A/N: All of you can blame indraaas for making me do this shit. I wrote a thing, and we both fell in love with it. And while I know I should be working on updating two prompts from CoLu Week (because you guys are eager for them), or even my main stories… Fuck it.

There will be more chapters of this, but it's not going to be in my rotation. Just whenever I feel like adding to it. More info about the Challenge that inspired this thing is at the end.

Also, one last note. I'm obsessed with House. Hugh Laurie makes me swoon, guys. Because that's the only real point of reference I have for how a fucking hospital works, let's just call this the House!Cobra Series. For those familiar with House, I'm sure you'll get a kick out of the FT characters thrown into these roles. Hopefully.

Enough rambling, let's get to this fucking story!

Indraaas, this is your present for being such a fucking enabler. I love you.

Catch Me If You Can

If there was one thing Doctor Cobra Vivas excelled at, it was avoiding his boss. This was second only to his ability to diagnose the strangest amalgamations of symptoms with a relatively low fatality rate. Just after his ability to avoid the Dean of Medicine, was annoying his closest friend, the Head of Oncology.

Considering he'd just finished with a case - a wholly intriguing presentation of toxic epidermal necrolysis, if he did say so himself - Cobra wanted nothing more than to kick back in his office and relax. His shows were already set to record at home, and he didn't want something to come up and interrupt him while he was in the middle of watching his stories. He'd sent his team off to do… something. He wasn't sure what Loke and Virgo were doing, but he did know that his precious little protegé, Wendy, was off learning things. Silly little med student that she was.

She was wound tighter than a toe-tag on a two-week old river corpse. Ah, he remembered those days. He didn't miss them.

But a digression was in order, and he needed to focus. Because Jellal was looking for him. Just like he did every couple days, because Cobra was adamant about not ever doing his "required" clinic hours. He hated the fucking clinic. The people were boring, and if he had to hear another complaint of Oh, my two year old's ear hurts, he was going to throw an uncomfortable lobby chair through a window.

Of course the toddler's ear would hurt, it's a growth spurt. Go to your fucking pediatrician. That was what he would've said, if Jellal hadn't literally walked into an exam while he'd been saying nearly the same thing. The lecture afterward was not worth three hours of his time.

The paperclip trebuchet that now sat proudly on his desk, however, was.

Cobra shook his head and crouched beneath his desk when he heard footsteps. Familiar footsteps. The devil was coming. It was only with years of practice that he was able to prop himself up with his hands and feet wedged into the sides of his desk, so he was no longer on the floor. Jellal couldn't see him in the small opening beneath it if he was a fucking spider monkey.

Luckily, only one person knew of this trick of his, and she was sworn to secrecy on the matter. Then again, Cobra also knew that the last thing she wanted was to admit that she'd spent three whole months being dragged to one store after another while he quite literally tested each and every desk in stock for this exact purpose.

The looks on those poor employees' faces had been priceless.

The footsteps faded, and Cobra waited another 45 seconds. With Mississippis. Then, and only then, did he silently lower himself to the floor again. And once he was on all fours, Cobra knew that he needed to get the hell out of his office. If his team came back and saw that he wasn't around, they wouldn't come looking for him. Now that he thought about it, he'd sent Loke and Virgo off to find them a new case to work on. Someone would call him if they found something.

He looked toward the door, and sighed. He couldn't leave that way. Jellal was still lurking around somewhere, and where was the fun in being found so easily?

No, Cobra needed another way out. His head turned toward the window while he patted his pockets. He had his phone with him. That was all he needed for where he was going. He made his way to the window and frowned as he carefully pushed it open. He really needed a balcony. One that could connect his office to the one next door. Then he could just walk out there, hop over the divider, and take his ass inside. But no. Jellal nixed that idea every time he brought it up.

Something about unnecessary spending and hospital donors, and… Cobra hadn't really paid much attention after Jellal said no. He wasn't all that serious about the balcony. But if he had been, he would've found a way to get one.

Cobra hoisted himself up onto the windowsill, then leaned out slightly to peer down at the ground that was four stories below him. There was a six-inch ledge running along the building, but that was it. Shit. He really didn't want to do this.

Then again, clinic duty was worse. He had to do this. There was just no other way to avoid working.

So, he sucked in a breath and crawled out the window, then slowly slid up the wall. He was not going to look down. He was not going to…

"Fuck…" He looked down. The sudden tightening in his gut made him wonder whether he was more freaked out or exhilarated by the prospect of plummeting to his death.

He wasn't going to dwell on it though, because the last thing he needed was for some Debbie Do-Gooder to see him up here and think someone was trying to kill himself. But Cobra didn't want to kill himself. Not unless he was forced to go back down to the first floor and deal with those common colds and overdue flu shots.

"Oh yeah," he muttered while shuffling further from his window. "I need to get a flu shot."

He was silently thanking the weather systems for not sending some ridiculous gusty wind his way. His foot didn't slip. He made it across the fifteen feet between his window and the one next door, and he only stopped one time when he felt his phone vibrating. Cobra paused to carefully pull his phone from his pocket.

