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“Why on earth do you tolerate him, Reid?” Emily demanded furiously. Her arms were crossed over her chest; to keep her from reaching for her gun, Spencer imagined. House had upset her. Well, beyond upset her. He’d pissed her off. Her eyes were blazing and her face was furious. At the same time, she seemed to honestly want to know the answer to her question. Spencer looked around and realized that JJ, Dave and Aaron were all looking expectantly at him as if they, too, wanted to know.
Spencer looked over at Derek, confused, and then back to the others. “He’s a friend.” He said. To him, it was as simple as that. “I enjoy conversation with him. When you get past the sarcasm and the acerbic commentary, he really has quite a few interesting things to say.” Shrugging, he looked down, slightly embarrassed. “We’ve sat up for hours before just talking to one another. He’s just, he’s a friend.”
“He’s a jerk.” Emily snapped. “A jerk with a God complex that has to shove his intelligence onto the lesser idiots of the world.”
“Well, yeah, he can be that way sometimes.” Pausing, Spencer smiled. “Or a lot.”
“If this is the taste you have in friends, Reid, I find it amazing you were able to make friends with us.” Dave said with a shake of his head. “Someone who doesn’t insult you every other word. It must be an interesting experience.”
Annoyance burned low in Spencer’s stomach. He kept his mouth shut, though, not wanting to fight with them. Who he was friends with was his own business. Didn’t they understand? Couldn’t they see that, no matter how much of a dick House was, he was exactly what Spencer needed sometimes? He was a good friend.
To cover up the annoyance and keep himself from saying something he shouldn’t, Spencer mumbled “I’m going to get coffee.” Before he darted out of the room, leaving behind his confused friends and a frustrated boyfriend.
Derek didn’t hesitate to turn to the others an glare at them. “Real smooth there, guys. Who the hell cares who he’s friends with? Isn’t that kind of a personal choice for him?”
“That isn’t a healthy friendship, Morgan!” Shaking her head, Emily turned to look at him. “I’m surprised at you too. You’re usually so protective of Reid, but you let that pompous jerk insult him and pick on him and slam down his ideas like they’re stupid. You let him act horrible toward Reid and you don’t even protest!”
“That’s because the muscled wonder over here is the only one who seems to have any understanding of your precious Dr. Reid.”
House’s voice caught all their attention. They turned to look as he limped into the room, using his cane to snap the door shut behind him. Instead of the superior look he usually wore, Dr. House actually looked pissed off right at the moment. The others exchanged glances, unsure of how this was going to go. Derek simply grinned and leaned against the wall.
Even the sound of the cane tapping the ground while he moved forward seemed to show his anger. “Let me ask you one thing, BAU team.” Stopping beside the table they stood at, House looked at the three agents. “Are you all really that stupid?”
“Now wait just a damn minute…” Emily began.
She was cut off when House lifted his cane, snapping it onto the table. “No. It’s going to be your turn to listen to me. I could hear you in here criticizing me for talking the way I do to the kid. I heard your little comments, all of yours, about what kind of friend I am and the way you quizzed him as to why he’d bother being my friend despite the attitude I show. I’m going to give you your answer. Because, unlike the rest of you, I actually understand the scrawny geek.”
Aaron scowled at the insulting name. “Quit calling…”
Another rap of the cane on the table. “I said, be quiet!” he snapped. When everyone was quiet, House gave them a furious glare. “Now, junior’s talked about you all plenty of times. More than I ever wanted him to. I’ve heard how wonderful he finds it to have friends who enjoy him and who don’t hurt him. I won’t deny he cares about each one of you, though I don’t understand why.”
Pulling his cane off the table, House braced himself and took a few steps back. “You’re so accustomed to his intelligence that you don’t stop to think about it most of the time. I’m sure you’ve all felt what it’s like to be the smartest person in the room. Being surrounded by kids or other adults who don’t know what you know. How frustrating it can be sometimes to explain your thoughts to someone who so obviously doesn’t understand a word you’re saying. You look at the other person and you know that, dammit, nothing you say to them is going to make sense because, well, people are idiots.”
