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Thank You For Nothing
by Jane Carnall
Wilson leaned forward on his desk with his head in his hands. There were two more patients to see before he could go home. He didn't want to see either of them. He didn't want to go home.
He absolutely shouldn't call Greg House.
The two files sat on the desk in front of him and stared at him. One liver cancer. One leukemia. He needed to read the file, remind himself of their names and medical history and other things about them than the cancer they were going to die of.
"What?" House barked down the phone.
"Are you having a good day?" Wilson asked.
"Oh, it's you," House said. "What is it?"
"Doing anything tonight?"
"Yeah, I'm meeting you," House said. "Loiret's, seven o'clock."
"Isn't that the place where you have to book about a week in advance?"
"So you have a choice: you can either get a time machine, or bribe the head waiter."
Wilson laughed, and caught himself doing it, and laughed again, almost at himself. "Okay."
"Don't be late. I'm buying."
"How is Daphne?" House asked, head tilted, giving Wilson a wide-eyed look.
Wilson looked down at the menu. "She's fine."
"Who are you having sex with?"
Wilson looked up, sharply. "No one!" He caught himself. He shouldn't have said that.
"Not even Daphne?"
"Well, of course..." Wilson trailed off. He was better at lying to House than most people were, but he hadn't been planning that one.
"You mean you called me for nothing?" House impaled him with a look. "No juicy details of your latest affair? If your marriage is breaking up, who's next? That hot little nurse with the big - " House gestured explicitly, and caught the waiter's eye. "We're not ready. Come back in five."
"I'm ready," Wilson said.
"You haven't been reading that menu."
At least House shut up when he was studying the menu. For two minutes. Then he looked up - Wilson could feel it, though he kept his eyes on the menu - and said, "What are you having?"
=@=@=
The waiter came back with grilled asparagus for House and lobster bisque for Wilson. House was watching him, chin propped on hand.
"Why do you always think I'm having an affair?"
House widened his eyes: how can you ask such a stupid question. It discomforted Wilson that he could recognise it. "Saves time. I've known you, what, three years? You've had five affairs that I knew about."
Wilson's jaw dropped. "I - "
House thrust his face forward, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly open. It was an explicit expression of disbelief.
"Not five," Wilson said, an admission jerked out of him.
"I can name names," House said. "Would that help?"
"No," Wilson said. "Anyway, I don't believe you."
"I can." House's mouth twisted. "Well, no, I can't. Not all of them."
Wilson smiled. House's guesses could be sharp, but he was guessing.
House picked up a stalk of asparagus and thrust it into his mouth. Around it, he said, "I can name specialities. The zaftig blonde was a vascular surgeon, the brunette was an immunologist, and the other brunette was one of the surgical nurses. The brown-haired one was a nursing student. You cradle-snatcher." He swallowed, and reached for another stalk. "The rugged blonde's an electrician. Eat your soup." He smirked. "It's fish."
Wilson picked up his spoon and put it down again. "What - Look, all right, I was - " He was about to say, I wasn't counting a one-night stand - okay, two - I had at conventions, but House's ability to form relationships was such that he probably did count a one-night stand at a convention an affair. Besides, that didn't cover the nurses. Or the one he'd been certain House hadn't known about.
"You know, I'm paying for this meal. You should eat."
"What are you, my mother?"
"Only if your father was even more of a cradle-snatcher than you are."
It was probably wonderful soup. Wilson couldn't taste it. He could feel House looking at him.
"I called you because I wanted you to cheer me up," Wilson said.
House's mouth opened in a quick and oddly rueful grin. "Well, that worked."
"What?"
"Whatever was eating you when you came into the restaurant, you haven't thought about it for - " House glanced at his watch " - at least ten minutes."
"Don't be nice to me," Wilson heard himself say. "You're only nice to people when you feel sorry for them." He hadn't meant to say that out loud, and, from the look on House's face, he hadn't expected to hear it.
"You've been watching me."
"You've been stalking me." He pushed the soup bowl away from him.
"You've got a perfect technique." House shrugged. "You give them that puppy-dog look and let them think they found you. And of course they never get the chance to notice that the ones who find you are the ones who won't ruin your marriage. Believe me, I'm filled with admiration. So. Does Daphne know about your latest affair yet?"
"I'm not," Wilson said, with an explosive puff of laughter. He caught House's pale blue gaze of disbelief. "Really, I'm not."
"And again I say, you called me and asked me out without any good reason or even any juicy gossip?"
"I called you because I wanted to talk to you," Wilson said. He met House's eyes. "Is that so strange?"
"Yes." House picked up the last stalk of asparagus. "When you call me unexpectedly, it's usually when you want to make yourself feel better by comparing yourself with me. You usually want to do that because you've just had an affair. Or you're having an affair. Or - as with that rugged electrician - you're about to have an affair and you want to make sure you're normal by establishing - " he thrust the stalk into his mouth, closed his lips around it, and bit down. His throat muscles worked. "That you're more normal than I am."
Wilson swallowed. "Greg - "
House gave him another wide-eyed look, eyebrows raised. "Please, don't tell me. You're not gay. You just like electricians."
"I like women."
"You like everybody," House said. He looked exasperated. "Stop giving me that doe-eyed look. What do you think, I'm going to tell everyone at Princeton Plainsboro?" He mimed lifting up a phone, spoke into it: "Hey, everyone, Doctor Wilson likes the boys."
"No, I guess not," Wilson said. He smiled, because smiling pleasantly was habit, feeling chilled.
