Chapter Text
“Hurry up, I’m freezing my tail off here.”
The telltale sign that winter had officially arrived in New Jersey had been sounded (for a third time) by a very impatient Gregory House.
Striped arms tightly crossed. Good hoof stamping into slushified snow. Pelt bristling. Snout puffing out breath in short, white, brittle bursts.
The longer he stood outside their rinky-dink apartment building, freezing to death, the more tetanus-riddled nails hammered themselves into his remaining goodwill.
Not that there was much left to hammer.
His goodwill had died forever ago, right beside his patience and most of his tail's circulation.
And now the relentless chill was needling its way through his signature peacoat too, deliberately catching on the thinning fur underneath.
It didn't stop there; the cold flattened his tufted ears, pinned his paint-brush tail and narrowed his bright blue eyes into a watery death-glare that was sharp enough to cut glass, or, at the very least, one very distracted, very snow-dusted, deer.
“You’ll live,” Wilson mused through the warmth of his big red scarf. Ears barely flinching at House's incessant whining.
Unlike House, the cold made Wilson look sugar dusted and disgustingly wide-eyed and sparkly.
House shot him a scolding glance because of it.
House thought that Wilson kinda looked like a Christmas tree ornament that had been granted a wish to become real.
A comparison that was probably considered a hate crime among deer.
Not that House cared.
“Well, today would be nice Bambi, you know before the frostbite seeps in,” House grumbled.
He would’ve jabbed Wilson with his cane to emphasize his annoyance, but his fingers had turned into popsicles. And not the fun kind.
See, in an unjust contrast to House’s thin monochrome hide, Wilson’s fur was a thick and fluffy russet brown, still dappled with a couple cream spots he’d never outgrown from fawnhood.
Even his fluffy ears and small antlers, crooked and lopsided as they were, offered better cover against the elements than House's dire genetic lot.
And yes, sure, ordinarily, stripes and spots don’t go together.
In fact they're total fashion seppuku.
But sometimes, animals, like all living things, do have to try and coexist without killing each other.
Especially when some mysterious hand of fate like a cheap lease, a third tail-spin divorce, or plain bad luck shoves them both into the same stable at short notice.
Circumstances and trying-there-best be damned, it was still and would probably always be a pattern clash of mammoth proportions.
Like for instance, Wilson, the prime cut of venison that he was, insisting on checking the mail before opening the front door to their shared apartment, condemning a shivering grumbling House to the early stages of hypothermia right there on the stoop.
Which was especially cruel because ever since they’d been homeward bound, House had been practically dreaming of the couch.
Whilst Wilson, self-appointed guardian of the apartment keys (ever since House had lost his set in a tragic game of beer-pong-meets-strip-poker) was clearly far more interested in sifting through junk mail than granting House access to his kingdom of painkillers and cheap cable.
“More for your alimony collection? Maybe another fat-stack of love letters from the Ex-Wives’ guild. Or-or let me guess this is the Christmas edition where they all send you one big thank-you card for funding their pilates memberships?” House snarked.
"You know half of this horse crap is actually yours-" Wilson snapped, wet nose twitching, scenting through the stack of stiff beige envelopes and glossy pharmaceutical junk, hoping for at least one free coffee coupon for his collection.
”Parking tickets, cease-and-desists, taxes-" Wilson listed as his gloved hands flipped quickly through the Zebra’s garbage.
"Just bin everything-I know you're just itching to take it all on a Green Mile trip to your shiny little shredder anyways.” House drawled. “Unless it's-"
Wilson didn't need House to finish his sentence to know what piece of mail he was interested in keeping.
He grimaced, handing the zebra his adult magazine with a long outstretched hand.
“You know I don’t actually love checking the mail House.“
“Oh, please yes you do. You love to torture me, it feeds your moral complex-”
“Uh, no I don’t actually, I do it because if I left it to you, it would just vanish into the great Gregory House black hole. Same place as the laundry. And the dishes. And the vacuuming. And anything else that remotely resembles adult responsibility ends up.”
Wilson, irritated, shook off the snow that had settled on him.
In the process his shoulder brushed right up against House’s.
A brief, static spark lingered.
