42. darling

As he grudgingly rose out of sleep, House realized that he was living with a madman.

Normally, the combination of frantic movements and tossing clothing signaled that something exciting and extremely fun was about to occur. Unfortunately for House, this particular morning had managed to twist the two into something both irritating and boring.

A hanger rattled. Clothing rustled. Bated breath was held and then expelled with a frustrated sigh. Hands and hair strands scraped against one another. Clothing rustled again, defied gravity for a brief moment, and then fell onto the bed with a soft 'whump.' The cycle repeated with varying stages of audible dissatisfaction.

House shoved his face further under the pillow and scrunched his eyes against the dull light seeping through the blinds. It was, however, to no avail. He was officially awake. With an unhappy rumble of defeat, he pulled his head out from under the pillow and rubbed his hands across his shut eyelids. "Is there a reason you're burying me in your laundry?" he mumbled grumpily, his voice husky from sleep.

"I have a benefit dinner at seven o'clock tonight," Wilson replied straightforwardly, apparently too distracted to notice House's petulant expression.

House cracked an eye open and squinted at their alarm clock. He groaned. It was worse than he had thought. "Wilson, I think you're confused. We're in New Jersey, not Krasnoyarsk. It's seven o'clock. In the morning."

Wilson, still lost in his button-down world, answered distractedly, "This meeting is not something to be taken lightly. A $300,000 dollar check is not something you accept while wearing some threadbare old shirt. Forgive me if I want to look presentable for the donors, if I want to give the impression my department deserves the donation." Apparently he decided his current blue dress shirt fit the category of "threadbare old shirt" because he hurriedly unbuttoned it and tossed it on the pile with the others.

House, when he looked at that shirt among the others, honestly couldn't see a difference compared with the few still hanging in the closet.

He scrutinized Wilson as the tortured man surveyed his remaining selection of shirts. "Have you thought about the logic of that as carefully as you should have?" he asked as Wilson selected a white shirt. "You could swindle at least $10,000 more if you put on your best Tiny Tim impression." House then proceeded to put on his best Tiny Tim impression. "Please, sah, take pity on this poor, wretched doctor."

Wilson turned halfway to House, dividing his gaze between the older man and the mirror. "Well, not all of us pull off the Sympathetic Cripple as well as you."

"It's a gift." As if hearing the word "cripple" had reminded House's leg that it, indeed, was crippled, the damn thing starting throbbing with pain. House grimaced as he reached over to the bedside table, grabbed his Vicodin, and popped the top open. House shook out two pills into his palm. With a brief glance at Wilson, he swallowed one and dropped the other back into the bottle.

As the medicine dissolved into his system, House's mouth tilted upward into a grin of burgeoning genius. With a careful amount of fake sincerity, he mused, "You know, I think it's time I gave back to the hospital for all it's done for me."

Wilson stopped fidgeting with the shirt's collar and turned to stare at House warningly. "If you barge into that dinner dressed like Tiny Tim, I swear I'll cut you off for at least two months, probably more." With a final look in the mirror, Wilson began unbuttoning the white shirt with a little frown of disappointment.

Defiant to the end and willing to sacrifice a few french fries for the sake of art, House declared, "Fine. I don't need your oncology bloodmoney anyway,"

"Money and sex," Wilson elaborated smoothly.

"…Killjoy," House muttered.

Wilson just chuckled, threw the offending shirt onto the bed, and turned back to the closet.

As House stretched his legs under the sheets, he kicked a shirt off the bed with a look of distaste on his face. Even though there was something oddly alluring about being buried under a cover of Wilson's shirts, there was something disturbing about it, too. They were Wilson's shirts, but without Wilson wearing them, they were just empty, starched husks. They smelled crisp and clean, like detergent and bleach. The sleeves were neatly rolled down and unwrinkled. There were no gaudy ties adorning the necks. It was…unnatural.

House quieted that unnerved part of himself by turning his attention to Wilson, reminding himself that he had nothing to worry about—Wilson was still here in all his shirtless glory.

House had gotten so used to seeing Wilson naked that sometimes he took the sight for granted. He decided he should rectify that injustice immediately and let his eyes rove across Wilson's back.

Wilson held up a mustard-colored shirt to himself. "What about yellow? Do you think—" he stopped himself mid-question and turned back around, muttering to himself, "why am I asking you?"

House picked up a shirt from the pile at random and tossed it at Wilson. "Here. Wear this one,"

Wilson gave the shirt only a second's glance before tossing it back on the bed with a sigh. "I've already looked at that one," he said mournfully, turning back to the closet again. He shifted a few hangers and leaned further in.

House rolled his eyes and lamented his lost sleep. He could be blissfully unconscious right now, but no, instead he was being forced to watch as Wilson shaved off two years of his life by stressing out over a shirt. Wilson's ridiculous anxiety was even making House jittery, and he didn't appreciate the second-hand stress. "Do you really think that if you dig your way to the back of the closet, you'll find a magical portal to Emporio Armani? Or are you just banking on the eighties coming back into style?"

"You could help instead of just offering useless sarcasm."

"Hi, I'm Gregory House. Have we met? Besides, I think you look fine the way you are now. You should lose the sweatpants, though," House said appreciatively as he gave Wilson an over-exaggerated and suggestive wink.

Wilson looked over his shoulder with an I'd-be-more-amused-if-I-wasn't-in-the-middle-of-a-fashion-crisis sort of look. "Thank you for your valuable input. I'm sure it would be completely acceptable if I showed up shirtless."

"Only if you want an obscene amount of one dollar bills tucked into your underwear. And, I mean, who doesn't want that?" House leered. When Wilson turned back around, House leaned over to the nightstand and grabbed Wilson's wallet. In an effort to more artfully embellish his point, he fished out a one-dollar bill and, with a mighty heave forward, tucked it into Wilson's waistband.

"House. Put that back in my wallet," Wilson admonished idly as his fingers hovered between a red and a brown shirt.

House did no such thing. He leaned back into the pillows and mused aloud, "Just think of it as a necessary sacrifice. Papa Wilson's gotta bring the chemo-bread home to the little cancerous kiddies somehow."

"I refuse to take part in your exhibitionist fascination."

"Okay," House acquiesced, turning his eyes innocently toward the ceiling.

Wilson knew House too well not to be suspicious of his quick compliance. "And if you send a stripper to the dinner, I'll make it at least six months," he threatened.

"I think they prefer the term "clothing-deficient entertainers,"" House explained as he played with the sleeves of one of Wilson's shirts. As he tossed it away a few seconds later in a spasm of boredom, a piece of paper fluttered from the pocket. Curious as always, House sat up to snatch the paper back. His brows furrowed as he attempted to decipher the note's curly handwriting.

Wilson, by this time, had noticed House's silence. Wary that House was planning something within the silence, he turned around cautiously. "House?"

House had finally decoded the message: James, darling, I think the cleaners were able to remove all of the coffee stain. Kisses, Julie. Oh, that's just disgusting. The "i" in Julie was dotted with a heart.

Wilson noticed the creased note that was in House's hand. Temporarily forgetting about whichever shirt was currently in his hand, Wilson asked, "What is that?"

With a distasteful flick of his wrist, House tossed the note to Wilson. "Here. See for yourself, darling."

As Wilson read the note, a brief flash of nostalgia crossed his features. "Oh. Huh." He turned the note over, shrugged, crumpled it up, and threw it successfully into the trash can. He walked over to the bed and picked up the shirt the note had fallen from. There was still a fairly-distinct brown splotch splayed across the front. "I guess I never wore it again, anyway."

"It's a good thing you divorced her. Just reading that made me nauseated." House held a hand to his stomach made a few revolted lurching motions. His eyes flickered to the coffee-stained shirt, which Wilson was still studying. "And she was such a liar, too. They didn't get all of the stain out at all. How did that happen, anyway, mister Clothing-Conscientious is my maiden name?"

Wilson laid the stained shirt back on the pile and looked at House. "Don't you remember? I was on my way out of my office to a date with Julie when you decided it would be fun to show off just how well you could juggle three cups of coffee."

House did remember. "I seem to recall there was some burning and screaming involved soon afterward? The screaming, of course, being you vocalizing your adoration for such a talented individual as myself and the burning being the fire of desire in your loins."

"Naturally. It was a fairly impressive feat until one of the cups spilled all over my shirt and scalded my skin in the process," Wilson admitted, his eyebrows giving away the sarcasm.

"Hey, I offered proper reparations for that scalding," House replied in his defense.

"You suggested I take off my shirt, wrap it around my head so the coffee stain showed, and become a vigilante that fought crime diligently despite public protest."

"And then you, being the respectable husband you were, went home and changed your shirt and went on the date anyway, despite the first-degree burns," House said with a roll of his eyes.

When House failed to make a further comment, Wilson looked at him questioningly. "Isn't this the part where you say "Hmm…interesting" and then employ some sort of Freudian logic to explain what my actions meant?"

House thought for a moment, replaying their conversation in his head. He slowly sat up and studied Wilson. "What was Julie wearing that night?" he finally asked, scrutinizing Wilson's reaction.

"I don't know. A dress, probably," Wilson shrugged unconcernedly.

"What did you two talk about at dinner?"

"It's been years, House. How am I supposed to remember—"

"Yet, you could recall almost word-for-word what I said to you on the same night," House gloated. He could almost forgive Wilson interrupting his sleep because of this early-morning revelation. House knew he was important to Wilson, but it was always gratifying to see these little bursts of further realization spreading across Wilson's face.

Even though his dysfunctional relationship with Julie was old news, Wilson still had to fight to hide an embarrassed blush. He attempted to transform it into annoyance as he put his hands on his hips and stared at House. "It really is amazing how the smugness makes you glow from the inside out. If I didn't know better, House, I'd say you were expecting."

Something about a full-front, half-naked, almost-blushing, hands-on-the-hips Wilson made House all the more appreciative that neither of them (well, at least House) had any reason to venture outside into the cold, clothed world today. "I'm expecting something, all right," House growled moodily. "Especially after you woke me up early and subjected me to your dress-shirt crisis."

Wilson either hadn't heard him or was ignoring him. As fun as jokes about Wilson losing his hearing in his old age were, House decided it was probably the latter. With patient and meticulous care, Wilson picked up the rejected shirts from their bed and hung them up in the closet once more.

House sunk back into the pillows and closed his eyes. There it was again—the scrape of hangers and rustling of clothing. At least Wilson wasn't sending out panicked like he had been before. Still, House wondered how much more of this insanity he could take.

After hearing what seemed to be an endless amount of shirts being re-hanged, House felt a heavy weight settle on the mattress.

House's eyes opened to a completely naked Wilson hovering over him. Wilson jerked his head backward slightly to indicate a lone, blue dress shirt hanging on the doorknob of the closet. He smiled and quirked an eyebrow at House.

"Crisis averted."