Author: lornesgoldenhair

Genre: House MD

Pairing: House/Wilson friendship and later Slash

Timescale: Early Season 6

Rating: T to be safe. M in later parts.

Date of Creation: Fall 2009

Summary: House has returned from the Mayfield and Wilson struggles with his feelings

Spoilers: Through to Season 6.

Distribution: Fanfiction. net, otherwise just ask.

Disclaimer: Not mine. David Shore owns everything.

Abdominal pain

Pyrexia

Visual disturbance

Peripheral Neuropathy

Rash

Kidney failure

Deranged LFTS

Respiratory failure

Death

?

The same list that was on the white board at home. The same frustrated squiggle of a question mark punctuated and emphasised House's irritation with this... disease... infection... thing that he couldn't see. Wilson stood outside the fishbowl diagnostics office with his arms folded so tightly that the pocket protector crushed against his chest and his lab coat became taut across his back, material straining. He shifted his weight, rocked on his heels, restless eyes watching House's movements as his friend paced back and forth inside the glass.

No epiphany yet.

Three more victims in intensive care. Two more days since the autopsies.

No conversation either.

House hadn't come home. Wilson couldn't be sure if it was work or avoidance or both. Certainly the three new men brought into PPTH were enough to occupy the diagnostician. Identical symptoms, completely different histories. Different work places, different friends, different interests, different holiday destinations, different pets, different taste in clothes, different way they combed their hair... The team had turned their worlds upside down hunting for clues, examined the minutiae of their entirely separate lives and come up with precisely nothing.

But they each followed the same pattern of symptoms progressing close towards Respiratory Failure, Death and House's question mark.

So House ordered them to 'test everything' in his inimitable style and his minions had scurried to laboratories with samples and stayed there ever since. The painted agar plates and sliced tissues from the bodies; peered down microscopes and dropped chemicals onto specimens with delicate pipettes. They reviewed scans and x-rays and drew more blood and ran more tests and drove from victim's house to victim's house to collect more things to experiment on. They'd find a bacterium and start a treatment and then realise that the diagnosis didn't fit all the symptoms. House would stand by the board and draw coloured lines around symptom clusters, insisting that 'one size has to fit all with this one, kiddies,' before ordering them back to lab to retest, retest, retest.

They were testing, he could still come home, take a break. The patients were on cocktails of antibiotics which seemed to be controlling at least the most extreme of the symptoms, slowing the progress, staving off death. He could come home, they'd call him if...

But House stayed. And paced. And glared at his white board and drew mind maps and flicked through textbooks and lay on his floor twirling his cane.

And he didn't speak to Wilson.

And Wilson, wary after House's response in the morgue didn't want to push. Something was fragile. Post Mayfield, post Vicodin, post kiss. He couldn't push, particularly now while House wrestled with this diagnosis, his first real foray back into the job and already two people had died. His confidence and his reputation rested on this, and at the back of his mind Wilson suspected that his sobriety and their friendship probably did too.

But it was killing him, the waiting. It was killing him to be in the apartment alone, surrounded by House's things, surrounded by the ghost of him flitting home to change, or grab a book and then leave before Wilson could stir. It was as though House timed his movements to Wilson's sleep, a circadian rhythm, coming and going wordlessly with sunrise and sundown so that Wilson would wake to the fresh scent of soap in the bathroom or the warm mist of a shower turned off minutes before, and nothing else.

House had slowed and stood again in front of his board, thinking; weary, edgy. Wilson stole glances up and down the hallway. He felt conspicuous just standing there, so obviously waiting and so obviously entirely unable to move on. He chewed at the inside of his cheeks and looked away as a colleague caught his eye questioningly.

'Dr Wilson?'

'Yes, Dr Montgomery?'

'Are you ... busy?' her face was sceptical. He didn't look very busy standing there like...

...Like a moron.

'Just ah... I was going to...'

'Consult?' she offered him.

'Er... yes.... consult... with House. Obviously.'

Obviously. Why else would he be here.

Right.

He rubbed his neck and tried to will away his embarrassment while she nodded unconvinced and excused herself.

He couldn't just stand there all day. It was ridiculous. He'd run out of opportunities and excuses to cruise past House's office hopefully. He just had to grasp the bull and the horns and...

Yeah. House's confidence might rest on the case but suddenly Wilson's rested on House. He didn't feel like he could function without his input somehow.

There needed to be some normality. Some indication that things in the world of House and Wilson were still OK. How many times had Wilson wandered into his office while House wrestled with a problem? How many times had he drunk his coffee, given him an ear, sat in front of his desk and offered House half his lunch...?

Offered is being a little generous. Had my lunch taken... Wilson mentally corrected himself.

