Title: THE A-Z OF HOUSE
Author: Mer
Characters: Mostly House and Wilson – paired or not paired, depending on your interpretation – with a dash of Cameron/Chase and others.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Sadly, I didn’t get House, Wilson et al, for Christmas.
Warnings: Spoilers for “Hunting” and “Daddy’s Boy”
Summary: 26 little bits of House.
Author’s Note: Not an original idea, not playing by any challenge rules (other than the ones in my head), and not even particularly clever, but it was a fun writing exercise.


A is for…

They sit across from each other in the cafeteria at what House thinks of as their table. Wilson has a dismayingly healthy lunch: a roast beef sandwich that he had made with mustard just to annoy House, a plain salad and an apple for dessert. No chips, no fries, nothing House would want to steal off his plate. House’s own dry Reuben – no pickles – is no longer satisfying. He can tell by the slight smirk on Wilson’s face that he is well pleased with himself and this new game. House is pleased too, though he hides it. Mischievous Wilson is his favourite Wilson. He watches Wilson nibble at the apple, pretending to enjoy it more than he possibly could. House snatches the apple out of Wilson’s hand and runs his mouth over the already marred flesh, almost like a kiss. Then he bites down hard.

B is for…

Wilson sits on a deck chair, head back, eyes closed, letting the dying rays of the sun play across his face. A shadow passes over him and he cracks open one eye. House is perched on the low wall that divides their balconies, staring down at him. He closes his eye. A steady tapping disturbs his peace and he opens both eyes. House isn’t looking at him this time, but his cane beats an annoying pattern on the wall. Wilson closes his eyes again. A moment later, a shower of pebbles rains down on his face. He brushes them off and sighs. This time he gets up and slides over the wall to House’s side. They sit side by side in deck chairs until the sun has set and it’s time to go home.

C is for…

The first thing people notice about House is his cane. Their eyes are drawn to the outward symbol of his disability and they think, “cripple.” What they can’t see is the brilliant mind and caustic wit, and that gives House an advantage in every new encounter he has. It is the only benefit he has gained from the infarction – that and good parking spots. He would trade it in a second to be able to run again. Those who know him best no longer register the cane consciously, at least until he jabs them in the back to get their attention or (accidentally) trips them. It is just another visual statement, like his designer t-shirts, his expensive sneakers, his stubble. Sometimes even House forgets about the cane. But the first unsupported step brings a reminder too sharp to ignore.

D is for…

House sits in his office, lights off, staring out the window to the balcony. It has been a hard day – one patient dead, two confrontations with Stacy, and three hours in the clinic. His mind is racing overtime and his body, unable to keep pace, is twisted with stress and a pain that the Vicodin can’t touch. He sees the light go off in Wilson’s office and counts down the 147 seconds it takes to walk between oncology and diagnostics. Wilson doesn’t knock; he just walks in and stands beside House’s chair, evaluating. He places one hand on House’s shoulder, plumbing the level of tension. “Lean forward,” he says and deftly, patiently untangles the knots in House’s muscles. Normally, this kind of contact would not be allowed. There are different rules, though, in the dark.

E is for…

Two pairs of eyes, one brown, one blue, look at Cuddy sheepishly. The owner of the brown pair, at least, is sheepish; the blue eyes are glittering with something that has nothing to do with remorse. They have their good cop, bad cop routine down to an art form: Wilson disarms her with seeming regret, while House keeps her off-balance, expecting something far worse than eventually occurs. She should be angrier – after all she has just discovered them playing chair badminton across the bed of a comatose patient – but she knows through her sources that Wilson received a package from a lawyer this morning. The brown eyes, she can see now, are red-rimmed and swollen. House’s methods for cheering up his best friend are unethical and eccentric, but they are effective. “See me in my office,” she snaps. “And bring the game.” As she pretends to stalk away, she sees one blue eye close in a wink.

F is for…

“How do you stand him?” Foreman asks, after a day in which House has mocked, baited and disparaged his team. Wilson doesn’t answer. It’s not a question that can be answered, at least in any way that Foreman could understand. His friendship with House simply exists, inexplicable and constant. It is, in fact, the only constant in his life outside of death, and for that alone he treasures it. House is House – frustrating, vexing, confusing, and hurtful. He is also fascinating, challenging, entertaining and fiercely loyal. Even when House mocks, baits or disparages him, Wilson can’t imagine an alternative. Nor would he ever want one. All he knows is that somehow having House in his life makes him a better person. Perhaps that is the only answer.

