More House/ Wonderfalls
Shapiro took Jaye into a smaller room to give her the cognition test where they give her five random words and ask her to repeat them back, followed briskly by Cuddy, who, in her desire to Be On Top Of Things reminded House of Cameron on a bad day. A bad day for House. Probably Cameron considered them good days. She could pile up her shiny, shiny, gold stars. House felt stiff and restless so he got up. He was debating whether he should take a leak now or wait for GH’s first commercial break, but he barely got two steps out in the hallway before he was waylaid by a wet-eyed Karen Tyler. Jesus. It’s alive.
“Dr. House,” she pleaded, “Will my baby be all right? I’ve just always thought it took her a long time to find her way, but then she had this...’sode, and now I wonder if I’ll have to see her in some halfway house, or...”

“Look,” House snapped, wishing, incredibly enough, to have Wilson’s finesse for about ten seconds, “we both know that if she needs that, it’ll barely cause you to wear flats to commit her. Ten days after her diagnosis, I’ll be muting you on Oprah being Mental Illness Hero Mom and six months after that, you’ll be having lunch with Elton John and doing public service announcements about what to do if your teen talks to her bunny slippers. This won’t affect *you* at all. I’m not sure if anything *can*. But if it can, I need you to stop this.”

Sharon was impressed with Dr. House’s ability to shut her mother up for a whole minute(moot court had been nothing compared to getting the car as a teenager) but she’d always suspected there was something *seriously* wrong with Little Sis. She was so sloppy...had that “Whatever,” attitude five years past its sell-by date and had no interest in rising in the world whatsoever. She was past due for a ‘sode, being so UnAmerican.

“Ok,” she said. “We get it. You’re the big scary maverick. But according toMcClusky vs. Ferguson, my sister is owed a thorough psychiatric evaluation on a timely basis.”

“Wow,” House replied. “You must be responsible for some warm moments around the Christmas tree. And people think *I’m* mean. At least I’ve got the stones not to hide it behind superficial tidiness. I have the plain old guts to go around being a total dick if I feel like it, and that’s why I’m gonna say “liar, liar, pants on fire” right here in front of your mother. You could translate it into Latin if it’ll make you feel better, Counselor. Of course, if you got your pants on fire once in a while, you might not be so eager to talk your sister *into* the cuckoo’s nest...when I’m getting laid, I’m almost magnaminous. Not as much as Wilson, though...he’s actually a sweet guy.”

Karen looked surprised.” Is this true? Did you lie to Dr. House?”

Sharon just looked miserable, so House said “Do you want to know what her mistake was?”

“Yes.” Karen said, as if the answer to this one stupid question would give her her old life without thinking of ‘sodes and hospitals. “Yes, I would.”

“She tried to run a con without knowing her mark...I learned a lot fucking a lawyer. Tons of lawyer jokes, how to buy the hairspray that would really last all day, and that there was no McClusky decision regarding mental health.”

For a minute, Sharon was lost in picturing Clea McClusky, her first year law school crush. She wasn’t much to look at, maybe, but she had this amazing brown hair that Sharon would have loved to see spread out on a pillow somewhere. It had started as a tribute using the girl’s name to win arguments, even if Clea had dropped out to get married and never knew...had House guessed? Sharon flushed.

::weeps, because we'll never get to see erika's House/Wonderfalls filmed for reals::

Aw, shucks. I would love that myself, gotta say.

On a relatively unrelated note, anybody want to beta my Chase/Cameron het challenge story?(I know! So much shiny hair in one place, but you know...assignments.)Challenge rules say it's supposed to come in at 1000 words so you're not committing to my usual sweeping epic! People in the fandom put up stories all the time, don't beta, then spend their summaries apologizing...it's enough to turn *me* to Vicodin. Even though most of their beta-ing could be done by a monkey with a red pen and I'm published.

I'd be happy to look at it erikaj. (If by happy, I mean ooh ooh give me the stuff....)

Profile addy is good.

Okay, insent momentarily.

Backflung, whee!

...er, so not to interrupt the most excellent House/Wonderfalls goodness, but I'd appreciate input on a quick SGA fic. 'specially since I don't have canon to hand, and there may be infelicities.

FIVE KISSES

Rodney McKay was like a mystery wrapped in an enigma locked in a Chinese puzzle box and hidden in some kind of Dadaist maze protected with laser beams and velocoraptors. As she went through the motions of setting up her lab the following morning, Katie Brown reflected that she still had absolutely no idea what to make of him. But he was one hell of a kisser.

She was the only one in the lab, and it felt a little strange to be there without the usual clatter of her colleagues’ fingers on keyboards, and the quiet chatter of Merwick and Lewis arguing – or, in Katie’s opinion, flirting – over how to interpret the latest data from their project. By the time she arrived Morgenstern had usually got his iPod set up, and there was generally the smell of tea, or not-quite- coffee being borne around the lab on invisible currents of Ancient air conditioning. The elegantly angular devices and the curves and corners of the architecture were starting to feel less and less alien, and more and more like home, but this was the first time she had arrived to the lab at such an early hour, with dawn barely blushing at the windows and the corridors so quiet all around. This morning felt almost like the first time she had stepped into the room and seen it all in its strangeness. It suited her mood.

She had been unable to sleep for thinking about Doctor Rodney McKay.