The small smile that slipped to his lips when he thought of it helped him to decide. It eased his anxiety and reminded him of something. Wilson was only person House ever chose to spend time with on a voluntary non work basis and when they were at work, he was part of the process. He was part of what made House tick. For a decade he had been his sounding board on the most difficult of cases and he didn't want that to change now.

And if they kissed again? If they fixed these patients and slid back towards one another? His mind wandered softly back to the feel of House's lips. If they kissed again... well then he didn't want it to change this either. If whatever he was feeling towards House developed and grew, if House let his barriers fall again then that would be new and exciting and important. But he didn't want to lose this in the meantime. If he waited outside he could wait until Doomsday. Or at least until House solved the case. If he went in, swallowed down his uncertainties and worries, acted as he always had, offered his friendship and support , then...

The maybe he'll get his damned epiphany.

No big conversation then, Wilson had decided, and he stepped towards the office, the glass door opening and the windmilling of House's cane catching his eye as his friend turned to see who had entered the room.

House peering over his shoulder, cane twirling halted, he held it like a weapon, poised.

'Busy,' he said brusquely.

'How's it going?' Wilson asked neutrally.

'Two dead, three sick, I'm still here... apparently not very well.'

Tension.

A heavy pause during which House continued to scrutinize him. His body was still mostly facing the board, his head turned as though he might just as easily turn back to this thoughts and dismiss Wilson. It was all about the case, it was all about House's mind, about reconnecting with whatever had once made him brilliant.

Wilson stuffed his hands in the pockets of his labcoat in a bid to prevent himself from scruffing his hair nervously. He took a breath and shuffled his feet slightly, glancing up as he framed the single word question. Reconnecting on common ground, with the familiar.

'Lunch?'

House considered, tensed, turned away, glanced back at his list of symptoms. He tapped the handle of his cane against each one in turn, mentally processing them.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

The cane, held slipping lower through his fingers as he moved to the bottom of the list...

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

...to land vertically at his side in readiness.

'You buying?' he quirked over his shoulder, the shadow of an old sparkle again in his eyes. Wilson saw something soften in House's face.

'Always,' he replied warmly.

A twitch of discomfort crossed House's features as he turned away from the board.

'Wilson, listen...' he tried.

He's... Broaching this...? No. It's distracting him. He needs to focus. He's not ready for that yet.

'We don't have to talk about that now,' Wilson said and surprised himself by meaning it. 'When you have this solved, when we have space... not now.' He thought he could see the relief in House's silhouette, in the shape of his shoulders, relaxing just a little. Wilson smiled and turned to grab the door, hands mercifully free from his pockets as his confidence returned.

'I've been... avoiding you,' House admitted quietly, dropping his glance with his volume, forcing Wilson to turn back and look at him. He cut an odd figure, strangely distant across the open room. To anyone else he probably just looked like House after a rough night; jeans and a vintage T-shirt, rumpled button down, designer sneakers, messy stubble and nervous eyes. He looked like someone whose head was buzzing with overtired thought; he looked like... well, House on a case.

And different somehow.

Wilson tilted his vision just a fraction, switched his internal lens from colleague, to friend, to a fraction more.

He looks lost. He looks...

Wilson thought of the empty shower and the ghost of steam in the bathroom. Of the unwashed coffee cup and the scattered journals that littered the apartment. And of the cold grey light that had settled round his shoulders like dust as he had sat and waited for House to come home each morning and evening before sunset, after sunrise.

He thought of how much he had missed him, even in that two short days, and wondered if House had felt that way at all. Pacing his office, staring at his board, did he think about him? Did he want to come home? When he slipped into the apartment did he secretly hope to find Wilson awake? He tried to place himself in House's shoes. So he had avoided him and admitted it. Avoidance as a coping strategy, a basic hotwiring used from infancy upwards. Avoidance was simply fear.

'We'll talk about that too.... at... some point... but it's... it's OK... I get it...' Wilson replied vaguely, kindly, his eyes acknowledging House's veiled apology until House nodded shortly. There was another pause and then House drew himself up again and headed purposefully for the door that Wilson held open.

'Ruben, no pickles, I need brain food,' he was halfway towards the elevator before Wilson followed.

'Wilson come on!'

He drew the office door shut and trotted to catch House up, almost immediately slowing his pace again to match his friend's steady lurch in the direction of the canteen.

As the elevator doors closed Dr Montgomery slid back into view, and this time Wilson held her eye, nodded, smiled, leaned just a little closer to House. It was a start.

HWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHHWHWHHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHW

'Someone's lying,' House pressed the head of his cane to his lips thoughtfully. From where Wilson sat he could see the twitch of anxiety in House's jaw muscles.

