Chapter Text
Wilson was invited to speak at the yearly function of all New-Jersey and Delaware hospitals, something that isn’t too surprising for anyone who knows him—even just a bit.
He’s the typical people-pleaser, a chairman at Princeton-Plainsboro and most importantly, part of the transplant committee.
You never could catch Wilson without being busy with a butt-load of work.
That idiot rarely refuses anything either, just out of anxiety and fear they could hate him for it. At points, it felt pathetic to House.
James Wilson truly had a heart made out of gold, but this wasn't a euphimistic way to call him a good man, no, this was an insult, strong critique.
WIlson was invited to talk a bit about morality issues this time, since he’s been through it all already more than once and can share one or two relatable, sad anecdotes about what decisions he and his peers had to make before.
Of course, that was rather just the theme, there weren't precise guidlines, but House assumed Wilson to do something predictable, something normal and fitting for Wilson. Something innocent and nice, not too happy—not too sad.
So, there’s that.
House and Wilson rarely talked about this kind of topic—transplants giving and all that.
That shit bummed anyone out, even House.
House is aware it takes a great toll on Wilson—the man who wants everyone to live a great life—even if it means sacrificing a part of himself.
Literally. Wilson has donated before to one of his patients.
That's just plain crazy and he'll make sure to never let Wilson live that down, even in his own narrative.
House can tell whenever Wilson was part of a voting in the comittee.
He notices that Wilson avoids him the day after, staying inside his office as much as possible and sulking a bit. House could understand it, if he was feeling low, the last thing he'd want was to talk abut it with someone like House.
He likes spending time with Wilson, that's obvious, but seriously he isn’t the guy to open up about anything deep to, to be entrusted with anything emotional. His reaction would be making jokes of it or ignoring the topic entirely.
Coping mechanisms, or something like that. Wilson threw these words at him once and it stuck.
To confirm his thesis, though, he always checks up with either Cuddy, who obviously is also a part of the committee or another trustable staff member at the hospital, whenever Cuddy is fed up with House again or he has his own private reasons to avoid her.
Mostly clinic duty related reasons.
Until now, he has always been correct, he can read Wilson like a book.
Usually, Wilson always gives House an early draft on what he’s going to say to get a second-opinion on the matter, like one to two days before the event. It wasn’t a big secret to anyone that if Wilson would value anyone’s opinion to a one-hundred percent, it’d be House’s.
It would go to lenghts, where Wilson asked House for his opinion on different shirts.
God, that sounds gay.
Pretty early on—two weeks before the function actually—he came rushing to House, his tie a bit messed up, hair blown away from the wind and the papers in his arms, tightly.
House had decided to go home earlier that particular day and that seemed to have caught Wilson off-guard. House assumes that Wilson is especially anxious of this year’s function because his old med-school pals will be in.
They were invited for a sort of reunion type fo thing, that's all he's aware of.
He actually doesn’t know a lot about them at all—anything and everything he heard of Wilson’s med-school years was right when they met, when House bailed him out and they chatted a bit, to be specific.
Nowadays, Wilson was avoiding the topic like the pest, for whatever reason.
It makes House feel giddy every time thinking about it and he tried multiple times to find out more about the topic. He really did. But he had always failed somehow. Wilson is bad at covering things up, that’s perhaps one of the most obvious reasons why he has so many ex-wives and girlfriends, but if it came to the topic of his past, even House couldn’t go far without breaching all trust built between them.
Reluctantly, House promised Wilson that he deserves boundaries too and to stop trying to find out why Wilson was so secretive about the whole thing.
Of course, House had his fingers crossed, so he’s keeping his options open.
One day, there will be a perfect chance to strike. And it’ll be better if Wilson is out of his hair until then, unaware of his dark and secret plans.
Wilson begged him to review the draft, saying it was important and that House should hurry to finish it.
House doesn’t remember when he actually has seen Wilson as desperate as that evening, if he’s honest. His eyes were wide-open and House could swear some sweat was forming on Wilson’s forehead from either anxiety or exhaustion, stemming from running after him.
“Of course I’ll hurry. Who do you think I am?” House chuckles, taking the papers out of Wilson’s arms, he held them as if cradling a baby, it looked so silly. Wilson softly shook his head. “I know exactly who you are, that’s why I am telling you now.” Wilson raised his pointer finger at him, being serious. House couldn’t protest his statement, he smirked as if he was caught.
Before House walked away, he hesitated, his head still facing him. Wilson gave him a curious expression. “What?”, he asked nervously.
