House, but didn't. "You too?" she said instead.
"My partner at the FBI. Completely insane. Unfortunately brilliant." Scully frowned into her glass.
"Handsome?"
"God yes." Scully's smile was true but crooked. "Yours?"
"Unexpectedly so," said Cuddy. "Best and worst thing that ever happened to me."
"I will drink to that," Scully said deliberately, and drained her glass. Cuddy did too and refilled them both, leaning closer to reach with the bottle.
"I hate the fucking boys club," said Scully, and Cuddy would have felt it was out of the blue from anyone else. "The men won't be friends with you, because they think you're inferior or they want to fuck you or both. The women won't be friends with you because the men want to fuck you. You end up locked away in the basement with the unlikely love of your life and you can't possibly be in love with them and there's nothing left."
"And think how hard we worked to get there," said Cuddy. "The worst thing is, my mother was right."
Scully gave her a funny look. "Mulder, if he were here, would be saying something about doppelgangers and parallel selves."
"Sounds like a catch," Cuddy said, kicking her shoes off as an afterthought and tucking her feet up under her. She and Scully had shed their jackets during the corkscrew fiasco. "We don't really look alike, though. Quite." She studied Scully, the two of them in their formal skirts and the unbuttoned blouses beginning to ruck up at the tails. Scully was examining her too, a mutual blue-eyed evaluation. They both looked away at the same time, trying not to smile.
They talked about medicine for a while, and madmen, and the way your life got all twisted around the strangest things, and Scully showed her the gun that had somehow been holstered in the small of her back all this time, and she arched her back, twisting to show Cuddy how it fastened. The tails of her shirt fell open over her stomach and Cuddy caught a glimpse of what looked like an awful scar, livid against the white skin of Scully's belly.
"Is that one classified?" she asked, shifting closer. They had gone through most of the bottle of wine and the room felt like the grown-up version of a slumber party, all the temporary intimacy of secrets you wouldn't reveal to other people that were somehow okay in the dim light. Scully pulled aside the fabric of her shirt and looked at the scar with clinical detachment. It was a jagged thing, no clean edges, and Cuddy caught her breath.
"Gunshot?"
"From the idiot temporary partner the Bureau assigned me when Mulder and I got in trouble," said Scully. "Of all the hazards of the job, they never mention your colleagues." She laughed and lay down, setting her almost empty glass on the floor at the foot of the bed. The expanse of her belly glowed a little in the hazy hotel light, washed pale by the brightness of New York. Cuddy was suddenly exhausted. She put her glass on the table next to the wine bottle and lay down on one elbow, looking over Scully out the window.
"I don't know what I thought life would be at this point," she murmured. "I have some measure of success, but it's still not what I expected."
"I figured less lonely," said Scully. "No boyfriend. No kids. No real friends. Just work, and then an empty apartment, and Mulder on the phone. I don't even have a dog."
"No one on the phone," said Cuddy morosely. "Wilson's always getting married. House goes home and plays for Stacy. Sometimes I play tennis with schmucks whose only redeeming factor is the way they hold a racket." They sighed in unison. Scully had flipped over so that she was facing Cuddy, the skyline of the city jagged over the curve of her hip. Cuddy could smell the wine on Scully's breath, that serious mouth warm and open now.
There was a long breathless moment and then their mouths came together like the click of two magnets settling against each other: sudden and right, the pull of inexorable forces.
They did not fuck each other, not really. When years later, Cuddy caught a glimpse of what looked like Scully on the cover of some tabloid about the end of the world, she blushed and caught her breath and regretted that, almost, the last thing left between them. They had been shy, uncharacteristically shy, she thought. But they had neither of them done anything with a woman before, and so they kissed for long, aching hours, and they touched without entering, running fingertips and the flats of palms over surfaces that were familiar and strange too, and they slept almost naked together in the big bed. Breaths came ragged with longing from pale throats. Careful doctors' fingers undid buttons and zippers with a tenderness that ethics class hadn't taught and learned things that hadn't been discussed in anatomy, the delights of the body and its workings. There may have been tears, but the salt damp on the sheets was catharsis instead of misery. It was a night of peace and desire and soft whimpering against serious mouths, and in the morning there were showers and they could look at each other and smile for the mirror of determined blue eyes and strong noses and lovely solemn mouths a little swollen with kisses. No numbers exchanged, no false promises made: they left the conference with the comfort of a few hours stolen in the presence of someone else who knew and that was enough, because Scully's shoulders under her jacket as she left were held high and loose with relief. It was perfect as it was, uncomplicated by guilt or the accidental gasped name of the madmen whose quests had possessed them. It was love, brief and pure.
Cuddy remembered, and she smiled, and she thought a half a heartfelt prayer in Scully's direction, and she moved on through the grocery store to find something that Caleb would eat, her son so fussy now that he was in fourth grade and thought he was grown.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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