G is for…

At 12:59pm, House finds an excuse to conclude the meeting. Not so much conclude, really, as just standing up and leaving the room. His fellows watch as he settles behind his desk and pulls out his portable television. Just because the walls are glass, however, doesn’t mean his actions are always clear. Wilson glances at his watch. “Time for his soap,” he says and gets up to join House. He doesn’t enjoy the show so much as House’s sarcastic commentary and speculation on future plotlines. Sometimes he thinks House gets his more creative treatment plans from television scriptwriters. It’s strangely relaxing, though, to worry about the unbelievable medical problems of fictional characters for an hour before he goes back to trying to solve the endless puzzle of cancer. Besides, the nurses on the show are really hot.

H is for…

House is not a touchy-feely kind of guy. Even before the infarction, he avoided unnecessary physical contact. He embraces his mother, of course, but only gives his father a slight nod, which is just fine for both parties. House comes by his aloofness honestly. Later, he points the motorcycle east and thinks about riding down the shore, but after a few miles, the speed isn’t enough to ease the discontent his parents’ visit stirred in him, so he turns the bike back. He parks outside Wilson’s house, honking until Julie opens the door. She scowls when she recognises House and House suspects Wilson will be enduring the silent treatment a little longer. She shouts something behind her and Wilson appears, shrugging on his golf jacket. “Come for a ride,” House says. Wilson glances at Julie, sighs, and walks over to House, who tosses him the helmet he picked up on the way over. Wilson puts it on silently, slides behind House and holds onto his jacket. As they pick up speed, Wilson leans forward, his chest pressed against House’s back, arms crossing over House’s stomach. They hit 150mph and House has never felt safer.

I is for…

The day Wilson’s divorce is finalised, he finds an iPod on his desk. He knows it’s from House because there is a handmade card next to it bearing the encouraging message “Happy Day of Freedom. Don’t screw it up this time” in awkwardly formed letters. The picture on the front bears the signature colour selections of one of his patients, a six-year-old boy undergoing treatment for leukemia. House had commented approvingly on the purple sun, green sky and orange grass of the landscape Wilson had pinned to his bulletin board, so Wilson is unsurprised by the commission. He scrolls through the playlist that House has thoughtfully pre-loaded and smiles at the eclectic selection of break-up songs. He suspects that House has been gathering them for quite some time in anticipation of the occasion. He puts the earphones in, leans back in his chair, and listens to “Heartbreak Hotel.”

J is for…

Chase suggests the bar, which is unusual enough that House agrees to join his fellows for a drink after work. They’ve been working hard, but their latest patient is on the mend, so a little celebration is in order. It’s exactly the kind of bar House likes – dark, smoky and anonymous. There is a bottle of aged single malt hidden below the bar, a piano in the corner and a young woman who plays the standards and sings in a voice that is dark, smoky and anything but anonymous. He wonders how long Chase has been holding out on him. He sips a 16-year-old Islay and his fingers tap a counter-melody against the tabletop. A lifetime ago he would have joined the lady at the piano and later she would have joined him in his apartment. Now he leans back and lets the music and whisky wash over him. He can almost taste happiness in the syncopated notes.

K is for…

When no one answers the door, House uses his key to get in. Wilson gave it to him when he first moved in, smiling tentatively, as if expecting him to refuse it. He didn’t refuse, but he’s never used it until now. The phone call worried him, though. It’s been a long time since he’s heard that level of desolation in Wilson’s voice. The entranceway is empty, literally, and so is the dining room. Sometime over the past two days, Julie has moved out. Days that Wilson spent taking extra shifts at the hospital and nights spent sleeping in his office. He can see Wilson now, sitting on the couch, his head bowed. At least she left him the television. He turns towards the living room, a sarcastic comment already forming on his lips, when he sees something on the window ledge by the door. A single abandoned key.

L is for…

Wilson is well versed in the difference between lust and love. That is why he can admire Cameron’s beauty, appreciate her company and still understand that the occasional stirring of his loins is merely a physiological response. It’s different with Cuddy. Sometimes when their eyes brush during a meeting and they share a grin over some ridiculous pronouncement, he feels a connection that has always before resulted in marriage or divorce. He tries to keep his distance. Lisa Cuddy has no interest in becoming Mrs. James Wilson the fourth and matrimony is the only response he knows to love. He doesn’t know what he feels for House. It’s not lust, nor is it any kind of love he recognises. But it’s deeper and more complicated than anything he’s ever felt in his life, and it’s more addictive than Vicodin.

M is for…

He is talking with a patient, explaining a complicated treatment plan when the familiar visual distortions begin, black spots crowding his vision, a vague haze around the woman’s head. He blinks and tries to ignore it, but his concentration is shot and he wraps up the meeting as quickly as he can. It’s not soon enough. The migraine strikes with full force before the door has even closed behind her and he is barely able to grab the garbage can before the contents of his stomach make an unwelcome and abrupt exit. House chooses that moment to walk in. “Bad sushi?” he asks, but when Wilson looks up at him, eyes lidded against the painful light, he bites back another quip and takes charge. The lights go out, the shades are drawn and Wilson is led unresisting to the couch. House disappears and returns a few moments later with a glass of water, a bottle of pills and a damp washcloth. Then he sits on the arm of the couch, humming softly, keeping watch, until the pain recedes and Wilson sleeps.