He snorted and paced away toward their board before turning to look at them again. “But, as frustrating as that gets, you all can find someone who, if not matches your intelligence, at least surpasses it enough that you feel intellectually challenged while you talk. Have you ever stopped your simple little lives and looked beyond your own annoyance at Dr. Reid’s rambling and statistics to realize that he is always the smartest boy in the room? Have you ever just listened to his rambles so he can talk, even if you don’t understand them? Or do you cut him off because you consider it babbling? Not a one of you stopped your stupid little annoyances to realize something important. He is always stuck explaining things to those around him. And, more often than not, his explanations are only more confusing to you.”
Raising his cane, House tapped the code papers that Spencer had cracked just a few days before. “You look at these and you have no idea how he did them. You think it’s amazing that he could look at it and just know what it is. You’re baffled by the complexity of it, correct?”
Dave was the only one brave enough to say “Yes. Dr. Reid always amazes us with his intelligence. He’s a brilliant man.”
“Yeah. Did you know it took him twenty seven seconds to figure out the code to this and decode it all?” At their shocked looks, House snorted. “To him, this code was so simple it amazed him that your bad guy would even use something this mundane. He admitted to me that it baffled him that no one else seemed to understand it.”
“There are many things he understands that the rest of us don’t.” Aaron told him. “We understand that. I hope you aren’t implying that you think we use him solely for his intelligence. Because he’s so much more than just his brain to us.”
“Well no kidding.” House shook his head at him. “Any idiot can see that. And of course you use him. Everyone uses those of intelligence. That’s normal. But this whole discussion was to show you why him and I are friends. Why he tolerates me, even though I’m a…a jerk, wasn’t it, Emily?”
At her bland look, he grinned back. Then his eyes moved over the others. “When junior and I talk, he doesn’t always have to explain to me what he means when he says something. Oh, there’s plenty he says that’s above my head. There’s things he knows that I can’t even comprehend. But there are things I know that he doesn’t. I may not always know what he’s talking about when he says something but I can follow his thought process to see how he got there.
“We may bicker with one another. We may be rude. I may insult him. But when we get into a discussion and we debate our points back and forth, the rest of it all falls away. We aren’t trying to dumb ourselves down when we talk. We just talk the way we are and the way we think and the other understands. We actually challenge one another intellectually, which is a rarity for us both.”
For the first time since they’d met him, House looked more human than ever. “Most of the time it’s easy being smarter than all the idiots in the room. It’s a gift. You see things, do things, that no one else understands and you manage to save some people with it. You learn some new things. But then there are days when it’s an absolute burden.”
All at once he looked exhausted. His eyes traveled down to his cane. They looked distant. “It’s the loneliest feeling in the world to know that no one around you understands. It’s cruel, to look around and feel like no one nearby really understands you. That,” he looked up, a cynical smile on his face. “is why your genius remains friends with someone like me.”
The room was silent for a stretch. Then another voice joined them, drawing all their eyes over to the other door. Spencer stood there, leaning against the doorframe and sipping off his cup of coffee. Good humor lit his eyes. “You forgot a few key elements, House.”
“You think so? I thought I did pretty well.”
“Oh, you did explain certain parts of it, I’ll grant you that much. But you forgot to account for all the different variables that make up our friendship. What you spoke of was just one layer. Another layer of it is the fact that your brain, your thought process, absolutely fascinates me.” Chuckling, Spencer pushed off the door frame and moved over to Derek.
There he let his boyfriend slip an arm around him, giving him a brief kiss. Then he looked back to House. “But more than that, House, I’m your friend because I like you. You are a jerk, yes. A huge one. You’re immature as well and you’re a narcissist. But, you’re also amusing, randomly kind, extremely intelligent, brutally honest, and you take people as they are. In fact, you’ve usually judged the worst about people from the start so there’s no way a person can go lower than your expectations. And, above all else, I like you because you’re you and that’s all I need.”
They saw something on House’s face then that was one of the kindest expressions they’d seen him wear. “You’re not so bad yourself.” He answered in a voice that could almost be called fond. “Now, everyone quit shouting about me so I can get back to work.” The usual briskness was back, as well as the attitude. He leaned into his cane and made his way toward the door. “Oh and, pipsqueak? When you’ve got a spare second, come do a differential with me and the team. I’m conference calling them in ten.”
Spencer smiled at him. “I’ll be there.”