Wilson of course shifted away, pretending to fix his own winter blazer, pretending he hadn’t noticed.
Because it wasn't a big deal.
Not really.
They'd long-breached the limits of personal space.
Being bundled thigh-to-thigh in a taxi for two hours with someone tended to do that.
Especially when you’re trapped on said car ride with someone as spatially-inconsiderate as House.
Snoring like a bear, melting against his shoulder, fumigating him and the rest of the taxi with his stale coffee breath.
Yep that pretty much obliterated any remaining barrier of distance between them.
For most of the weekend they'd been away at a conference in NYC.
Bite Back: The Global Rabies Symposium.
Conference trips always wrecked House's sleep.
Too much travel, too many lectures, too much dealing with Wilson.
Hence the much-needed Taxi nap.
Back in New Jersey, the dainty little state whose proudest export ranged from Snooki and bubble-wrap, Wilson was still going through the post whilst watching House shiver like a shitting dog.
It was kind of making his chest twist.
Even though it was partially his fault for going deliberately slow with the mail.
“Jesus it's not even that cold.” Wilson muttered, nuzzling deeper into his scarf.
House shot him a look that could scrape paint. “Says the guy dressed like he mugged a Patagonia outlet.”
“It’s called layering, House. Some of us have functioning survival instincts-”
House snorted, stamping his hoof down hard enough to splash icy-cold slush onto Wilson’s winter coat. “Whoops.”
Wilson’s ears flicked back, eyes narrowing. “You’re such a child-”
The gory ins-and-outs of their weekend together had already done most of the heavy lifting in the declining-personal-space department.
Thanks to a computer glitch at check-in.
One room. One bed. No refunds.
Whilst it was not their first rodeo navigating such a predicament, as a gay Pride event in '02 had caused the exact same error at the exact same hotel, packing the place to the rafters with beautiful, shirtless men, this occasion was very different.
The Rockefeller tree was already up, and the ice rink below it was in full swing:
In other words it was winter in New York and it was cold.
Thankfully because of what happened in '02 the two doctors has conjured something of a system.
If there was only one bed, Wilson took the couch and House took the bed.
House's leg demanded good beauty sleep after all.
All they had to do is make some adjustments, mostly because Wilson’s ears had turned blue overnight and House couldn’t be bothered to call reception for more blankets.
When the chattering eventually started sounding like a death-rattle, House gave in and (reluctantly) let Wilson into his big, warm, king-sized bed.
But it wasn't at all as cute as you're probably imagining.
They'd top-and-tailed in the bed like the senile grandparents from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Wilson had spent the night desperately trying to curl in on himself and defrost, whilst the opposing force that is House, tried to get warm by tossing and turning all night like a rotisserie chicken.
It was a long tiresome battle filled with aggressive blanket tugging, name-calling and more than a few less-than-civil leg kicks.
Hence Wilson’s thinning patience now, hence him making House wait a few extra minutes before he unlocked their apartment door.
The zebra sighed, snorting white steam through his nostrils, charcoal muzzle rippling. “Quit clipping coupons, just grab the sexiest bill in the pile and let’s gooo.”
Wilson was about to comply, when his hand stilled on the final piece of supposed junk-mail.
His ears stilled. He stiffened.
The last envelope in the pile was glossy.
Overly perfumed.
And scarlet red in color.
Worst of all, it had his name: James Evan Wilson, staring back at him in pretty silver calligraphy.
He immediately shucked it open, skimmed it, hesitated a beat, then tucked it into his inner coat pocket, finally unlocking the front door.
Thankfully, House didn't see much of the strange exchange.
He was far too busy sulking, kicking snow against the door and muttering to himself like a pissed-off draft mule.
“Still no Hogwarts letter, Jimmy? It's okay I don't think they said those things out since the author discovered twitter.” House teased, shouldering past the deer the second the lock had clicked open.
He shook himself off in the hallway like a wet dog, leaving a trail of melted snow across Wilson’s (previously) clean floor. Though arguably, most of it had already defrosted into his haystack mane.
Once finally inside the warm flat himself, Wilson unwound his scarf and got to sorting his coat.