Wendy. Wendy was calling him. So he answered it and made himself as comfortable as could be while he stood on a six-inch ledge forty feet off the ground. "Westshore Pizzeria."

"So, the funniest thing happened," Wendy said.

"Did it, now?" That was an interesting way for her to begin a conversation with him. Usually, Wendy was either a mess on the phone over a case or some assignment of hers… Or she wasn't calling him at all. Normally, the latter. She never called him.

"You're not busy, are you?"

"Nah, I'm just hanging around," he said. Cobra tipped his head back to look up at the sky. What a lovely shade of blue.

"Well, I was coming back to the hospital from class," she said. "You know, because you told me that I had to shadow Loke when he went into surgery this afternoon."

"Sure," Cobra said. He didn't remember that at all. Well, it was a little familiar, he supposed. He said a lot of things to his team.

"And I saw something that I thought you might find interesting."

That had his attention. Cobra pressed the phone more tightly to his ear, his brows pushing together as he ripped his gaze away from the sky. "I'm listening." Wendy never bothered him with things that weren't important in some way. She knew that a sure way to get his attention was to promise him some tantalizing bit of information.

"There's someone standing outside your office."

"Is it Jellal?" he groaned. "Ugh, he's so persistent."

"No, I mean outside your window," she laughed. "Look down."

He frowned and looked at the ground. And there she was, on the ground, looking up at him with her phone to her ear. And he knew for a fact that it was Wendy, because she was the only person in this whole hospital with such long blue hair that was always pulled up into pigtails, with her bright pink argyle sweater and professional beige slacks on beneath her crisp white coat. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I saw nothing," she said. "I haven't seen you all day. I can only assume you're doing this to get away from Dr. Fernandez, for reasons I don't wanna know."

He was clearly training her well.

"Just know that this means I have something to hold over your head," she said. Fuck, was he training her too well? "I won't tell a soul about your window escape, but you owe me a favor of my choosing. No questions asked."

Cobra sighed heavily into the phone. He couldn't even be upset over this sudden turn of events. Or owing the little med student a favor of some sort. "Nothing illegal."

"Unacceptable. You make us break and enter constantly."

"Nothing that can get me put in jail for more than a night," he countered. No, he was not above bartering.

She was silent as she mulled it over. "Fine. Enjoy your anarchy, Dr. Cobra. I've got a surgery to watch." She hung up the phone after that and he watched her walk toward the building until she disappeared from his sight.

Damn her. He sighed again and slid his phone into his pocket, then leaned to his left just enough to peek into the window that was his destination. All clear. The Head of Oncology was sitting at her desk and the door was open. But someone was leaving. He couldn't be sure who it was - not that it really mattered anyway - but he still waited until the door closed entirely before pushing her window open and hopping inside onto her dark blue couch.

"Cobra, what the actual shit-"

"No time." He dashed for the door and locked it, then drew the blinds on the little window beside the door just to be on the safe side. There was no way to be sure that a locked door would stop Jellal from coming in here, though, so Cobra needed to make sure he had enough time to run out through the window again.

Of course, there wasn't a whole lot in the way of options for proper barricading, so he had to use the only viable piece of furniture. The desk. He turned toward the desk and grinned at his blonde friend's bewildered stare. "Hey," he said by way of greeting. He came around the desk to stand next to her, then pushed.

"Damnit, Cobra," Lucy growled. "What are you doing with my desk?"

"Blocking the door," he grunted. Fuck, why was her desk so heavy? Oh, right. Because it was all wood. None of that flimsy Ikea bullshit for her. Of course not. It took several minutes to get the desk wedged against the door, but Lucy didn't move to stop him. She just stared. Once he was upright, Cobra turned toward her again.

"Would you care to explain why you just swept in through my window and blocked my door with my desk?"

"Well, I couldn't really bring my own desk in here just to block your door," he said. "It never would've fit through the window."

Lucy sighed and dropped her head to her hands. "Cobra…"

"I'm clearly running from the Yakuza," he said with a smirk. "They knew that there's only one entrance to my office, so I had to use the window. And I'm sure they'll think to come looking for me here as well, because everyone knows that you're my main squeeze."

"Oh shut up," she laughed. "Main squeeze… This isn't the '80s, and we're not in med school anymore."

He shrugged. "Their words, not mine."

"Your words, you liar," she snickered. Cobra ignored her and walked over to the couch sitting under the window. He kicked out one leg and dropped onto the comfortable, worn in cushions with a contented hum. "Oh, are you comfortable now?"

"Immensely," he chuckled, closing his eye. "You have no idea how happy I am that you kept Davenport." When they'd been roommates during their residency, this couch was the only thing they could afford in the way of actual furniture - aside from their beds. Lucy had gotten custody of it when he moved out.

"Why do you keep calling it that?"

"You're the one who named it," he shot back. Her and her stupid couch humor. And her stupid whiskey that had turned him into a giggly little bitch who agreed to anything.

"You know what? I don't even care why you're here," she finally said. "I've got charts to read through, so… behave."

