Habits
"Have you ever told Wilson that hands-on-hips thing he does makes him look ridiculous?" Minerva asks Rona. It's late evening; he's lounging on the couch beside Wilson with a beer in one hand, and Minerva is lounging on top of Rona, leaving him to enjoy the knowledge that Wilson is actually relaxed for a change. "Kind of endearing," she adds, "which is totally proof that bonding hormones have infiltrated our brain—but ridiculous."
Wilson looks mildly affronted. "I do not look ridiculous."
"You might if I were smaller," Rona says. "As it is, you remind us of Mom when you do that." Wilson makes an amusing, embarrassed kind of face, and Rona continues, "It's no worse than House reminding us of a five-year-old when he plays with his toys in the office."
"It's my process," House says. "It may look like playing with toys, but really—"
"Don't be pretentious, Greg; we hate that," Minerva says, and looks back at Rona. "It's playing with toys. Sort of white noise for our brain so we can zone out."
"Yes," Wilson agrees. "To the point where you can ignore every function for which you're paid to be in the building."
"I don't ignore them," House says. "Chase does the charting and the billing and whatever paperwork."
"Which conveniently leaves us nothing to do until the next exotic disease walks in," Minerva says. "And we have it on good authority that Chase does some of the most detailed charting in the hospital. Valuable skill."
"And definitely not one he learned from you," Rona says. "Although if you want detailed—James insists on recording seconds in the times he puts into our charts."
House gives Wilson a look of unholy glee: that little detail will be worth some serious mockery at the right time. "That just hits new depths of anal-retentiveness," he says. "Chase at least stops at minutes."
"You could out-detail everyone if you wanted to do your own charting," Rona says. "We're talking to the man who once fired a secretary because of some mystical message sent by her shoes."
"They were too pointy; the woman was obviously a masochist," Minerva says. "And you can't talk; Wilson's shoes are French." A pause, then, "And yours are completely prissy, unnecessary and ridiculous."
"I only wear those when it rains or snows," Rona says. "Forgive me if, unlike some people, I prefer not to track mud everywhere."
"Since I'm the one who always has to clean it up—" Wilson begins, but Rona breaks in.
"James," she says warningly.
"What?" Wilson says.
"I think that's shorthand for 'the martyr complex isn't attractive,'" House says.
"Don't try to do her job, Greg," Minerva says. "We hate it when she tries to do mine, and we refuse to be a hypocrite."
The look she gives Rona is a loaded one, practically a conversation; House parses the emotional feedback loop into an eloquent combination of exasperation and affection that affirms his and Wilson's agreement to live with each other's respective crazy habits.
Do you have to do that out loud in front of him? he says to Minerva. Sure, Rona had done the same thing with Wilson, but…
She meets his gaze, unmistakably smug. It's always good to remind them I'm the boss of us, she says. It stops them from thinking they are.
She does, he concedes, have a point.
END.