A/N: Ok. This was supposed to be a one-shot, but then spncsifreak reviewed. And we all know what can happen when we get reviews…at any rate, they inspired this chapter. Enjoy my rambling if you can.
By: Still Hadley.
Disclaimer: I do not own House M.D. any more than I am fluent in ten thousand languages or deny my Welsh heritage.
Foreman, Chase and Cameron walked out of the room, heading off to do their respective testing on the patient.
Of course they didn't see House after they'd left the room. They didn't see his labored breathing. They didn't see his pain. And they didn't see him collapse from fatigue onto his desk, his arms around his head, trying to relieve the waves of pain attacking it.
But someone else did.
Wilson strode into the room, tripping over a chair on his way in. It fell to the floor, cracking with a snap. But he didn't care about a stupid piece of wood. He cared about House.
Wilson felt his forehead. House was burning up. He should've heard Wilson come in, because his entrance wasn't exactly quiet, so either he was in so much pain he had to block everything out, or he'd chosen to ignore him. Wilson brought forth from his lab coat a bottle of pills: ibuprofen, for the fever and headache. He lifted back House's head, forcefully making him swallow them. His head would be pounding later from moving it around now. But his fever would be reduced, and that was enough for Wilson.
He screwed the cap back onto the ibuprofen and pocketed it once again. No evidence. Before leaving, Wilson capped House's ever-present Vicodin bottle and stowed it in his bottom desk-drawer. His habitual pill popping would not be of any help in this situation, and Wilson thought it best that his favorite 'candy' not be in sight. The oncologist quietly strode away, turning off the lights in House's office. But he stayed and watched for a little while; from a place House couldn't ever find him. Just to make sure he'd be okay.
House's breathing returned to a normal pace after a short while, and his temperature went down. But his headache still pulsed loudly, and he was glad that he had remembered to turn out his office lights. But wait…he hadn't. He never turned them off. And so it happened that as pondered how his office lights turned off, House fell asleep, right back on his desk, completely unaware of the twin pools of chocolate eyes watching carefully and protectively from across the hall.
EDIT: A special applause to the 'Anonymous' reviewer whose critique made for the update. Constructive criticism at its best, people. I love people like that.
