Happily Never After

Author: Storm

Cast: Hilson (friendship/pre-slash); Huddy.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Greg House. Including his creators. And theirs.

Summary: House didn't hallucinate his one-night stand with Cuddy. Wilson wishes he had. (Eight interconnected pieces of microfiction).

Notes: Set at the end of Season Five, but inspired by 5-9.

"You're singing!"

Wilson put down his pen in astonishment as House threw open his door to warble a few notes of Dude Looks Like A Lady at him. He scrambled out from behind his desk. Dodging assorted pot-plants given to him by a horticulturist with liver cancer, he made it to the doorway in time to watch House, hip thrusting energetically and strumming his cane, careen into the diagnostics office. He trotted down the corridor, shoved the glass door open and, bracing it there with his foot, put his hands on his hips.

"You got laid!"

"Yeah, dude! I hit that and it was totally hot."

"Cuddy?"

"Cuddy."

"Seriously? You didn't just take too many Vicodin and hallucinate? Cuddy?!"

"Morning, Dr. Wilson," Cuddy swept past him into the office and House up in an embrace. "Hey, Greg."

"Oh. Erm. Hi—whoa. Whoa. Hello! I did not need to see that."

House grinned, his mouth plastered in crimson sunrise lipstick. "Told ya."

"Yeah. Okay." Wilson held up his hands. Exchanging a stunned glace with the Ducklings Mark Two, who were gawping through the glass doors of the DDX room, he backed out into the corridor. "I think I wish I were hallucinating."

***

Since his wish hadn't come true, Wilson didn't care how weird it looked that he was walking down the corridor with his hands over his ears. House was still talking and, unfortunately, Wilson's lip-reading was pretty good. He was threatening to draw sharpie diagrams on the glass walls of his DDX room.

"All I asked," Wilson repeated, for what felt like the hundredth time since he'd bumped into House in the elevators, "was if everything went well. I didn't need a commentator's play-by-play complete with the soundtrack to Girls Gone Wild – which, by the way, you should probably not have as your Cuddy-specific ringtone."

House grabbed his wrist and pulled one hand away from his ear.

"Oh, lighten up. Sex by proxy is all you're getting."

"Who's the proxy for whom in this voyeuristic little scenario of yours?"

"Who do you think? I'm inimitable. You're a blow-dried slickster who paints his toenails and Cuddy's basically a bloke with boobs."

"You realise that this would make you gay?"

"Gay? I'm as joyful as a spring morning. I'm also comfortable with my sexuality. Heteronormativity, smetronormativity."

Wilson stopped at the door to his office. "Go away. Go…do whatever it is that you do."

"That would be Cuddy. I'm so gone."

***

"I need to do Cuddy."

"Aren't you already doing that?"

"In deference to your newly developed sense of squeamishness, I was trying to segue—never mind. I need a script. Two scripts," House corrected. He propped his chin his hands, which were wrapped around the silver domed head of his cane, and smirked expectantly at Wilson across the desk.

He kept jotting down his last patient's medication regime changes. "I'm not giving you that much Vicodin."

House snorted. "Not two Vicodin. One Vicodin. One Viagra."

That did make Wilson look up, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "What's the matter, old man? Can't keep up?"

House smiled the smile of the supremely unamused. "More exercise equals more pain. More pain equals more pills. More of those pills, means more of the other pills. Cough up, kingpin."

Reluctantly, Wilson reached into the pocket of his lab coat. He'd got into the habit of keeping his prescription pad on him since House's predilection for using him as a pharmaceutical dispenser had devolved into full-blow larceny. He filled in the requisite dotted lines with his chicken-scratch.

Passing it over, he was surprised when he not only didn't lose his fingers, but House seemed to hesitate before taking it.

"Hey," Wilson said, keeping his tone light and careful. "You okay?"

"I'm doing Cuddy." House scragged the script and bolted for the door. "I'm super!"

***

"Super, House, that's just super, makes me feel so much better…Yeah? Well, I love you too!" The phone crashed into its cradle hard enough to make the whole contraption jump an inch off the desk. "Jackass."

Wilson hovered in the doorway, torn between obeying the vigorous beckoning and fleeing for the clinic, where there would be witnesses enough to forestall any misdirected murderousness. He was glad he wasn't in his office. He was pretty sure that when he got back he'd find a phone-sized hole in the wall punched through from the diagnostics office and the sad remains of the phone itself teetering around on his still spinning chair.

"That headache you're massaging away? It's called House."

"He lied to me about giving up his apartment!"

Wilson put his hands on his hips. "Seriously?"

"I know!"

"No, I mean you seriously paged me nine-one-one to bitch about your boyfriend?"

"Seriously – House needed you for that clinic consult on the pole dancer with the thirty-four double gees this morning?"

Wilson shuffled his feet sheepishly. "Okay. The apartment: House likes to have an escape route."

"You mean he thinks we're going to break up."

"No. I mean he doesn't think that. He has an escape route so he never has to use it."

Cuddy crinkled her forehead. Her mouth opened. Her pager bleeped. She jerked it off, glared at it, and softened.

"House?"

"He gave up the apartment. Wait! Does that mean he thinks we're going to break up?"

"No."

"Wilson – come back!"

"No. Go and talk to him. Or at least order him a new phone."

***

"I lied," House announced over the strains of Girls Gone Wild shrilling from his cell phone.

"Nice of you to make a public service announcement. Are you going to answer that?"

"No." He switched it off and shoved it under the couch cushion. "I lied about the being super."

"Ah."

"The doing Cuddy part. That's super. The rest…sucks."

"The lack of hosiery, awesome powers and swishy cape?"

"No, got, and no—"

"Your serendipitousness isn't a superpower."

"That isn't a word – and how do you know?"

"Okay, conceded. What's wrong?"

"I'll give you a hint: everything else!"

"Uhhum…"

"Okay. Fine. It's got twenty-four teeth, can't form complete sentences, and wets the bed."

"Rachel?! You—" Wilson dropped his voice and glanced around, appalled at the idea that they might be overheard by the empty cream leather chairs of his three-piece suite, the Mets' players on the Tivo'd game, and their beer bottles. "You hate Cuddy's kid?"

"I moved in with Cuddy, not the rugrat."

House prodded at his lower lip with the neck of his bottle. His breath puffed out in a sigh, making an eerie, discordant note as it rippled over the liquid trapped inside the tapered glass.

"What part of single mom did you not understand?"

"The dad part," House started softly, then, catching sight of whatever was on Wilson's face rolled his eyes impatiently. "Geez, forget it already. There's no need to have a coronary. I only meant that if I have to play the Sesame Street theme song one more time I'm going to slam my fingers in the lid of the piano."

***

"What now?" Bracing his hands on the lid of the piano in Cuddy's front lounge, Wilson vowed never to answer another weekend phone call from either of his friends ever again. House was sulking on the sofa, palm wrapped around his pill bottle. Cuddy was cradling her daughter on her hip, her free hand holding onto House's cane while Rachel sucked on the top.

"Cuddy's upset because her child is a genius."

"I'm upset because my eighteen month old daughter is a stoner!"

"Hey, that cap is supposed to be childproof!"

"You gave her your Vicodin, House – as a rattle!"

"And I gave her Ipacec. She's fine!"

"Vicodin. Baby. A whole world of no."

"Baby. Screaming. Galaxies were sending out interplanetary transmissions begging no."

"She's a child! It means she needs something – some attention, some sleep, something to play with. She doesn't do it just to annoy you!"

"Lisa." Staring at the unfinished case files heaped up around House and the shadows of pain and exhaustion under his eyes, Wilson had to interrupt. "Neither does he."

***

"I need a new script."

"I gave you a refill yesterday. If you need a new script, where's your E.R. admission slip and proof that Cameron had to pump your stomach?"

"Not Vicodin. Ambien."

"If you need to wear yourself out, go and have sex."

"That reminds me. I need a refill on the Viagra too."

"House, I am not medicating you through your entire relationship."

"I haven't slept a whole night in over a month."

"Okay. Have less sex."

House growled low in his throat. "There is no sex. Turns out, for a morning person, she's not so into three a.m."

"You tried to have sex with her at three a.m.? No, wait. Who are you trying to drug to sleep?"

"Me! Bourbon only works on the under twos now."

"You're drugging Rachel to sleep?"

"Cuddy is drugging Rachel back to sleep. After I wake her up with my pacing. Of course, she is the one who wakes me up. And then my leg hurts. Hence, the pacing."

"House." Wilson steepled his fingers together and studied House over the top of them. "Go and talk to her."

***

"Wilson said talk, not shout!"

"Wilson says, Wilson says. If Wilson says blow him, you going to do that too?"

"That's not talking – that's mocking!"

"That's not talking – that's screeching! Any second now dozens of glass walls are going to come shattering down."

"Wilson is not taking responsibility for that. Or this," he announced, reluctantly walking into his office and the blazing row going on inside.

"Simon! You said—"

"Yes, Wilson, you said—"

He blinked as two lists were thrust into his face. Cuddy's was typed up in small font, numbered bullet points that started with do the washing up, progressed through no piano after nine p.m. and finished around get up early enough to look after Rachel while I'm showering. House's was handwritten on the back of a prescription slip: more sex, less screaming, more sleep. Wilson's heart twisted painfully, but he kept his face stern. He couldn't take responsibility for this, either.

"I said talk not write to each other. And definitely not to me. This whole creepy three-way thing is over."

"Wilson, please, just once more—"

"For old time's sake."

"Shut up, House."

"Wilson. Seriously. Fix this one and I'll blow you."

***

"Really?" Wilson coughed as smoke was blown into his face. "You have to do that on the oncologist's balcony?"

"Oh unclench." House blew the next stream out over the city. "If you don't do something daring once in a while people will start confusing you with Foreman. You should have another affair. Or get married again. It's been two years since you risked knocking someone up."

"Hmm, dead girlfriend. Wonder if that has anything to do with it."

"Not unless you're into necrophilia."

Wilson shuddered. "You're getting some, so now everyone has to get some, is that it?"

"Just you. Threesome?"

"No, thanks. I really don't get off on being scared out of my wits."

"Twosome?"

"With you or with her? Not that either of you are any less scary alone. House," Wilson gently took the cigarette out of his friend's hand and ground it out on the wall between them. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You're finding new ways to kill yourself over nothing?"

"Slow death. Painful. But oh so much fun."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

Shoulder to shoulder, they watched the last sparks of the cigarette fade and the ash skitter away. The stub rolled backwards and forward, trapped in a groove in the brick. House flicked it off the wall. Neither watched it plummet.

"Since you don't have your own place anymore, I bought a new couch. It's there, if you need it."

"Thanks, Wilson."

***

"I took Cuddy back to my apartment last night." House spoke to the X-ray of the cancerous tumour lodged in a patient's brain. His back was to Wilson's desk, his attention trained on the brightly illuminated board. "Rachel was with the babysitter. We had dinner, drank wine, mocked a movie together and made love. It was amazing."

A protest that he was busy died on Wilson's lips. He shifted his pen from the file he was annotating and slowly drew a line through the next meeting listed in his appointment book.

"House," he said uneasily. "You gave up your apartment."

"Yeah. So," House spun around, a kind of ruthless animation infusing his voice, "It turns out that I barged into her office, yelled at her until we broke up and then scared the hell out of the new tenant in 221B Baker Street."

He strode over to the desk and flung down a handful of prescriptions, some written in Wilson's hand, some Chase's, some Cameron's. Wilson shuffled through them slowly. The Warfarin he'd been on since the infarction. Vicodin. Xanax. Viagra. Ambien. There were dozens of others. Other painkillers. Other sleeping pills. Even antidepressants. All filled out and rendered. He must have harangued the slips back from Marco in the pharmacy to stage this little show.

"House." Wilson moved around his desk and approached tentatively, his eyes flicking between the savage aloofness on his friend's face and the quaking of his hand on the top of his cane. "What's going on?"

House's façade cracked and he gazed at Wilson in blank despair.

"I'm hallucinating."

[End].