It had been, without question, the most bemusing date that she’d been on in recent years. To start with, there was the whole business of Carson Beckett being present as a sort of – what WAS he there for, again? Moral support? And it was tremendously sweet, all the effort that Doctor McKay had gone to, and he smelled good, and she still liked the shape of his mouth and the way he waved his hands when he spoke, and the food and the drinks had definitely been a cut above the usual canteen fare… but it was painfully awkward having a date in front of somebody else. She switched on her computer and bit her lip. Rodney couldn’t seem to decide who he was with her. She’d heard so much about him being an arrogant asshole, and she’d seen him hurrying past on the way to one crisis or another more than once, buzzing with urgent energy as he waved his hands, yelling at some of the smartest people on the base like they were recalcitrant kindergarteners…she knew that he could be like that. To be honest, she found it rather a turn on. And she was utterly disarmed by the fact that he seemed so much less confident around her, because that was sweet, and it gave her a sense of power. Except that his shyness did shade into a total lack of social skills, and Katie had dated a number of geeks in her time, but that was still rather less charming.

She wandered over to the window while her terminal hummed and beeped behind her, and trailed her fingers over the not-quite-glass.

It really had been one HELL of a kiss. And the way he had suddenly seemed to take charge of the situation at the very moment when she was on the verge of losing patience and interest altogether, the very moment that she was asking herself what on earth she had ever seen in Doctor Rodney McKay… the way he had straightened his back with an almost military confidence, spoken so clearly and firmly and simply about how he felt, and then grabbed her like they were characters in some cheesy romantic movie and bent her back…well, it still gave her goosebumps.

But he hadn’t followed up on it. She’d hoped to hear his voice outside her bedroom, find him framed in her doorway, fresh from whatever vital thing it was that had taken him away from her and ready to make good on the promise his lips had made. But he hadn’t come. Damn it. And she didn’t want to seem easy, but a girl had needs, after all. Especially after being kissed like that. She scowled, and stared out over the ink-dark sea. Presumably the universe (continued...)

But he hadn’t followed up on it. She’d hoped to hear his voice outside her bedroom, find him framed in her doorway, fresh from whatever vital thing it was that had taken him away from her and ready to make good on the promise his lips had made. But he hadn’t come. Damn it. And she didn’t want to seem easy, but a girl had needs, after all. Especially after being kissed like that. She scowled, and stared out over the ink-dark sea. Presumably the universe had needed saving. Again.

• * *

“And then McKay planted this kiss on Beckett like you wouldn’t believe.” They both laughed. “You should’ve seen John Sheppard’s face.”

Katie stilled. It was two days since her strange date with Rodney McKay, and she was feeling increasingly puzzled and cross that he had so far made no effort to contact her. She knew that there had been something, some kind of crisis or other, but there was always some kind of crisis or another and the details tended to blur together. The accounts of this latest kerfuffle were decidedly confused, but as far as she could gather it hadn’t involved imminent attack by Wraith or Genii or man-eating plants from outer space, so it was pretty much business as normal. It was Morgenstern who told her McKay had been hospitalised, and then she felt like a total bitch for feeling cross with him; but by the time she got there, red-faced and clutching a handful of delicate alien flowers stolen from Merwick’s small greenhouse, he had already been released. She blushed a little when she saw Beckett, remembering the oddness of her date, remembering that spectacular kiss which he had witnessed, but his smile was kind and understanding, and he’d crossed the room to speak to her at once. He really was a very nice man. “You just missed him, dear,” he said, glancing down at the flowers. “But not to worry, he’s good as new and twice as troublesome. Back to his old self. Everyone’s right as rain, now.” He looked a little red in the face himself, for some reason, but she didn’t think about it at the time. It was only afterwards, as she was leaving the clinic and overheard the nurses gossiping that things started to resolve themselves into an unwelcome pattern.

Despite herself, Katie reached out and felt her fingers close around the speaker’s quivering shoulder. Red-brown curls brushed the back of her hand as the nurse turned around, still grinning. She was a little taller than Katie, with a generous mouth and the sort of lush, curvy figure Katie Brown had always wanted to have when she was a skinny little stick of a teenage science nerd. Evans, she was called, or Erikson, or something like that – Katie knew they had met at some party or other, but she couldn’t quite place the name. Katie found herself fighting an irrational impulse to slap the grin right off of her pretty face. She could almost hear the ringing sound, feel the sting of it on her skin. She took a deep breath and made herself be calm.

“Excuse me,” she heard herself say, her voice sounding strange in her ears, “but is that Doctor McKay you’re talking about? Kissing…kissing Doctor Carson Beckett?” The nurse dissolved into giggles again, her full bosom heaving, and nodded helplessly. Katie stared at her, turning over data and feeling more like an idiot by the second. “Doctor Rodney McKay?” There were, she knew, no other Doctors McKay on Atlantis, so this was a perfectly stupid question.

“You should have been there,” gasped the nurse, her freckled face pink with laughter. “It looked like one hell of a kiss.” Katie felt herself grow cold. Her hand fell away from the other girl’s shoulder and she stepped back. The flowers fell from the fingers of her other hand to lie forgotten on the floor.

“I see,” she said, and walked blindly away, bruising the buttery petals underfoot and never even noticing. Behind her, the nurse said something about Sheppard, and something else about Cadman, but Katie was no longer paying attention. Well, that explained why Carson Beckett had been with Rodney on their date, and why he had looked so embarrassed just now. She dug her fists into her pockets, feeling like the butt of a joke and resenting it enormously. But why bother with a date at all, in that case? And why – how – what on earth had prompted him to kiss her like that, if he hadn’t meant anything by it? “Bastard,” she muttered, shocking herself a little but feeling righteously angry nevertheless. She had not deserved this. “Rodney McKay, you utter bastard.”

She was supposed to be helping Lewis with testing the new grain samples. She should really get back to the lab. She was only going to look like a fool if she went and initiated some awkward, melodramatic scene with Rodney McKay, so she should definitely just head back to the lab and get on with her work.

She didn’t.

• * *