“Why is this one so important to you?” House holds up the draft to skim over a bit of it, Wilson immediately pushed the papers down again, so he couldn’t continue. “I’m a little self-conscious about this whole thing. Maybe I shouldn’t go at all.”, Wilson gasps, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Is it really that deep, Wilson?” ,House raised an eyebrow.
Wilson looked down to the ground for a second, pondering.
The path they were standing on lead right to the hospital, some benches close yet astray to it. The outside of the hospital looked so much more peaceful than the insides, House always thought that.
That silence made him realise how quiet it was, which is pretty strange for New Jersey at 7 PM. The only thing he could hear were birds humming a song. It reminded him of a beautiful song he used to play on the piano whenever he felt gloomy enough. It was a serenade by Schubert.
Until one day he had enough of it and could never hear it again the same. The day he last played it, must’ve been around the time when Wilson and him got into a fight last. He can’t remember what they even fought about, if he’s honest.
They always fight, that's the charm of their relationship.
Bantering best friends.
“Just do this one thing for me, without over-analysing me. Please.” Wilson groans, his fist curled in to a ball to reinforce how serious he is about it, but House knows he’s only doing that when he needs to reassure himself.
House was surprised by Wilson being this straight-forward, usually he doesn’t lay his cards on the table like that if it wasn’t necessary, he would know, he beats Wilson any time they play poker. So, this was serious.
He makes eye contact with Wilson.
Wilson usually avoids his gaze, he says it makes him uncomfortable when House stares at him for too long.
He calls House’s eyes ‘two creepy blue orbs’ and starts shaking comically every time they catch a glimpse of Wilson, but House never can help himself but lose himself in these calm, innocent-looking, doe-like eyes of Wilson anyway. He knows that Wilson is probably quite frankly the opposite of these adjectives, inside of him, Wilson feels nothing like that and his exes could sing a song about these tricky eyes as well.
Maybe that’s exactly how he lures in all his Mrs Wilson’s.
Slowly, House nods, he understands to not make a joke out of this situation. At least for now. He takes a step back and then starts walking away from Wilson, the papers tucked under his free arm.
House was planning on enjoying himself on a Thursday evening, but now, as it seems, his pleasure will be reading Wilson’s pathetically people-pleasing and long speech about dying children instead. It was hand-written, actually. Wilson has a girly handwriting, House always tells him so, but he never changed it.
Once, he left a present from Wilson laying on the desk in his office and Thirteen, he thinks, picked it up and then the entire team wouldn’t stop pestering him about it until Wilson finally lifted the curtain on who it was from, because they thought House had a girlfriend no one knew about. It was the most fun he had since a long time.
The speech was acceptable. There were some grammatical errors which House immediately corrected because he couldn’t help himself from doing so. He hates being a smart-ass but it was basic knowledge.
He did like being a smart-ass maybe a teensy bit after all.
Besides that, it was definitely sad.
Sad is what he expected, but somehow not the usual Wilson-sad: that spiralling black-hole, no one lives forever, everyone will die and I have to be the nicest human on earth mindset so I can live with myself, knowing everyone likes me because I don’t,
but instead something entirely new.
Something he didn’t know Wilson was capable of thinking about, because he always thought of Wilson rather shallow on the topic of it.
Wilson didn’t write only about the value on life and how to make decisions regarding the topic of transplants, but rather, how far one can go until one shouldn’t interfere anymore, he wrote about how far a doctor should go to—the lengths a doctor is usually prepared to go for and how far they actually should dare to strive.
Strangely, it reminded him of himself.
It felt weird, because this was definitely about House, the more he thought about it, the more timess he read over it.
Anyone who knew House would think about House when hearing this speech.
It wasn’t a secret that both men psychoanalyse each other until the brink of madness, but this was a point Wilson usually never indulged him in.
How far House is allowed to go, is usually limited by how far Cuddy is ready to break the rules for him. Wilson is usually only the moral instance of neutral or morally good, not an interference. Which was strange to begin with, because why would someone like that, so opinionless and shallow be on the transplant committee in the first place?
And then, it hit him.
It him like he was hit with a bat, like he has never felt pain before in his life and was brutally woken up by the realisation that Wilson actually does interfere with House’s business.
Wilson never openly did anything to manipulate House, but of course he does.
Of course, a good person like Wilson couldn’t stop himself from interfering. And suddenly, everything that happened inside the Plainsboro-Princeton teaching Hospital was shining in a different light.
How Wilson pulled the strings on House accepting certain cases by lying or withholding information, how Wilson tricked House into so many treatments that ended up being the morally correct way to go about things.
How Wilson got Cuddy and him so close, how he managed to control House in a way he never noticed.
