Disclaimer: I do not own House M.D.

House limped back to his office, humming indistinctively into the air. He approached the glass door, peering inside to see his team waiting impatiently. Kutner was amusing himself with his pencil, Taub was tapping his fingertips against the table, Foreman was reading the newspaper, and Thirteen was rifling through a skinny book.

House opened the door, hobbling to his desk to pick up another patient's file.

"Male, thirty-seven, vomiting blood." He announced, slapping the blue folder onto the table.

"What the hell took you so long? It's two o'clock!" Foreman reprimanded, furiously folding together his newspaper.

"I had lunch with Wilson."

"Oh, how's he doing? With… Amber dying last night and all." Kutner questioned awkwardly. Thirteen interrupted his inquiry.

"For three hours?" she asked suspiciously.

House glanced at Thirteen. "Well, I'm sorry if I don't inhale my food." He replied sardonically.

"No one has lunch for three hours."

"Male!" House boomed, ignoring the chatter among his team, "thirty-seven, vomiting blood!" he repeated insistently.

"Unless they weren't eating food." Thirteen continued, eyeing her coworkers.

"He probably just needed comforting." Kutner said reasonably.

"He doesn't need comforting, he needs a diagnosis!" House said firmly, tapping his cane on the table.

"Not the patient, Wilson."

House glowered at Kutner. "Good try, Kutner. Close, but no cigar! Perhaps it's neurological. Foreman, you're cue!"

"Nobody needs comforting for three hours. And nobody eats for three hours."

"Heads up, Thirteen." House warned, tossing his whiteboard marker at her. She caught it deftly, staring up at her boss in confusion.

"I get to write on the board?"

"If it's the only way to shut you up. Come on, now, male, thirty-eight, vomiting blood–" House encouraged, staring fixedly at his team.

"I thought you said he was thirty-seven." Kutner cut in.

The older man glared at him. "You," he said playfully, "are going home with a note."

"Unless you want us to think that you had lunch when you really did something else that you don't want us to know about."

House swiveled around, giving Thirteen a calculating glare. He grabbed her wrist, marker poised in her fingers, and pressed it to the board, scribbling vomiting blood for her.

"There could have just been blood in the stool." Taub reasoned logically.

"Yes, but then that means that he's not dying, and what's the fun in that?" House pouted theatrically.

"Bleeding ulcer in the stomach?" Foreman volunteered.

"Gastritis?" Kutner supplied.

"All good offers," House looked over his shoulder at Thirteen expectantly. She crossed her arms.

"Maybe it's a side effect a recent surgery he had. We'll have to see how much he vomited and what color it was." She proposed.

"Ask him questions, find out everything. Run an EKG."

Three doctors rose from their chairs obediently, leaving the office. Thirteen stayed firmly by the whiteboard, closing her marker and raising her eyebrows at House.

"So," House began conversationally, "if you're not going to leave to run tests, I might as well ask how the results of your blood test was."

Thirteen stiffened. "Does it matter?"

House stroked his chin thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes at her histrionically. "Or maybe you don't want me to care. Maybe there's a hidden meaning behind all of this."

She sighed.

"Two can play this game." House challenged, twirling his cane.

"What game?"

"The analytical examination of my having lunch with Wilson. You presume that maybe I didn't eat at all. Maybe I wasn't with Wilson at all. Maybe I have a life outside of gossiping with my coworkers."

"Maybe," Thirteen began, "you lied."

"Everybody lies," the diagnostician dismissed unimportantly, "you don't think I was with Wilson?"

"No, I think you were with Wilson."

"You don't think we had lunch?" House ventured, "because perhaps I could have poisoned his soup. That way he and Amber would be forever united in Heaven," he said dramatically, wiping a pretend tear from his eye, "even though she's probably in Hell."

Thirteen shook her head, stuffing her hands in her white hospital jacket. "Nobody eats for three hours. And nobody comforts anybody for three hours. Especially not when you there were patients waiting for you to diagnose them."

"What do you want me to say?" House asked, propping his cane up against the wall as he slumped down at his desk. "That Wilson and I are having a secret affair and that we had sex in the janitor closet? Four times?"

"I don't want you to lie about what you did with him." She said, tapping her fingernails on House's desk.

"And if you think I'm lying, you must have an idea about what we did. What did we do, Thirteen?"

"Why don't you tell me?"

House looked suspiciously up at the woman before he turned to face his computer, "I appreciate you trying to set me up with Wilson, but as much as he likes needy, damaged people, you're looking at the wrong cripple."

"Why won't you just admit that you like him?" Thirteen yelled exasperatedly.

