Work Text:
Names are a funny thing, are they not? A lot of the time, what someone is called sets how they’re viewed, and a lot of the time, how someone is viewed sets what they’re called. First names are informal, used between friends, lovers. Never a friend from work, though, or a colleague. Last names, for them, for people who respect each other.
But what if a colleague is a friend and a lover as well? What if two men who had met at work and introduced themselves by last names have become so close, it seems silly not to use first names, nicknames even? Some things about people never change, it seems. But a name is a title, not quite a quality of a person, and should hold little meaning to a person unless chosen by the one who holds it. Still, it near impossible, if not completely, for a name to change when it’s been used for so long.
James Wilson ponders this quite often. Why does he find it so normal to call the man he loves nothing but his last name?
To his wives, to his past lovers, he’s always been James or Jimmy. Never Wilson. Because that would be strange, would it not? Extremely.
He sometimes wonders what House called Cuddy, in bed especially. Was it Lisa? Or simply Cuddy? He images it to be strange to call her either.
Wilson had asked House once, “Don’t you think it’s strange that we never use first names?”
House just shrugged. “I don’t. Does it bother you?”
“I guess not,” was all Wilson could say. He guesses not. He never thinks of it as bothersome, simply odd.
He stops thinking about it for a while. He decides it doesn’t matter. He realizes, though, exactly how much it does matter, but not at all in the way he’s always thought.
It’s a dinner, with an old friends. Just a woman he used to work with. House isn’t home, so Wilson and his friend sit in the apartment, and Wilson cooks.
But House gets home soon enough, mocking, “Wilson! I’d thought you’d learned to hide your mistresses!” with that exaggerated mock-surprised expression of his.
And Wilson just smiles and sighs, as of course House had known about the dinner, looking up though when his friend, who knows exactly who House is, asks, “He calls you Wilson?”
“Oh, well, yeah…” Wilson tells her, and he can’t really offer much of an explanation.
“But why?” asks the friend, clearly perturbed.
All Wilson can do is shrug. “It’s just always been that way. Well, you call people from work by their last names, don’t you?”
“Well of course,” is her reply, “but not when I’m living with them. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to judge, but it’s a bit interesting, don’t you think so? It’s different.”
But it isn’t that strange, Wilson decides, just different. It’s just a little, special thing that he and House have, that no one else does.