Wilson wasn’t ever not participating, he was just silent about it.
Without noticing, House’s face grew red—just slightly.
How did he never notice before?
He notices everything, usually.
How could this have slipped his mind? Was anyone else aware about this, or was even Wilson himself aware about this?
He sat there, on his couch, alone with only the TV making any sound in his lonely apartment, grinning to himself. He never took Wilson to be that kind of person, it made him much more interesting than he ever gave Wilson credit for. It made him somewhat attractive even.
House gulped, catching himself drifting off the matter at hand. Looking through Wilson’s draft and giving his thoughts on the matter. He cannot afford to start giggling and blushing over imagined plot-twists of things he overlooked before.
House continued on, now staying focused and a little drunk, adding his opinions to different paragraphs. He picked his best red pen for this job.
In the end, he did enjoy his Thursday evening after all without meaningless sex or unnecessary amounts of illegal substances.
Just the legal ones in a concerning amount.
The next morning during lunchbreak, he handed him the papers, to Wilson’s most honest surprise. “You’ve read the whole thing in one night?” He asked, leaning back in his chair. Both were in Wilson’s office, eating Wilson’s self-made sandwiches with avocados and bacon on House’s. When he noticed that he added it, it made him grin foolishly bright.
Wilson remembered that he liked bacon.
“Of course. You told me to hurry.” House replied proudly. “And… how did you like it?” Wilson pressed for more details. He was fidgeting with his fingers, nervously avoiding House’s eyes once again.
“Hm, it was great, I wrote my thoughts on the sheet,” he said as he handed them over, he stored them in his backpack so they were a little affected, “I liked your point of view. Something refreshing from you.” House nodded, taking a bite out of the criminally delicious sandwich.
Wilson took the draft immediately out of Houses hands and looked through them. He smiled before looking up. “Thank you. I wish you could be there with me, to listen to the finished speech.” The second sentence, Wilson only muttered, it took House a minute to fully comprehend what he said. Then he shook his head, “You can’t manipulate me this obviously. You’ve been slicker than this, Jim.”
Wilson laughed, some sandwich in his mouth, and nodding defeatedly, “You got me there.” He held up his hands.
House just looked at him for a moment. Pondering if he should accept even though it was perhaps an unserious request. “Would you really want me to be there?”, he decided to ask.
Wilson’s eyes widened in disbelief, he swallowed the sandwich in one gulp and then raised his left eyebrow. “Are you considering?”, he whispered, as if scared that House could change his mind if he got startled.
House shrugs, “What’s the harm?”, he innocently asks then.
Wilson stood up, “The harm? You don’t even show up to events you’re explicitly invited to. You’re scheming!”, he held up an accusatory finger, pointing right at House.
House chuckled, “Perhaps I am feeling generous today.”, he shook his head.
“I don’t have anyone else who would be my plus one…” Wilson mumbled and House smirked in victory.
The time to strike has finally come, to find out more about Wilson’s past.
“Great.” House nods affirmingly before he stood up, grabbing his cane—he rubbed his belly and sighed, “I’ll see you later.”, and left.
The week has flown by really, House couldn’t wait for the function. He can’t remember ever being hyped up for social gatherings of any sort beside clubs and strip clubs.
Wilson came by earlier in the morning to inform House about all the details he’ll need, but House didn’t care to listen, because obviously he was a plus one, he was sort of V.I.P, right?
And besides, Wilson will drive them anyway. It’s supposedly a one-hour drive, that he caught between rambling of work problems and how he is so happy to finally have three days off in a row.
And, he heard that Cuddy won’t be joining, since she was busy here in the hospital.
A perfect setting to perhaps cause a little havoc and do some needed master-detective work—research you might call it, on Wilson’s med-school past.
He already had some wild guesses as to why his good friend might be so unbearably mysterious about it, each one being better than the one before.
Bad haircut, an embarrassing nickname that stems from an even more embarrassing story or maybe he was super awkward and cringe and was like the nerd-type of guy? Maybe he was like super popular with the ladies even back then and was sort of a heartbreaker? It certainly would explain his love for neediness and why he's so awkward around ladies nowadays.
House chuckled to himself, losing himself in endless ideas of different versions of Wilson.
There were so many possibilities, truly. It felt fascinating.
Whatever it really is though, House is ready to figure it out as soon and slick as possible and tease Wilson for it the eternity of their shared mortal-lives they have left with it.
House is so looking forward to this, just the expression on Wilson's face each time, hilarious, he imagines.
How bad could this small secret be anyway? Wilson's always so dramatic over nothing.