House slowly swiveled his chair around to face her as he looked Thirteen up and down. "You have an EKG to help your coworkers do."

"You're not denying it!"

The older doctor grabbed his cane, stepping up from his desk and limping towards the door. "Thirteen, just because you swing on both sides of the fence doesn't mean everybody else does too." He admonished playfully. Thirteen jogged after him.

"I'm not wrong about this," she pressed, "aren't you at all curious?"

"Oh, of course," House said sarcastically, nodding feverishly at Thirteen, "I like adventure just as much as Indiana Jones. Asides from the fact that I don't own a whip and he doesn't have a cane we're practically brothers." He limped towards the elevator, pushing the button with the end of his cane. As the door binged loudly, Thirteen stood in front of the entrance.

"Normally I wouldn't be pressuring this, but I'd like to know that you're not a man who's so screwed up he can't even love anyone anymore."

"I had a wife. You should be having this conversation with Wilson. This is the second person he's slept with that's died." He prodded Thirteen away from the elevator with his cane.

"You were jealous of Amber! She was taking up all of Wilson's time that you wanted to have with him!"

"I was jealous of Amber," House played along, "but not because of Wilson. Because she had such great hair!" he pined dramatically. He hurriedly pressed the elevator close button. It binged again, leaving Thirteen on the other side.

"House!"

"EKG!" he yelled, just before the space between the doors shrunk into nothing.

--

"No ulcers. We checked all the linings of his stomach." Taub reported promptly.

House stared among his team, all reporting various news about the patient. Thirteen was silent, swinging her foot to an unheard beat. Everyone besides House was oblivious to the tension between them.

"When I went in to do an MRI he had a seizure. This wasn't just a small tear in the arteries." Foreman said, shaking his head.

"Who told you to do an MRI?" House chastised.

"You're not the only one in charge." The other man said firmly. House scowled.

"So we have a new symptom," he announced, turning to face the whiteboard. He froze.

On the side of the board in meticulously bold writing were the words Denial – Resentment – Bargaining – Depression – Acceptance. He whirred around to face Thirteen, who was grinning foolishly.

"No more marker for you." he said sternly. "These are not the patient's symptoms."

"No," she said calmly, "but they are the symptoms of another patient."

"We have two patients?" Kutner asked surprisingly.

House ignored him. "Foreman may have been right. This could easily be neurological or cardiovascular. He'll probably have another seizure soon."

"How would you–" Kutner began, but was interrupted by a sharp trilling of his beeper.

"I think that's our seizure."

All four doctors hastened from their seats.

"Thirteen," House called out, "three doctors can handle the seizure. In my office."

As they both walked to the other room, one hobbling, Thirteen ventured to ask, "So was I right?"

House ignored her. He accusingly pointed his cane at her chest. "Why are you doing this?"

She was taken aback by the question, "Why does it matter why I'm doing this?"

The diagnostician slammed his cane on his desk. Papers that had been haphazardly piled atop of one another fluttered to the ground. Thirteen winced.

"You're going to die of Huntington's and you're playing matchmaker! The only reason you're doing this is so that when you die you know that you've made a difference in the world and that you're life wasn't useless! You're still going to die as big of a moron as everyone else!"

"You're going to die alone." Thirteen said, "I'd rather die knowing I've made somebody else happy then knowing that no one is going to be mourning over my casket."

"I'm not alone! Wilson is still my friend!"

"Just because you're friends doesn't mean you can't be more." She persisted firmly.

"Our friendship is screwed up as it is. If I push it, it's going to break."

"You don't know that!"

"Neither do you!" House yelled back, "go and help Taub and Kutner with the seizure."

As the brown-haired doctor walked silently away with one last lingering gaze, House resisted the urge to slam his cane on the desk again. He limped over to the whiteboard, staring at the words Denial – Resentment – Bargaining – Depression – Acceptance like they held the answers to the future.

He really needed to find a new team.

AN: Good news! My birthday's coming up! Well, actually, my birthday's not until October, but because my family is going to be traveling a lot over my birthday, my mother ventured to have it celebrated over the summer. So I am. A lot of people have been asking for my address so they can send in birthday presents, and if you're a friend I've befriended over fanfiction enough that I know you well (you know who you are!) feel free to FF PM me for an email address so I can send you an address :D

Other than that, here's another update for Almost Undamaged. I'd like to thank all of the supporting reviews and story alerts/favorites this has gone under! I love you guys! :P

I want to dedicate this chapter to Paige and the Loquacious Table, who's been a wonderful friend. :D I didn't know that there was a person alive who shared as many ships as I do. She's a great girl :P