"I'm not gay either," House said. "I just like electricians."
"Oh," Wilson said. And then, understanding hit. "Oh."
"And plumbers. The guy who came to fix my burst pipes last winter? He was hot." House smiled, swiftly. "In fact, `burst pipes' is a euphemism. When a guy says he has burst pipes, you know he's really been dreaming of a handsome plumber with a big, big plunger."
"You're gay?"
"Wait, I'm sure there's another word for it. Starts with b."
"Bastard," Wilson said.
"No, I don't think that's it." House rubbed his thumb slowly across the side of his face, brushing the nascent stubble. "Why have you been watching me?"
"Why have you been watching me?"
"Because I'm an inquisitive, arrogant jerk." House lifted his head and raised his eyebrows. "Now how about you?"
House was sitting with his back to the wall. The waiter's appearance, just as House finished speaking, probably didn't take him by surprise: Wilson twitched. He sat back in his chair, unspeaking, and looked at House as the waiter collected their plates and another waiter served their main course.
He wasn't smiling: he was eyeing Wilson with a kind of intent curiosity. Wilson looked back at him.
The waiters went away. House picked up his fork. "Should I be nice to you?"
Wilson began to eat. "If you do, I'll probably want to kill you."
House raised his eyebrows. "Are you going to tell me why you want to be cheered up, or should I just tell you jokes that should be obscene and not heard? Did you hear the one about the two fags sitting in the hot tub?"
"I want to kill you."
"Not while I'm eating." House tucked a forkful of ragout into his mouth: he made a noise of orgasmic pleasure. "Wait till I've had dessert."
After a moment, Wilson asked "Who else knows you're...?"
"Oh, we're not going to have that conversation," House said. "Who cares? You don't. You want to know if I'm going to tell anyone about you, and I already told you, no."
"Okay," Wilson said, after a moment. Actually, he found he did want to know. He'd made his own trade-off, quite consciously, much as a man who feared he might be an alcoholic might swear off drinking. He liked women, he got along with women, he enjoyed women, and it was no hardship - not really - to avoid relationships with men with any link to hospitals or medicine, no matter how attractive he found them. If anyone else he knew had made the same trade-off, he'd never know who he was: that was the nature of things. House had a reputation, both good and bad, but no one had ever passed on any juicy rumours about his sex life. He'd made the same trade-off, and made it more successfully. How House had found out -
"How did you find out?"
"I pay attention," House said.
"How long have you known?"
House glanced down at his plate. He wasn't smiling.
Wilson put down his knife and fork. "I confirmed it for you, didn't I? Just now."
House looked up. He shrugged a little. "When a patient's symptoms could mean they've got either one of two different syndromes, and there's no way to tell which, what do you do?"
"Wait," Wilson said. "Do more tests. Take a more detailed history."
"Yeah, because that way, even if the patient dies, no one can actually sue," House said. "No. Pick the syndrome where you'll see immediate results from treatment - results one way if that's what the patient's got, results the other way if it's not that syndrome - and treat that syndrome. Either the patient recovers, or you figure out what the patient's got and treat that, and the patient recovers. Most of the time. More often than if you follow the lawyer's route and do nothing."
"How many times have you been sued?"
"That's what hospitals carry malpractice insurance for," House said. His gaze on Wilson was steady. "Your symptoms indicated either a marriage on the rocks or an advanced case of closeting. You have a lovely wife to whom you are apparently devoted. But you've had three affairs in the past eighteen months - that I knew about."
"You said five - "
"Ah, no one counts one-night stands at conventions," House said. "Why else does anyone ever go to pharmaceutical conventions? What else are they good for?"
Wilson picked up his knife and fork again, and began to eat. He was staring at House. "It could be both," he said.
House eyed him. He said nothing at all for a long moment, neither sympathetic nor sarcastic. "Why did you call me this afternoon?" he asked at last.
"I told five patients they were going to die today," Wilson said. He heard himself. "Well. Not die today. Next week, next month, three months, maybe six. But they're going to die."
House stopped eating momentarily: he looked at Wilson with eyebrows raised. "I know you're the boy wonder of oncology - "
"Please," Wilson said, with some feeling. "That was dumb when I was in my twenties. It's beyond dumb now."
"....but you must have done this before. What was so bad about it this time? Were they all cute kids, or mothers of three, or expectant fathers?"
"They said `Thank you'," Wilson said. He was keeping his voice calm and controlled. "I told them they were going to die, and how long it was going to be, and that we couldn't do anything to help - and they thanked me."
"What, all of them?"
"It happens sometimes," Wilson said.
"Yeah, but - all of them?" House looked genuinely astonished, and fascinated. "Can I hire you to talk to my patients? They never thank me, and I mostly save their lives."
"It happens too often," Wilson admitted.
House rolled his head. "Ah, the curse of being too damn good at your job." He sat back in his chair. "You ever bet, Jimmy?"
"Sometimes. Why?"
"I will bet you ten bucks you never get a patient to thank you again."
"What?"
"Simple bet," House said. He raised his finger: "Every time you tell a patient he or she is going to die, and he or she doesn't say `Thank you', you owe me ten dollars. Every time he or she does thank you, I owe you ten." His hand twisted, snapping his fingers shut against his palm. "I'd make it more, but you'll be paying double alimony soon."
It was a moment before Wilson could speak. He swallowed twice. "Okay," he said finally. "I'll take that bet."
"Life sucks," House said. "But there's always dessert."
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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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