N is for…

When Wilson is in meetings or with a patient, he thinks of himself as James. It’s a solid name, dependable and competent, everything he wants people to believe he is. James is responsible, successful and not particularly happy. When he is alone, he thinks of himself as Jimmy. It’s what his friends and family called him when he was growing up and it makes him feel safe and loved. Jimmy doesn’t have to watch patients die or wives leave. House calls him Jimmy with equal parts mocking and affection. The former is the price for the latter, but it’s a bargain he made long ago, and he doesn’t mind. Sometimes when his wife calls him Jim, he wonders who she is talking to. When he is with House, he doesn’t think of himself at all.

O is for…

Sometimes Wilson wonders why Cuddy moved the oncology offices next to diagnostics. He supposes it’s no different than a teacher isolating trouble students at the back of the class – though he resents being thought of as a trouble student. He’s only ever wayward when he’s with House, which would seem to argue against moving them closer together. Wilson has never actually questioned her, though. He likes his new office. It’s larger and has room for a couch, which is handy if a patient is feeling faint and needs to lie down. Or if he’s working late and is too tired to drive home, which happens more and more as his third marriage spirals down to destruction. It’s also easy to drop into diagnostic sessions, drink Cameron’s coffee, and keep an eye on House. Which he finally decides is Cuddy’s real reason for moving oncology. A little reorganization can go a long way in avoiding lawsuits.

P is for…

It’s almost always night when House plays the piano for Wilson. During the day they are at work, of course, and on the weekends Wilson doesn’t spend trying to fix his marriage, they watch football or play video games with the same fierce competitiveness that used to infuse their tennis or golf games. But once the sun has set, their viewing choices exhausted, and dinner cleaned up, House moves to the piano and starts to play. His fingers move over the keys with a grace that is denied him in too many other things. Wilson loves to listen to him play, loves the way the notes hang in the night air, expressing everything that House can never say out loud. Occasionally, House lets him join in on an improvised duet. Wilson isn’t a good pianist, but he has an ear for music and he’s always been able to follow where House leads.

Q is for…

One Saturday, near House’s birthday, but not so close that they would have to acknowledge it, Wilson drives House into New York to see a matinee performance of Man of la Mancha. It is House’s favourite musical, based on one of his favourite books. He has always thought Cervantes’ delusional knight was just misunderstood. He knows that windmills really can be dragons. There are dragons lurking in the bodies of his patients. Sometimes he gets knocked off his diagnostic horse jousting phantom symptoms and sometimes the dragon does too much damage before he finally kills it. But he always sees the dragon. Wilson grins indulgently when House sings “The Impossible Dream” loudly and off-key on the ride back – his own Sancho Panza in a Swedish car and French shoes.

R is for…

House collects rumours the way other people collect stamps or coins. He gathers them for their potential value – and for their potential power. Of course rumours without facts are really nothing more than a bluff, but House has always been an excellent poker player. The rumour, for example, that Cuddy will sleep with anyone who gives the hospital a million dollar donation is paying dividends at this formerly tedious dinner. It’s not true – he started that one himself in the bathroom less than an hour ago – but the speculative looks that the pharmaceutical CEO has been giving Cuddy over dessert have boosted the entertainment value of the evening immensely. He watches as the CEO’s wife flirts not very subtly with Wilson and wonders if another well-placed whisper will be enough to meet the evening’s fundraising goal. Cuddy never lets him forget that he cost the hospital $100 million. The least he can do is get some of it back.

S is for…

He doesn’t sleep much any more. Chronic pain and a mind that can no longer be exhausted into submission have taken care of that. The Vicodin rarely gives him a respite longer than three or four hours. On a good night he might manage five or six hours, but good nights are few and far between. He envies Wilson’s ability to sleep anywhere – in empty exam rooms during long shifts, stretched out in his office, at the bedside of a dying patient. Or curled into the arm of his couch, while House watches the late movie. He wonders if he should wake Wilson up and send him home, but the one place Wilson doesn’t seem to sleep anymore is with his wife. He turns off the television, spreads a blanket over Wilson, and goes into his bedroom to stare at the ceiling until dawn.

T is for…

House isn’t sure when he first started keeping track of Wilson’s ties. It is a little suspect, if he stops to think about it. Men don’t notice other men’s clothing, but House isn’t like other men and he has always been good at noticing odd details. Like how Wilson tends to wear the same ties on the same days of the week, as if somebody has sewn Monday to Friday on five conservative, boring, expensive ties. It’s an excellent diagnostic tool though. A new tie indicates a change in Wilson’s life: a new girlfriend; a special event; a change in marital status. Tuesday’s tie on Wednesday means Wilson has spent the night in his office, or – if Tuesday’s tie was new – someplace he shouldn’t have. When House finds himself surfing the tie section of the Brooks Brothers website, he knows he’s spending too much time with Wilson. But he doesn’t care.

U is for…

House and Wilson have an understanding. Or rather House lets Wilson think they have an understanding. If Wilson doesn’t want to be disturbed, he pulls down the blinds in his office. Otherwise, his office is open hunting – or hiding – grounds. House hasn’t yet broken this agreement, mostly because Wilson tends to forget to pull the blinds, even when he’s with a patient, and it’s more satisfying to torment within the rules. Today, though, the blinds have been drawn since shortly after House made the spectacularly ill-advised comment that with diagnostic suggestions like that it was a wonder Wilson didn’t kill more of his patients. It is only after Wilson turns pale and stalks out of the boardroom that Cameron tells him Wilson lost two patients that morning. House desperately wants to throw pebbles at the window until Wilson pokes his head out and yells at him. But the blinds are drawn and they have an understanding.

V is for…

He measures his days in oblong white pills. One every 4-6 hours, closer to four than six, sometimes even less. House empties the bottle across his desktop, forming random patterns that define his life. That one is for clinic duty, that one for the budget meeting. One for morning and one for night; one to start and one to end the day. He knows it is an addiction, but it’s the only thing that works for him. Wilson walks into his office without knocking and his eyes are drawn to the spray of pills. House can see him count and calculate. The play of emotions across Wilson’s face – worry, frustration, determination – is as familiar and predictable as the pain in his leg. He reaches for a pill (that one for Wilson) and waits for the argument.

W is for…

The team is gathered in the diagnostics boardroom, House wielding the marker like a conductor’s baton, adding symptoms in neat handwriting that is an embarrassment to the medical profession. The fellows start shouting out possibilities: Cameron leading off with her old standby, lupus; Chase coming up with an auto-immune variant that House knows he read about in one of Rowan’s papers; Foreman throwing out vasculitis, just for shits and giggles. If Wilson were there, he’d suggest paraneoplastic syndrome, but Wilson is stuck in a transplant committee meeting, so House suggests it for him. He then shoots that and all the other suggestions down. Ritual completed, they can move into a free-flowing discussion that results in three contradictory treatment plans, one of which House hopes will reveal the final hidden piece of the puzzle. By end of day the patient has coded twice and developed three new symptoms, none of which shed any light on a solution. House wipes the board clean and they start all over again.

X is for…

House is not the only one who understands gating mechanisms. The day Julie calls to tell Wilson she wants a divorce, he hits the door to the balcony so hard the glass stars. House, who has been expecting something like this for more than a month, finds him sitting on his couch, cradling his fist against his chest, staring blankly at the floor. He barely flinches when House examines his hand gently. Apparently the gating isn’t working after all. He doesn’t say a word as House helps him up and leads him down to radiology. The x-rays reveal a thin fracture to the small finger metacarpal, and the lingering traces of previous breaks. Wilson has never learned his lessons in either marriage or divorce. House makes a note: the death of love presents in broken bones and ruined flesh.

Y is for…

As soon as he sees her eyes – pupils so dilated they flood the blue in black – Chase knows Cameron is high. But of course he doesn’t need to see her eyes to know that. Her hands pushing him against the wall, exploring his body greedily, holding his face still while she plunders his mouth, tell him everything. He knows he should stop her, knows she’s not acting rationally, but his body has taken over his mind. She pulls him into the bedroom, unbuckling his belt and fumbling at his clothes with a desperation that sets him on fire. She lets go of him to pull off her blouse and he takes a step backwards, his mind making one last effort to exert control. She recaptures his face in her hands. “Don’t you want me?” she whispers, breath hot against his ear and he groans. All he can do is nod.

Z is for…

Wilson has a miniature Japanese rock garden in his office. It was given to him by his first wife, and neither relocations nor remarriages have displaced it. His patients find it soothing and so does he. He enjoys raking even patterns in the white sand, smoothing out the past and starting over. House also enjoys it, but not for reasons ever intended by Zen monks. Wilson frequently finds his rake getting caught on buried objects – pennies, buttons, and once, disconcertingly, a tiny doctor figurine. There are times when Wilson regrets giving House a key to his office, but it’s preferable to having him break in. On occasion House will leave a message in the sand: “Bring Beer” or “GH Rm214” or “Yankees suck.” On Valentine’s Day he draws an anatomically correct heart. Wilson can’t bring himself to rake it away for days.