'Who?' Chase. Wilson glanced at him.

'Patient, obviously, unless you guys have decided its more fun to keep stuff from me when we're trying to diagnose.'

'Which patient?' Cameron. Wilson glanced at her too.

'All of them. About...'

Wilson looked back at House. He could see him reaching down deeply, searching, struggling, coming back with nothing. No realisation.

'Something,' House concluded undramatically, sadly, his forehead dropping onto the cane and a sigh rushing out disgruntled from his lips. Foreman slumped back in his seat, irritated; Chase looked back down at his file. Suddenly House was standing.

'This is crazy! On a normal day we have one patient, one disease, one set of symptoms. This week we've had five identical cases. Five histories, five bodies, two of which we've chopped up and stuck under the microscope, and we can't find an answer. We know they're infected, we know they have botulism, but that shouldn't have killed the first two and the others aren't getting well. What are we missing here people? I don't have time for the other results to come back. There must be something in the five histories linking these guys together!' He looked round at his team, desperation in his movements.

'Well?'

'There's nothing,' Cameron said. 'They all lead totally separate, different lives.'

'No!There has to be something, five random strangers don't come down with the same weird symptoms within days of each other for no reason. They're lying.'

'We've asked them....'

'Well ask them again!' Anger, directed at everyone and no-one. Wilson tensed.

Cameron laid her palms out on the meeting table. 'There's nothing. Nothing we can find anyway.'

'Look harder.'

'We've run out of places to...'

'Tell them they'll die if they don't tell you,' Wilson said. 'Frighten them into it.'

The team stared at him. House raised his eyebrows and then lowered them slowly, catching Wilson's eye, connecting.

'Cool,' he muttered curiously.

'Wilson!' Cameron blinked at him in shock.

'What?' Wilson asked. 'It's true isn't it? It's not a lie. They probably will die unless you get to the bottom of this, wouldn't do any harm to place a little... pressure... on a few pressure points.'

'Excuse me? Didn't you used to be House's conscience?' Foreman asked him shrilly, 'Can't think of any other reason you'd be here. It's not cancer these guys have. Say ...' he stopped as a possibility dawned, 'Are you supervising him? Is House going crazy again?'

House's mouth twitched and something unhappy passed through his face.

'I'm... contributing, this is a tough case,' Wilson explained levelly, 'And I think we should tell these guys exactly how the others died, down to details if necessary...' His mind flicked back to the autopsy, the scent of it, the wet sound of flesh, weighed measured, dissected, the crack of a rib... 'It'd make me confess anyway.'

House shifting thoughtfully, his gaze on the floor. He looked exhausted.

'You want to scare these guys into a confession,' Cameron adopted her outrage easily, 'You don't think they're scared enough already, you don't think if they knew something they would have...'

'People keep all sorts of secrets,' Wilson said softly, 'They carry all sorts of things to their graves. Things that you and I would maybe tell someone, things they don't feel able to. For lots of different reasons. Priorities can be skewed. They might feel the need to protect loves ones, they might feel shame....'

'There's plenty of reasons for lying,' House said. 'I just need to know this one,' he looked up at the ceiling, formulating. 'Wilson's right. Take a patient each, a strategy each. Cameron you can guilt it out of them, Chase, charm it out of them, Foreman... you can take them out into the parking lot and beat it out of them if you have to... but we will find out. Go... do it... fly my pretties.'

Foreman looked back at Wilson.

'He's not crazy,' Wilson answered.

The others trooped out of the room and Wilson remained at the table watching as House ran a green marker again and again around the cluster of botulinum toxin symptoms. Several others lay outside of the line.

'Where do a bunch of unconnected guys pick up botulism in New Jersey?' he asked the board.

'Water supply.'

'Well... duh?' House chided, got that far, it being a water borne infection. Hello? Infectious disease specialitst! It's not in their water supplies... we tested.'

'Sorry.'

'Be useful or get out, by which I mean sit there and let me talk at you.'

Wilson folded his arms and made a show of doing what he was told. Outwardly at ease with his role, inwardly concerned. He watched the smooth movement of House's arm as he circled the symptoms again, then reached for a red pen and circled the remaining few, overlapping his path once, twice. Wilson listened to the squeal of the pen and the slip-shift of House's button down over his T-shirt as he stretched to draw the line and then House stepped back, weight on his left, looking at the colours, where they transected and joined.

'Why are they all guys?' he asked the room. Wilson remained quiet, intrigued by the unravelling thought process, but the quickly turning wheels of the mind in front of him, the therapeutic movement of pen on board, over and over. When House neared an epiphany there was something electric in a room, as though the chemicals and impulses in his brain somehow influenced the outside environment. It was magnetic, tense, Wilson could feel the nerves in his stomach and a soft yearning for this to come to its conclusion just so that he could see the look in House's eyes. The look he knew he was privileged to again and again in his career and friendship, a look shared most often with him. His look.