Cobra's eye slid open to watch as Lucy rolled her chair across the room and over to her desk. She didn't even try to move it back to where it belonged. She just accepted this as her new normal for the time being - because he would move it back for her eventually, since there was no way she could move it herself, and he was really hoping to avoid climbing out the window again. She was silent after that while putting on her (as she called them) "snazzy" wing tipped reading glasses with rhinestones on the corners, then got to work on her cancer charts.

It was boring. So, Cobra pulled out his phone and scrolled through his apps. The little green square with a singing rooster was calling to him. With a devious smirk, he tapped the icon and waited for it to load. Moments later, Cobra shrieked. Lucy was so startled the chart in her hand went flying into the air. "Mmmnap!" Cobra yelled.

She whirled around in her chair and glared at him. "What are you doing?!"

He frowned when her voice caused the chicken to jump at the wrong time. It fell into a pit and died. "Bitch," he muttered. "You killed my chicken."

"What?!"

He turned the phone toward her. "Chicken Scream. You scream and the chicken jumps. It's actually pretty addicting." Wendy had made the mistake of showing it to him two weeks prior. He'd been torturing the whole team with it ever since. But he'd yet to do it to Lucy, and that just wouldn't do at all.

So Cobra kept playing the game, screaming when necessary. He changed it up by humming a single tone and making it louder and softer to adjust the chicken's jumping height.

It drove Lucy insane. He knew it did. That was why he kept going, even when she gathered the chart's contents from the floor and got back to work. Even when she started tapping her pen on the desk with that oh-so familiar If you don't stop, I'll tie you down and wax your taint like I did ten years ago, motherfucker rhythm, he kept going.

"Why are we even friends?"

He smiled at her when she turned toward him again. She knew exactly why they were friends. He'd seen her sitting at the bar, drinking her god-awful martini, and watched as she turned down the same guy over and over again. Cobra had been ready to swoop in and save the day - maybe get a phone number out of it, if he played his cards right - and he'd been utterly baffled by her cold-clocking the persistent ass who wouldn't leave her alone. He'd watched the bartender give her some ice for her hand, and when Cobra had tried to pull the Let me take a look, I'm a doctor card, she'd laughed in his face and called him out on his bullshit. He hadn't realized that she was the girl who sat dead center in his Medical Embryology class, probably because she hadn't been that oversized grey sweater and sweatpants.

They'd been instant friends because of it. She was a patient person, far more patient than anyone Cobra had met before. She laughed at his jokes, and listened to his wild ideas at two in the morning. And she was immensely forgiving… and willing to bail him out of jail on the off chance he got arrested.

He was pretty sure that he owed her a few grand from the last two years alone.

But it wasn't all one-sided. He gave her a silent shoulder to cry on when one of her patients died. He listened to her ramble on and on about the stupidity of parents who denied their children chemotherapy in favor of going for some whack-job's homeopathic "miracle cure" instead. Cobra was in tune with Lucy enough that he knew when she was having a shitty day before even dropping by her office - the nurses and their gossip also helped immensely - so he made sure to grab her favorite artery-clogging burger, onion rings, and strawberry milkshake from Uncle Bubba's Burgers two blocks from the hospital before tip-toeing into her office.

By the look in her eyes, how they rolled back while she shook her head at him, he knew that she wasn't mad at him anymore. If she'd ever really been mad at him to begin with. Patient as a fucking saint. No wonder she'd decided to go with treating cancer patients.

Cobra went back to his game, screaming into the phone to make the little chicken jump.

Ten minutes later, Lucy's head dropped to her desk in aggravation when he started screaming to the tune of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song."

"Come to the land of ice and snow!" Cobra screeched.

"Oh my god, shut up!"

Cobra chuckled and restarted the level. "If you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain!" His eye slid over to find her smiling helplessly at him again. "Something something and someth-"

"Oh, move over!" Lucy dropped her pen on the desk and stormed over to the couch. Cobra turned onto his side, giving her just enough room to lay down with her back against his chest. "If you're going to sing my favorite song, you'd better do it right."

He sighed when she wiggled to get more comfortable, pressing herself flush against him just like she'd done countless times over the years on this very couch. Of course he knew all the words to that stupid song. She'd sung it every day for two years, and forced him to endure her caterwauling constantly when they'd been roommates.

"Now, how do I do this?" she asked.

"Trial and error," he said. Cobra wrapped his arm around her and held his phone in front of her face. Her hand slid up and she tapped the play button, then started quietly humming her favorite song about almost-infidelity.

Jellal never found Cobra that day for his clinic hours. He'd just left Lucy's office, on a search for Cobra, when the Head of Diagnostics crept through her window. And Cobra and Lucy spent hours playing that chicken game, curled up together on the old blue couch in her office.

Over on Tumblr, there was a fun little Tropes Challenge that I participated in. Send two tropes and a pairing, and the requestee has to say how they'd write a story that combines all the elements. Well, a certain someone - who is the god of all CoLu Hospital AUs - sent my ass a request for… you guessed it… CoLu Hospital AU (and locked in a room together).

Also, the songs referenced in this story can be found on youtube:
Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song
watch? v=y8OtzJtp-EM

Rupert Holmes - Escape (Pina Colada Song)
watch? v=TazHNpt6OTo