Pyrrhic Victory by ReadingRat (Teen)

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

Fandom: HOUSE M.D.
Pairing: Lucas/Cuddy, between 'Broken'  and '5 to 9'
Length: ~4500 words
Author on LJ: readingrat
Author Website: Author's Fic on LJ

Why this must be read:

readingrat has written a number of epic fics - several loosely based on the plots of works by Shakespeare and Austen, and a more recent series called When the Wind Is Southerly in which she offers an alternative explanation for the inconsistencies of Seasons 6 and 7 that will have you laughing and wincing by turns. But I've decided to recommend the first fic of hers that grabbed my attention, an insightful study of the complicated House/Cuddy relationship from the POV of Cuddy's hapless would-be husband Lucas Douglas. I love how she allows Lucas to elicit both sympathy and revulsion as he compares himself to House while recounting his own ultimately futile campaign for Cuddy's heart.

Author's Summary: Lucas knows he's fighting House for Lisa. What he can't fathom is why, when he's won every skirmish and the odd battle so far, House should be winning the war.

Invasion n. 1 : an act of invading; especially : incursion of an army for conquest or plunder 2 : the incoming or spread of something usually hurtful.

He’s pleasantly surprised when he’s asked by the Dean of Medicine to investigate irregularities in PPTH’s accounting department; surprised that she should hire him despite the fact that he invaded her privacy rather rudely the year before, pleasantly so because Lisa Cuddy is an attractive woman whom he wouldn’t mind knowing better in the biblical as well as in the non- biblical sense. She seems pleased to see him, but he notes that she has lost weight, that her skilfully applied make-up aims at hiding dark rings under her eyes and that her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes anymore. All this points to more than just a simple financial scam that doesn’t really require a PI to investigate it, he thinks. It must be a lot more complicated than she’s letting on. Has the fraud taken on a dimension that threatens her career? He decides to drop in on House and scrounge some background information, for what House doesn’t know about the hospital isn’t worth knowing.

He’s probably one of very few people who know the extent of House’s addiction, but even so he’s shocked to hear that House has been committed. A charm offensive in the lobby gets him a first-hand account of the infamous balcony scene and suddenly all the pieces fall into place. Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine at PPTH, formerly keeper, babysitter, fire fighter, nanny and whatever-you-name-it to Gregory House MD, is quite simply lonely.

He meets up with Lisa Cuddy after office hours, ostensibly to report to her, but neither bothers to keep up the pretence for long.

He asks once, very casually, how House is doing. She tenses slightly as she gives him her administrator smile, cool and distancing. “I have no idea.”

“Shouldn’t he have detoxed by now?” he digs.

“Yes,” she answers tersely, twisting and twirling a rubber band around her fingers, “but Mayfield doesn’t permit any contact to him nor do they keep us updated on his status.”

So she hasn’t heard from House in over two months. Good, he thinks. House must be in a really sorry state if he hasn’t been able to cajole, lie or manipulate his way out as yet. So too is Lisa Cuddy, considering that she’s had over two months to put him out of her mind.

He doesn’t fool himself: he knows that in her eyes his primary attraction lies in those traits of character that he shares with House – perspicacity, obsessive preoccupation with minutiae, powers of combination and a healthy disregard for mundane concepts such as privacy or personal property. He has, however, three distinct advantages over House. One, he isn’t an addict. Two, he can do ‘romantic’ and ‘caring’ whereas House can only do ‘lecherous’ and ‘jerky’. Three, he’s around and House isn’t.



Pyrrhic Victory