Author:
For: vaya54.
Beta: cupiecake.
Setting: Post-"Acceptance."
Pairing: Foreman/House.
Rating: PG13.
Summary: House infuriates and intrigues Foreman.
Foreman's chair laid sprawled upside down on the floor of their conference room. He never expected things to go this far. Sure, House pushed every button, but they were all predictable comments, laced with notions of race. And House did and didn't mean every one of them.
"What? No remark about me finally losing my temper? Big scary black man throwing furniture around?" Foreman had finally broken the silence.
The damned deafening silence of House. He almost wondered if the man was still wearing his iPod.
"If you want to throw more furniture around, I'd suggest going to Dr. Wilson's office. He has a lovely set of chairs." House leaned on his cane more than he had before. Forman found himself worrying that the chair had hit House, which was absurd as it lay several feet away from him.
"Somehow I think that if I were working for Dr. Wilson, I wouldn't be throwing furniture around."
"Are you requesting a transfer?" House tapped his cane against the white board's legs as if all Foreman's attention wasn't already on the man. "I'm surprised that your personal growth, under my supervision, hasn't taught you that Cuddy has a secret budget to cover my indiscretions. It's been, oh, six months since the last raise in my malpractice insurance."
Foreman shook his head. "It's not worth it." He'd seen House take down lawyers, Vogler, and angry parents.
"But attempted murder is?" House motioned to the upside down chair. "Perhaps we should check you for tumors."
Foreman frowned. A need to meet House's verbal sparring became higher, curling in his belly. "The machines don't lie, but people do. That's your theory, right?" He walked over to the chair to set it back up.
"It's not impressive to use other peoples' pop psychological diagnoses of me; you have an education, now use it. Or maybe you do have Pheochromocytoma." House pulled out his own chair and sat down. "If you're going to keep me from clinic duty, I'm going to sit."
Foreman's hand curled around the chair's leg. He considered tossing it further, smacking it against House's chair. Some days, he wanted to be like Chase and tattle to Cuddy about House's less than professional behavior, but somehow he needed House's respect. He turned the chair over.
"Priming the chair for another round?" House rested his cane against the table. His body poised like a serval ready to pounce a rodent.
"Going to have another drinking contest with a death row patient?" Foreman wished he could rotate the chair and sit on it with his legs spread on either side, but the curve of the steel doesn't fit that; so instead his posture gave House shot of his crotch.
House knocked on the table, smugly smiling, lips pursed together. "That was exciting: death row. I saved his life and now the state's going to take it, unless the Good Doctor Foreman's testimony puts a four-victim murderer back on the mean streets. I can't wait."
"Then why'd you save his life?"
"Because I'm a doctor. It's in the job description, and apparently in addition to Cameron's nauseating Oprah-esque comforting of dying people, we also save them." House shifted in his seat; the metal bugged Foreman's lower back after a while of sitting, so for House, these chairs had to be even more painful. And Foreman wanted to slap himself for once again worrying about House being in pain. "Think I could sell the plot to General Hospital and put in for another early retirement? I can think of a few actresses I wouldn't mind privately coaching," House said. The man deserved to be in pain.
Foreman's grandma would smack him with her walker if she knew he was passing judgment on House. Probably hit him with her Bible too. "All that extra couching with Antoinette," House adds. Okay, maybe judging House balanced out in the cosmos, and Foreman knew that he'd been hanging around House far too long to know just which well-endowed character she was.
"Who do you think's going to prevail?" Foreman needed House's thoughts on the trial. He wanted to know why House had made him mad enough to throw a chair.
"Cuddy, she fights dirty," House answered as if he'd been pondering all day about Cuddy and the actress portraying Antoinette in a cat fight. "But I guess it would depend on how slippery the jello was."
Foreman shook his head. "No. The trial." Waiting for House's answer, Foreman studied House, feeling more and more like the gazelle. Maybe this was what it was like to be eaten by House.