Fic: Playing You Playing Me

[teyla]

Title: Playing You Playing Me
Beta: wheatear, wihluta
Rating: G
Pairing: House/Foreman (strongly hinted at)
Word Count: 1,530
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Episode tag to Moving the Chains. Foreman goes back to PPTH after meeting Marcus at the halfway house, and his boss is waiting for him.
AN: This was written for help_haiti, for queenzulu's winning bid requesting House/Foreman. It's not the pairing I usually write, but I did my best, and hope I was able to do the characters and their relationship justice.


Eric Foreman slammed his car door shut, and the thump echoed eerily across the empty parking lot of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. He looked around at the small number of cars scattered across the perimeter, none of them big or expensive enough to belong to another doctor, and raised an eyebrow. Looked like Diagnostics was the only PPTH branch requiring its members to work at eleven p. m. on a Friday night. He really should have picked a different department.

There was something to being in the hospital at this time of night, though. The entrance hall was deserted, save for the security guard snoozing behind the reception counter, and no clinic patients hassled overworked doctors and nurses about a bloody nose. It was neat, orderly—the way a hospital should be, as far as Foreman was concerned, but never managed to be. Too many people, too many emotions, to keep it running as smoothly as it should. Remove the people, you remove the mistakes. But then, if you removed the people, it wouldn't matter whether you made mistakes in the first place.

He pressed the button for the elevator, and with no cleaning personnel or nursing staff or patients in wheelchairs to cause delays, it arrived refreshingly quickly. There was one part of the job that you could do at night, that didn't require patients—lab work. Which was why he was here. Admittedly, he didn’t have to do it tonight; their case was over and their patient on his way to becoming a semi-professional football player with a paycheck that would barely cover his rent, but Foreman didn't have any other plans. The lab was a good place to think. Especially at night.

He dropped his briefcase on the counter next to the microscope and arrangement of test tubes, and pulled their patient's file out of the rack. They might have released him already, but that didn't mean that the case was finished—there were final reports to be written, loose ends to be tied up, and, as always, a few tests to be faked. All par for the course when you worked for House. It was okay to cut corners, as long as you made the paperwork look like you had dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's.

"One melanoma confirmation, coming right up." Humming a toneless melody under his breath, Foreman placed the slide he had prepared earlier under the microscope and bent down to look through the eyepiece—and almost jumped out of his skin when a voice spoke up.

"You know, I thought you were playing me."

"House." Foreman straightened up, peering into the dark on the other side of the counter to see House lounging in one of the chairs, his cane resting across his thighs. He must have been there when Foreman walked in, waiting, motionless, to speak up when he was sure to get the best reaction. Foreman felt a mixture of exasperation and reluctant admiration. He considered himself to be quite observant. You had to be good to make him miss you entirely. "What are you doing here? If this is about the pranks again—"

"Oh, forget the pranks." House planted his cane on the floor and pushed himself to his feet, stepping out of the dark to reveal piercing eyes, watching Foreman with the slightest glint of mischief. "Yesterday's news. I'm talking about your brother."

Not again. Foreman turned back to the microscope. "I thought we were done with that."

"I thought about it, after Marcus quit and flounced quite so dramatically," House continued, ignoring Foreman as he made his way around the counter. "It would have been perfect. You don't want him here; he'll do anything to make you happy, but he needs a good reason to quit to keep his case worker off his case." From the corner of his eyes, Foreman watched him drop into another chair and utter a short laugh. "Case worker off his case, see what I did there?"

Foreman curled his fist a little tighter around the edge of the lab table, but kept his voice level. "I am going to ignore you, House. Do what you have to do, but don't think you can get another rise out of me about this."

"Yeah, right. Eric and Marcus, Team GTA reunited. Kind of like the Blues Brothers, except your car isn't as cool."

He was looking at a malignant melanoma, no doubt about that. Foreman pulled the file closer and made a note, putting yesterday's date next to it, still ignoring House.

"Right, so, older brother wants to make younger brother happy, younger brother has a problem with older brother working in his place of employment, both brothers don't particularly like the employer."

"Marcus has no problem with you."

"Right." Foreman could hear the rubber tip of the cane bouncing on the floor. "That's why he quit. He liked me so much."

That made Foreman look up to give House a sneer. "That was after you brought my mother into it."

"Ah, see, but that's where I thought you'd played me." House's eyes were fixed on him, his fingers twirling his cane back and forth. "That oh-so-casual mention of your mother's death, the carefully set up confrontation—"

"You called us into that meeting!"

"—and then the build-up and Marcus quitting, it was all a bit too perfect. So I figured, what if your mother never died? What if the whole thing was just a way to find a reason for Marcus to quit, make you both happy, and get back at me in the process?"

Foreman had by now entirely abandoned the pretense of doing any lab work, and was staring at House in disbelief. Six years, six long years, and the callousness of the man still baffled him. After a long moment, he turned back to the microscope. "Sorry to disappoint you, House, but my mother is actually dead."

"I know. I checked the obituaries." House pulled a folded-up sheet of paper from his pocket and held it up between two fingers. Foreman looked at it, sideways, and then finally gave in and took it.

It was a print-out of the online obituary they'd put in the Princeton Herald. Aleesha Foreman, died age 86, will be dearly missed by husband and sons, etcetera etcetera. There was a reason Foreman thought these things should be kept private. The only thing a generic newspaper notice with a misspelled name would ever be good for was aiding House in his spare time stalking activities.

He looked up. "So?"

"So do you want to come have a drink and talk about it?"

"I've got work to do."

"We could just have the drink. The three months of silence tell me that you think talking is overrated anyway."

Foreman sighed and tore the paper in half, then dropped it in the trash under the lab table. "House, I'm really not in the mood to—"

"It's midnight! The case is over! Your mother's dead! Come have a drink with me."

Foreman closed his eyes for a brief moment. It was midnight, the case was over, and his mother was dead.

"We can hang out at my place. The boxes and cartons do add a certain charm."

Foreman didn't have to look to hear the smirk in House's voice. "What about Wilson?"

"Out on a date with Nora. Who apparently figured out that she does like her men to be manipulative bastards."

At the indignant undertone in House's voice, Foreman couldn't help but smirk too. He flipped the patient file shut and put it back in the rack. "And actually straight."

"Wilson's the one who knows all the show tunes. A law of nature was broken in there somewhere."

"The world is unfair and prejudiced. Who would have thought?" Turning around, he raised his eyebrows at House. "Are we leaving, then?"

"Don't rush the cripple."

House levered himself to his feet, and Foreman let him lead the way through the deserted hospital corridors to the elevators. House was talking about something, but Foreman wasn't listening, mentally replaying the events of the day. Overall, the outcome had been quite satisfactory—but he couldn't deny that he was looking forward to that drink now.

They stopped at the elevators, and Foreman noticed House looking at him sideways. "What?"

"I knew you weren't playing me." House's eyes sparkled with a self-satisfied glint. "I printed that obituary before I called all of you into the office."

The elevator arrived with a low chime, and Foreman stepped into the cabin, turning around to roll his eyes at House. "I know. I saw the time stamp at the bottom of the page. Are you getting on?"

The satisfaction in House's expression changed to surprise, and then he smirked, stepping into the elevator as well. "I think Wilson's going to be staying out overnight."

Foreman snorted. "Lucky him."

The doors of the elevator rattled shut, and as it jerked into a steady downward motion, Foreman decided that maybe working for House wasn't all that bad after all. The job did have some definite perks.


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