Come on, baby.

The thought intruded without warning, the endearment slipping easily into his inner monologue. But then House was talking again and distracting him, his movements more animated.

'What do guys have in common?'

'Sports? Beer? They all use a toothbrush? There's about a million things, House.'

'No more basic than that.'

'They all eat, they all sleep...?'

Red marker on the board.

Eat.

Sleep.

'They all eat... we tested stomach contents, they've ingested botulism, but it's not enough to explain all of this... and besides we don't know where it came form... They all sleep... this isn't presenting like your average bout of sleep apnoea, and they all live in different parts of town, sleep in different beds...'

House turned to him, looking at him, seeing something different. Something beautiful. Something perfect. And there is was. The flash in blue; the look in his eyes. Silence, sudden and torn and Wilson's heart leapt just a little.

'They don't sleep in different beds,' House said to himself.

Wilson waited, almost afraid to speak, to break the momentum, push House off track with the ignorance of his words. But he longed for the conclusion and was rewarded when House looked into him, raising his eyes to lock with Wilson's; knowledge deep seated at his core.

'I'm betting maybe once a week they end up in someone else's bed, pay that someone... '

Empty ring fingers.

Wilson thought of the bodies he had seen in the morgue and House was with him, seeing them too, his commentary running over both their thoughts.

'... Single scruffy older guy, young frustrated lonely guy, the first two.... they must have been there beginning of last week, maybe the weekend. The other three... dissatisfied with marriage guy, nerdy can't get laid guy... and the other one, whatever his issue is... they were later. All of them presented late to hospital. Maybe they figured they'd got it while they were there... Then we run the STD panel and they come back clean and figure they don't need to tell us about that. That couldn't be the cause... But maybe I dunno, she offers a three star service... they get to drink her tap water when they're done, pilfer stuff from her fridge if they've worked up an appetite, inhale mould spores from her bathroom when they shower after. We searched their own houses, we don't search hers.'

House flipped open his cell, 'Chase, when you're done charming your patient, ask him where he meets his hooker and then go test her home.'

All the light in the room seemed to move towards him and he seemed taller and stronger than before; more recognisable, more whole. Wilson felt a rush of something pure, spreading upwards to his smile and eyes.

He's back, he's done it.

'It's not all infection, it's environmental,' House finished on the cell, 'We should test for heavy metals, toxins, spores, chemicals... I'm thinking lead, the second symptom cluster fits... call me when you know.' End.

'House?'

House looked up from his excitement, eyes glittering, weight lifting from his shoulders and Wilson moved towards him.

'The answer's going to be there, Wilson, we get the address, we test the joint and we've got it. I thought I was losing it, I thought maybe I couldn't think without... without pills, without pain, without whatever it was that used to work for me. But I can, I did. Whatever it is, it's still there,' he laughed in a strange display of relieved disbelief, leaning forward on his game, rocking once on it, a smile playing around his lips.

House looked up suddenly, catching Wilson's gaze, his happiness suddenly tainted with something softer, less certain, something embarrassed, cautious. Wilson thought for a second that he might dismiss the moment, move past his triumph, bury the last traces of his self doubt and revert back to type. Cocky, sure of his brilliance, forgetting that he ever mistrusted himself, ever feared; make a joke, berate his team, reclaim his crown. But he didn't. The ghost of Mayfield passed between them and all it implied and the sparkle in his eyes was one of honesty; strong, vulnerable.

I love him.

'I did it... It's still there,' House repeated softly, looking at Wilson, looking to Wilson for something.

I love him.

'I know,' Wilson said quietly, 'You're OK,' reaching forward again, braver than before, his hand resting on House's bicep, feeling the muscle beneath his shirt, tense with the weight he pressed onto his cane. He let it rest there, softly stroking, willing House to hold his eye, willing his own smile not to falter, for his eyes to somehow convey what it was he was now sure he felt. Wilson wished at that moment that the office would fall away around them, that their colleagues were another world away, that there was just that second, that look, that relief and hope and knowledge that somehow this time things would work. He wished that he could lean forward just a little way further, brush the hesitance from House's lips with his own, whisper how much he meant to him, how much he had missed this, how proud he was. But he couldn't push, couldn't rush, couldn't do this to House in the bare exposure of his office, all he could do was touch him in some small way and beg him to see.

House's free hand moved cautiously, warmly, to cover his friend's. His eyes never left Wilson's gaze.

He knows.

And Wilson knew.

Epiphany.

'We need to have a conversation,' House said.

HWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHW