Title: A Man of Letters

Chapter 1: The Little Black Book … of Death!!!

All she had to do was scan a little bar code on a little box. That's it! I mean, somebody's got to do it, but … no, you know what? Nobody has to do it. They have self checkouts at other stores so she is replaceable. And how can she screw up when untrained people check themselves out everyday? Simple. Scan the box, scan the coupon. I shouldn't have to wait around for 15 minutes while she tries to figure it out! I even told her, I told her, that she should just forget it. That stupid coupon was worth less than what I make in a minute so why did I even bother? And why didn't I just insist she stop and finish checking me out? Oh no, I had to be all polite and try to convince her it wasn't a problem. That's why I had to waste more of my time and wait for her to get off work.

What, House thought. Wilson waited for some teenage cashier to get off work? This was going to be good! He wet his lips eagerly looked for where he lost his place.

I saw her walking out and I realized she wasn't walking towards what I thought was the employee parking. No, she couldn't even do that for me! No, she was walking the other way entirely. I put the car in drive and by the time I got to the other side of the parking lot she was waiting at a bus stop. I pulled up and smiled. She remembered me and smiled back and I asked her if she needed a lift. I even told her I wasn't some kind of insane serial killer. She smiled and got in the car. At least she made that part easy.

House was gnawing a hole in his bottom lip. He could just see Wilson doing his Prince Valiant routine. He turned the page in the journal.

I drove towards her place and made small talk before I told her I just remembered a stop I needed to make that would only take a minute and was on the way. She didn't mind. I pulled the car into that plaza on Burton where all those stores are closed. She should have had alarm bells going off in her head, but she was completely engrossed in her lip gloss. When I walked around the car and yanked the passenger door open she looked surprised. Not scared or worried, just surprised. Something about that pissed me off even more. I dragged her out and pushed her on the pavement. Now she looked scared.

House's eyes went wide. What…the…fuck?

She started to get up so I had to push her back down. She tried to move away so I had to stop her. I stomped on her with my left foot right in the center of her abdomen. It didn't feel like I thought it would so I tried it again a little higher. I felt some ribs break. I started jumping on her torso like me and my brothers used to jump on our parents bed. When I finally stopped to catch my breath, I realized she was dead. I picked her lip gloss up off the parking lot where it had rolled, got back in the car, and drove home. I was immediately angry again when I got home and realized she packed the eggs sideways and two of the dozen were now broken. That bitch!

That was not what House was expecting from Wilson's diary. He thought this was going to be about him. Sure, he thought it would be a lot about coping with Amber's death and dying patients and whatever else his therapist thought should be recorded, but ultimately House had assumed it would be about him. Maybe it would be about how he killed Amber or how he had put himself in harm's way again or how he had embarrassed Wilson in front of the mom of some cancer kid, but it would still be about House. It wasn't suppose to be some weird confession to killing some dopey cashier. He flipped through the pages looking for his name.

Blood…broken…gurgling…knife…gash…strangling…stab…maim…kill…

Then he saw a name - O'Shea. House knew Dr. O'Shea. He'd tried to make friends with O'Shea, but he gave up when Wilson came back to work.

I was just walking down the hall. It happens that way a lot. I just wanted to get from point A to point B, but because I'm me, people think it's perfectly ok to stop me. I don't really know O'Shea, but he felt like he knew me well enough to call after me while I was just walking down the hallway. I stopped and he caught up to me and said we needed to talk. So I thought he might need a consult or something. I followed him into a conference room and he told me he knows I'm not gay. Yeah! He interrupts my day to tell me about my sexuality. I could feel the anger bubbling up inside of me and I tried to think of the peaceful mantra I'm suppose to repeat at times like that. But I couldn't concentrate on that because O'Shea put his hand on my arm and said that he had put a lot of thought into the whole not gay, but sex with men thing and if "things" didn't work out now that I was back I should give him a call. Then he squeezed my arm and kind of wriggled his eyebrows.

House moaned. So that kind of had to do with him, but he had hoped Wilson would never hear about it. He was surprised Wilson hadn't mentioned it. He would have thought Wilson would have teased him mercilessly about it. If the positions were reversed he would have. He wished the entries were dated. The book was only labeled "Journal II". Only a few dozen pages were filled in so House guessed that it was maybe 20 entries. This one was about half way so maybe it was as little as a week ago. Then again, it could just as easily been two months ago. House could picture Wilson writing in his journal every chance he got so this might only represent a few days. He'd seen Wilson writing in it yesterday so… House gave up calculating and accepted he simply didn't have enough data to make an educated guess. He returned to the O'Shea entry.

Did he think "things" weren't going to work out? Was he hoping "things" would go badly for me? And who was he to presume there was any room for somebody like him in my life regardless of how "things" turn out? I didn't even think about it. I grabbed his tie and pulled as hard as I could. He lost his balance and I pushed his head into the wall. He fell to the floor out cold. I couldn't just leave him there like that so I picked up and leaned him against the wall. I grabbed his head and checked to see if his neck was broken. It wasn't. I bashed his head into the wall again and again and again until I heard a popping sound as his skull gave way. All I could think was how am I going to explain the dented drywall to Cuddy.

Whoa! House knew there were 8 kinds of wrong going on there. Most importantly he would have heard if O'Shea or anybody else had been found dead in a conference room. Then there was the lack of worry about disposing of the body. House was suddenly concerned when he didn't place "Wilson wouldn't kill somebody" at the top of the list. He could kind of see it. He wasn't sure if Wilson would be so messy about it though. He'd probably have everything planned out to mitigate any risk. What was he thinking? Wilson wouldn't hurt anybody. But the seed had been planted in House's fertile mind. He read a few more entries about bludgeoning waiters and knifing that obnoxious ped's nurse who thought she was oh so cute before putting the book back behind the desk drawer where he'd finally found it. He made a mental note that the last entry was the cable guy Wilson pushed off the ladder. House planned to check back to see just how often Wilson was updating his Little Black Book of Death.

* * *

Two days later House saw Wilson sitting in the cafeteria alone scribbling frantically. He watched him for a few moments before he decided he should join him. Maybe if he caught him in the act Wilson would share his murder fantasies with him. Wouldn't that be better than writing them down? Then they could make it their little joke instead of Wilson's new pathology.

Wilson was so engrossed in what he was writing he didn't notice House until he loudly pulled out a chair, turned it around, and dropped onto it as if his body had just discovered gravity.

"What cha doing," House asked propping his head on the back of the chair. Wilson quickly closed the journal and then tried to nonchalantly hide it. House nodded towards it. "Kinda big just for digits. You keeping stats now?" Wilson gave him an annoyed look that wasn't even close to his best.

"What do you want, House?" He tried to sound annoyed instead of anxious.

"Nothing, just seeing what my best buddy is up to."

"Just filling out paperwork. You know, that work we do with paper that you avoid. How's your patient?" Wilson hoped the patient was doing badly so House wouldn't mind changing the subject.

"Patient? Meh. Solved that one two hours ago. Not even a real mystery. Redid the labs and found the old ones were wrong. Yawn. On the other hand, the mystery of what you're writing there is fresh and new!"

"House, I told you. I'm filling out paper work." Wilson knew he didn't sound convincing. House gave him that cold, blue stare that people could still see when they closed their eyes.

"The book, what are you writing in the book?" House pronounced each syllable deliberately.

"It's private."

"It's no big deal, you know." Wilson was surprised to hear that. "Lots of people keep journals." Wilson had a brief second of relief before the panic set in.

"How do you know it's a journal?" Wilson clasped it in his hands protectively.

"I've read it," House said and the blood drained from Wilson's face.

"What," Wilson managed to wheeze out as he began hurtling down the panic attack highway.

"I saw you with it the other day so I decided to take a look. Are you ok?" Wilson was not looking ok.

"House! It's private," his voice was barely above a whisper.

"Stop being so melodramatic. You've got nothing to be embarrassed about." Wilson eyebrows tried to meet his hair line in surprise.

"Do you, um, do you mean that?" Wilson felt the panic turn into a different kind of emotional upheaval.

"Yeah, seriously. I've got my little fantasies, too, you know." Wilson's face turned red. He couldn't believe they were having this conversation.

"Are any of them about me," Wilson asked hesitantly.

"Of course not," House said not noticing the sinking look on Wilson's face. "Mostly Cuddy, but you know how it is when you work closely with people. I've had plans for Cameron, Chase, Foreman, Taub…"

"Taub," Wilson exclaimed.

"Sure! In fact, there are times I'd love to do to Taub what you wrote about doing to O'Shea." Now Wilson was just confused.

"What I wrote about O'Shea?"

"Sure and what you did to the cashier? I don't even need a particular reason to want to do that to 13." Wilson suddenly realized what House was talking about.

"Right. You'd love to jump on her in the parking lot…"

"Jump her, jump on her, whatever, just don't make me talk to her." House smiled. "Isn't it more fun to talk about murder fantasies than writing about them?" Wilson nodded enthusiastically. "So why don't you ever write about me? I would have thought I'd be your favorite character." Wilson tried not to laugh.

"For you I'd need a whole book," Wilson said gripping the book tighter as he stood to leave. "I've got a patient appointment to keep. See you at lunch."

As Wilson turned to leave House noticed the glint of gold from the gilded edges of the pages. It was striking as he knew the journal he read didn't have gilded pages. So much for the renewed feeling of camaraderie he'd been feeling. Maybe the reason there was no mention of House in Wilson's Little Black Book of Death was because there was a Wilson's Big Black Book of House's Death. He was going to have to get his hands on that book.