He slipped the scarlet envelope into their communal junk drawer, where bills, takeout menus, and all their other important paper-related-crap lived.
He lingered there for a moment, staring at the flash of bright red amongst the browns and whites, then he slammed the drawer shut.
“I guess we'll be playing House then.”
House called out from the next room.
Wilson stopped sorting the thermostat to raise his head.
“What does that even mean?"
Wilson knew what it meant of course.
Another dig at their inconvenient living situ'. Not the other meaning that implied they were some kind of odd couple, 'playing house', mimicking domestic bliss.
When Wilson shuffled into the room, House was sprawled across the couch, grin lazy and crooked, tail flicking idly.
“You know-cleaning, I mean, more realistically you'll be the one playing House, I will be House, supervising from the couch. I do all my best work horizontal.” he said, gesturing vaguely at the disaster around him.
House was supposed to have tidied before they left but obviously he hadn't even attempted it.
The place was a shit-tip.
A shit-tip that was now wet with melted snow thanks to House’s muttish approach to hair drying.
“Right, basically a parasite, but less charming," Wilson said, rolling his eyes as he readied two coffee cups from the cupboard.
Without even looking up, House waved one of the cups away. “Wrong mug,”
"Your favorite mugs filthy i'm not-"
"I don't care-"
“Fine. God forbid your coffee touch a mug that isn’t filthy, chipped, or stained."
Wilson knew that House's favorite mug was the chipped, stained one that somehow kept resurrecting itself from the bin after Wilson 'accidentally’ left it in there every garbage day.
"It's called seasoned."
”It’s called penicillin.”
”You're jealous.”
"You're disgusting-"
“And you’re so domesticated it hurts,” House shot back carelessly.
"Well someone has to make sure we don't live in a pigsty"
"That's ableist." House retorted.
“No, that’s biology,” Wilson thunked two coffee cups down, including House's grubby one. “You’d be dead without me.”
“Yeah. But I’d die free.”
“And alone,” Wilson added.
“Exactly.”
Wilson ignored House and set about making some coffee.
Before grabbing the milk, Wilson straightened the crooked animal magnets on the fridge, pinning down the loose corner of a newspaper clipping.
It was from dome local coverage on one of House’s so-called 'genius' cases.
It was the first time the term Zoo Crew appeared in print and, incidentally, the same article that labeled House as 'likely autistic', but that (unsurprising) diagnosis is a story for another day
The case involved a child, an autistic non-verbal lamb who believed he had worms dancing around his eye, but really had Taenia multiceps tunneling through his brain instead.
The tag-line of the article dubbed House's diagnostic team: The 'Zoo Crew' because it suited their apparent 'penchant for exotic cases'.
Though it obviously didn’t hurt that the members of said-crew were made up of three-quarters of the animal kingdom. You know a zebra, a capybara, a dog, and a cat, all attempting to get along and make differential diagnosis.
It would have made a perfect opening line to a terrible joke, if they weren’t occasionally very successful.
Naturally, the nickname stuck like glue around Plainsboro Veterinary Hospital.
House hated it. He hated it so much that he wished he’d let the dumb kid keep his stupid brain worms.
Naturally, Wilson loved it and thought it was hilarious, hence the dedication to cutting it out and pinning it to the fridge.
Wilson paused. He looked over at House on the couch and set the milk down.
He turned on the sink to rinse out House’s favorite mug, the one that didn't look like it had been safe to drink from since before the Bush administration.
House groaned at the sound of running water.
Wilson was so considerate it was pathetic.
"Jesus Wilson you're such a housewife-no wonder everyone with two fuzzy paws and a pair of functioning retinas thinks we're shacking up for the winter."
Wilson's jaw clenched, the tired-smile immediately wiping from his face. Left ear twitching twice in irritation.
He flicked the faucet off, grabbed House’s filthy mug, and dropped it, just a little too hard onto the drying rack.
He grabbed a different mug, trying to avoid the look House was giving him from the couch, eyes wide, gormless, waiting for a reply. Waiting for something to bite on and tear apart.
Wilson decided the radiator was to blame for him suddenly feeling all weird and hot under his fur.
House’s stupid throwaway jokes always stung more than he like to admit anyways.
