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Hero
by Teyla
"What's this?"
Wilson looked from the chart he'd been writing in up at House, who'd picked something up from the desk and was turning it in his hands. He raised his eyebrows. "It's a tie," he said.
House gave him one of his looks. "I can see that," he said. "It's not your kind of tie, though."
Wilson turned back to his charts. "Someone gave it to me," he said.
House unrolled the tie and held it up in order to examine it. "I like someone's taste in ties," he said. "What's the dog's name again? Odie?" He frowned. "He seems to be salivatingly challenged."
Wilson didn't look up. "It's from Bevvie," he said.
House didn't answer, but there was a rustling of paper and Wilson knew House had picked up the card that had come with the tie. The card with the picture of a hugely grinning Garfield on the front.
"Deer Dr. Wilson," House read out loud, careful to pronounce each spelling mistake. "You always were blue tys, so I pict a blue ty for you. You sayd you like dogs, so it has Odie on it not Garfield but Garfield is way cooler then Odie so he is on the card. Thank you for making the Canser go away. Bevvie."
There was a moment's silence after that. "You only wear blue ties on Tuesdays," House said then.
"She always has her appointments on Tuesday," Wilson said.
"Nice reasoning." House put the tie and the card back down on the desk and leaned on his cane, grinning. "And she's right, Garfield is much cooler than Odie."
"Oh, I don't know," Wilson said, signing the chart with a flourish and picking up the next one. "Garfield would have to get up and kick the cane out from under you to trip you. All Odie would have to do is drool a puddle onto slippery linoleum and enjoy the show."
A slow smile spread on House's face. "You've thought about this, haven't you." He dropped into the couch opposite the desk, continuing, "Yeah, maybe. But Garfield can swallow a whole lasagna in one gulp. How cool is that?"
Here we go, thought Wilson with the part of his brain that wasn't occupied with trying to come up with a come-back. He knew he was going to lose. But that was okay. After all, he always did. That was how it worked.
-###-
When Wilson came into his office the next morning, he found a gift sitting on the papers on his desk - a small box, wrapped in blue-and-red gift paper. Curiously, Wilson picked up the card that was lying beside it - strangely enough, it had the yellow-and-black sign for radioactivity on the front. He opened it.
"Hey Pete - For your nights out. -GH"
Pete? With any other signature, Wilson would have assumed that some sort of mix-up had occurred, and had left the gift unopened. But GH - Greg House - didn't mix up the one present he bought per year. Even more intrigued, Wilson picked up the box and unwrapped it.
It was a tie. Red and blue, with a silvery spider web weaving over the lower half.
Puzzled, Wilson walked around his desk and sat down, turning the tie in his hands. Pete. Spider web. Radioactivity?
And then he got it. A smile spread on his face. Carefully, he folded up the tie and put it back into its box. Saving it for his nights out.
Peter Parker had had it wrong. Sometimes, people could appreciate the loser and still know about the hero.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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