Hi, everyone.
I have more or less decided (unless inspiration hits me hard sometime in the future,) that when I am doing one-shots and drabbles, I am at my best. So, I'm going to stick with these until further notice.
This fic was inspired partly from my own fear of clowns (they are quite possibly the creepiest beings to exist on this planet, aside from mimes and stinging bees.), but mostly from a truly weird dream I had last week. The dream really made no sense, so I modified it to fit the House fandom. Hope ya'll like.
Disclaimer: David Shore just called, guys. He searched random, irresponsible teenage girls on Google, and found me.
I now own House, because David Shore, being the brilliant producer that he is, figured it would be a GREAT idea to hand over the rights to the main source of his income to me. And, even though I now own it, I am still spending my time writing fanfiction about it. You should feel privileged.
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If one happened to walking into, past, or even in the general vicinity of the office of Greg House, MD ('Divine Healer', a yellow post-it below the chrome letters read. It had been a bet,) on this particular Thursday morning, the sheer volume of the scream that emanated from said office would have been enough to startle a (maybe not so) little scream of the listener's own from their mouths. It was frightening in both its volume and intensity, and because any hospital regular, be they patient or doctor, could quickly identify the scream as coming from their resident Oncologist and everyone's golden boy, James Wilson.
Almost everyone in the building would wonder what evoked such terror in the normally unflappable doctor, and some might even ask (once it was deemed safe), but none would venture close enough to Wilson's desk so that they could see the jack-in-the-box that sit on its cluttered surface, still flopping back and forth lazily.
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"Wilson. Cuddy says that her head Oncologist better get his ass down to Peds' for his rounds, and soon, or she's going to condemn him to attendance at that budget meeting she 'so graciously' - Her words, not mine – got him out of."
"So, why are you here? Why do you care whether I give all my 'cancer kiddies' – Your words, not mine – their daily checkup?" Words laced with equal parts sarcasm and wary suspicion. "If anything, you would usually be itching to piss Cuddy off, which my not showing up for rounds at all would certainly accomplish."
"You know me too well. I don't care, and I'm here as your accomplice. I tell you she's looking for you, so you can avoid her at all costs. I like hide and seek." He looked around. "I was also a little curious as to why you're hiding here, of all places. It's kind of morbid."
"The morgue is quiet, and pretty much the last place anyone would think to look for a person. Which brings up the point-" Here, Wilson paused and put his hand on his hip, narrowing his eyes at his best friend, his My Best Friend Is A Stalker and I Hate It pose. When he looks back on how many times he uses this pose in an average week, he feels slightly uneasy."-How did you know where I was? I turned off my cell phone and my pager. Do you have me bugged or something?"
To smother what would have quickly turned into an uncomfortable silence, House said "Of course not. What do you think I am, a stalker? Anyway," He said hurriedly, before his friend could open his mouth," I get the avoiding work thing, but why are you choosing right now to start shirking your duties? Besides the puking, hairless, infected children, what's in Pediatrics that makes the morgue seem appealing? It's cold in here," He added as an afterthought.
Wilson handed House his lab coat, and miraculously, he put it on. There was no one here to see him but Wilson.
House was a master of detecting tells, and as soon as he asked the question, Wilson became a veritable epitome of tells. He broke eye contact, shifted in his seat, licked his lips, and started to tap his finger gently on the stainless steel surface of his make-shift desk. "I just don't feel like it today, is all. I don't…I didn't get a lot of sleep last night…I'm tired. Just tired, that's all, and what are you looking at?!" The last bit of his sentence turned more defensive that he had meant it, because he did not like the way the other was looking at him, with such intensity. House was thinking, and in his situation, thinking on House's part could not end well on Wilson's part. Not at all.
"You never 'just don't feel like it'. You're Wonder Boy Oncologist, you practically live for those bald-headed kids." He ignored his friend's muttered 'Why can't you just call them children?', and plowed on with his one-sided diagnostic. "I happen to know you got plenty of sleep last night, because you took advantage of my hospitality again last night, (Again ignoring the 'that sounded wrong, House" from his companion), "and you snored like a hacksaw the entire night. And, you never miss your rounds, ever. So, what's suddenly different about Peds' that would force you into the company of rotting corpses?"
Wilson closed his eyes and waited for the penny to drop.
"Oh, wait! Cuddy brought in that Clown Group thing this week, didn't she?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued," It was! Why would that…Oh, no. Wow. You're not seriously telling me…" His best friend seemed to have melted into the morgue stool he was sitting on, and the sheer impossibility of that under other circumstances confirmed what House already suspected.
"What are you, five? How is it even possible for a man your age to be afraid of clowns?"
"I'm younger than you."
"Yeah, but I'm taller."
"What? That has nothing to do with- Ow! What-?"
Still dragging him by the arm to the elevator, House smiled sadistically. "We're going to the circus, Jimmy."
At Wilson's pathetic squeak of fright, House actually laughed.
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And ever since, a week ago, he had actually had to hide behind his crippled best friend when a man with white make-up and a red nose had approached him, he had been equal parts paranoid and ashamed. His absolute certainty that House would somehow use his childhood phobia against him (he was expecting a sneakily-taken picture of his face as white as the clown's that he was trying to hide from posted in the clinic, or possibly a stuffed clown suit in the passenger seat of his car) was finally starting to dissipate by the time Thursday rolled around, aided mostly by the fact that House had stopped bringing it up at every opportunity. That could have been simply because he had run out of people to tell, he rationalized, but it was comforting nonetheless (So far, the List of People Who Knew About Dr. Wilson's Weird Phobia featured all of House's new team, all of House's old team, Nurse Brenda, Coma Guy, the night janitor, and House's poker buddies, all of whom already thought he was gay and/or banging his cancer patients regularly anyway).
Thursday was the first day he had thought it safe to walk into his office without sending some intern in first to inspect it and orders to report anything that looked out of place, anything of the Clown variety.
Aside from one report from a pimply med student that his Vertigo poster seemed out of place (he was quite offended), things had been completely normal, and that was why, on Thursday, he walked into his office without taking any of the necessary precautions.
And if he had looked in on House's office on his way to his own and his little surprise, he would have found it empty. He would have, instead, found his best friend bent over on his side of their shared balcony, cell phone at the ready and set on video.
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Ever hospital has its stories, passed down through generations of nurses. Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, having Dr. House on its staff, had more than it's fair share of tales. Some of them were even true.
It occurred to Wilson, as his friend came out from hiding and brandishing his cell phone (which he had no doubt contained the past thirty seconds, the jack in the box and his screaming bloody murder to be the highlight of every staff party and gathering for months to come), that the story of how the youngest Head of Oncology that the hospital had ever seen had been deathly afraid of clowns, and somehow (the details would fade in time), this oncologist had been found out by his best friend.
And paid the price.