House let the silence breathe, just long enough for it to go weird, then he rolled over to grab the TV remote, filling the strange silence with the electric all American oiled-up sounds of Wrestle Mania.
“Relax, Jimmy. It’s just a joke.” House’s voice was muffled a little by the sound of Vicodin passing through his muzzle.
“Right.” Wilson tried to smile, but it came out hollow.
Thankfully, House wasn't looking. He was far too busy ogling the half-naked men flinging people about on the screen.
Still, it took Wilson a shameful amount of time to find a comeback.
“You ever think about cleaning up your own mess? Call it physical therapy.”
“Now that is ableist.”
Soon they were already settling back into their rocky routine.
Though un-routinely, that evening, in the dead of night, Wilson crept downstairs, took the red card from the bullshit draw and turned it into into confetti.
Little tatters of the bright red material sat like blood at the bottom of his shredder.
Then he crept back upstairs to bed.
And House never ever found out.
Well, almost never.
The almost in never ever finding out, came about four weeks later.
House was home on a day he really should’ve been at work when the answering machine called out with a message meant for ‘Jimmy’.
At the first buzz, House was dead.
Well, he looked dead.
Tail limp, body impossibly folded, drool leaking into a pillow. Dead.
He was cuddling an overpriced silk pillow he had stolen from Wilson’s bed.
The same one he’d mocked him for drunk-buying off some home shopping channel, because four piña coladas deep, he’d become fully convinced it really was 'engineered for hair and fur health'. He’d even teased House that 'what was left of his balding coat' wouldn’t understand it, because his fur was 'far too gone'.
To House's annoyance it was actually really soft.
His own pillows, by comparison, were a horror show. Like that sad six-word Hemingway story about baby shoes, except this one went: really soiled pillow, never ever washed.
At the second ring, House’s ears stuck right up. His totally ironic third rewatch of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives didn’t stand a chance.
He muted it instantly and scrambled over to the phone despite his nagging leg.
By the time the Jimmy voice-mail had played out in entirety, House was wide-eyed awake.
Pillow discarded on the floor.
Obviously, he followed up on what he’d heard by ransacking the apartment.
He then proceeded to sit on his findings for almost a month.
Not that it was particularly difficult, after all it was only a few scraps of scarlet card, neatly tucked under his striped ass.
He wasn’t totally evil about it either.
House had handed the buck many bite-sized opportunities to come clean.
You know, half-started conversations, hypothetical scenarios, gentle nudges, all legitimate open opportunities to confess, but of course, the oblivious baboon Wilson, took none.
Which is when House’s patience waned and so did his kindness about the situation.
Salt in Wilson’s coffee was the first move he pulled in a long four week stint of some of the pettiest psychological warfare New Jersey had ever endured.
House told himself it was just curiosity-come-aggravation.
Not jealousy-come-shame.
Definitely not that sick, hollow, kicked-in-the-gut feeling that made him want to tear the remaining scraps of red into confetti too.
Definitely not that.
“So what? She injured herself…dancing?” Foreman questioned, tiny brown ears a-twitching.
House shook his head, groaning. “Not dancing. Pretending to be a Japanese pop star.”
Thirty days on from the big phone call, Wilson and House still weren't on good terms. Regardless the world kept on spinning and thus the Zoo Crew, were locked in yet another heated debate over their most recent admission:
A teenage arctic fox cheerleader named Sam, who had collapsed in the middle of an arcade dance tournament.
The girl had pissed herself before going possum and her urine had come out tar-thick and jet-black, not exactly a kosher shade.
The working theory was that kidney failure had lead to some kind of seizure.
Essentially her organs were in the chop-shop, and they, as her pit crew, had just been handed one hell of an oil change.
It didn’t help that the girl was the textbook queen-bee type: overdramatic, uncooperative, and mortified at the idea of anyone at high school finding out she’d collapsed chasing the oh-so-prestigious title of Winter Dance Dance Revolution Queen on some dorky Japanese rhythm arcade game.
She swore to the team she’d only entered the competition on a whim, after using the machine a few hours a week to keep herself fit between cheer shows.
She wasn’t saying much more than that, not with her precious high school reputation on the line.
Which, of course, only meant more digging, poking, and general detective work for them.
Great.
“She’s a perfectly healthy teenager-we’ve got the stats to prove it.”
Chase prodded the patient's file.
House didn’t even toss him a glance. He tapped the red marker to his muzzle, nibbling at the lid. “Sure. On paper. But perfectly healthy teenagers don’t tend to piss out black paint.”
“Maybe her heart's weak?" Foreman asked, leaning back on his chair. "CHF? Heartworm? Tumor? Any of those could trigger ischemia and cause her to seize?”
House scoffed, cane thunking the floor. “She’s a cheerleader Foreman. These chicks train harder than Navy cadets. If her ticker was crap, she’d already be face down with her poms on the fifty-yard line.”
Chase's eyes were glued to the infuriatingly empty whiteboard. "So…she’s an arctic fox? Maybe it’s CDV. It's seasonal and it can cause seizures.”
House squinted at the glossy little mutt in front of him. “Wowie a dog blaming a fox for CDV. Not very P.C Chase, what’s next? The cubs got mange?"
Bored with the now chewed up marker-lid, House was toying with the sugar cubes in his blazer pocket, freshly swiped from the early-morning patient refreshment rounds.
Cameron's ears pricked up a little. “Well distemper virus does fit.”
"Fitting is only a matter of perspective," House fired back, quirking an eyebrow at the deliciously obvious double entendre. "O.J's glove fit, my shoe fits up Foreman’s ass, a cheerleading costume would probably fit on chase's boney British pipe cleaner bod but that doesn’t make it right.” he said with an exaggerated shiver.
Both Chase and Foreman gave a long unimpressed glare, tails, big and small knocking back and forth.
Cameron frowned. “Well I don't really think it's about blame, it’s more about probability and-“
House interrupted. “Probability is a fancy word grown-ups use when they mean guessing-and we can't guess with wittle animal lives at stake now can we Cameron?-this isn't Grey's Anatomy." he mocked her known ushy-gushy sincerity.
“So then what? What do we do?” Foreman asked, trying to hurry the meeting along.
House was in a mood where he could get stuck arguing just for the sake of it and Foreman would actually like to get to his job today.
"You go stick a needle in our vixen, do some labs, get her on some anti-B's and if we’re lucky somewhere in the process we may finally find an answer to that age old question: what does the fox say, when she's drugged up on-"
House was cut off in his spiel by the dramatic arrival of two familiar antlers.
Wilson.
But the oncologist was not his usual doe-eyed, smiley self. He was scowling. Actually scowling.
The team traded knowing-looks between themselves.
The tension between the two best friends had been bleeding for at least four weeks, oozing into every case, every day, like a shitty infection.
The culprit? House’s exponentially worsening temper and cruelty as showcased in there current differential diagnosis battle.
Cuddy told Cameron, who told Chase, who told Foreman, that the two had even started commuting to work separately.
A definite sign that there was some kind of trouble cooking up in paradise.
Wilson, long stuck in the eye of storm-House, had probably hit his bullshit quota.
House opened his muzzle, presumably to make a snarky comment, eyes already burning bright at the concept of winding Wilson up.
“House. Your office now.” Wilson cut-in, his voice clipped and tight.
He didn’t stick around to hear a reply; his lab coat was already swishing away, head ducking under the doorframe so his antlers didn’t catch and threaten to soften the strictness of his words.
Oh, he was serious.
He had the tie on too, the very professional, crimson 'working-man' one that House knew was reserved for court appearances, disciplinary hearings, and prison visits.
And now, apparently, for his execution.
House frowned. He had at least three award-winning comebacks loaded.
He slowly turned his head back to his team and winced theatrically, teeth clenched. “Ruh-roh. Somebody’s in deep doo-doo.”
Without another word, House slinked after Wilson into his office.
Arguably it was all a bit too quiet and easy for House.
A bit too…obedient.
Something was clearly very, very wrong.
The team leaned forward trying to scrape a peek into the zebra’s office, only to be cut off by the sudden snap of the blinds by Wilson.
Whatever was about to happen, whatever it was, it wasn’t for their eyes.