Wilson staggered to the door, wanting to do anything to stop the pounding noise.
"I'm coming, shut up. You'll wake the whole building." He opened the door and stepped back, knowing already who it would be. Who else would possibly bang on his door at midnight? "House, there are places you can go, where people are awake and ready to entertain you – they even call them 'ladies of the night'—"
"Bring that inside," House said, kicking a box that was sitting in the doorway. "It was a bitch to carry in from the car." He walked inside Wilson's apartment and slumped down on the sofa, reaching for his Vicodin and swallowing two.
With a long-suffering sigh, Wilson picked up the documents box and closed the door. He knew there was no use protesting; no use even in asking politely if this could wait until tomorrow. House didn't see the world from others' perspectives. He guessed he should be grateful that House had carried the box inside himself, instead of demanding Wilson go out in his pyjamas and do it for him.
"Can I ask what this is? What is it that can't possibly wait until after breakfast tomorrow?" Wilson put the box down on the coffee table – it was surprisingly heavy.
"My father was an asshole."
Wilson paused. He'd wondered when this conversation was coming. It had been a long time since the funeral, but the events of this week must have stirred things up. House did seem to take longer than most people to process anything involving emotions. But then Wilson realised he didn't know which father House was talking about. He felt a stab of sympathy for his old friend. "Do you want a drink?"
"Stupid question," House muttered.
Wilson pulled a sweater on over his pyjamas and poured two generous measures of whisky before returning to the living room. House was sitting staring at the box as if it was a ticking bomb, and Wilson's curiosity suddenly overcame sleepiness.
"What is it?" Wilson asked, handing House one of the glasses.
"Pandora's box," House said cryptically.
"Literally?" Wilson asked, arching his eyebrows. "Will all hell break loose on earth if we open it?"
"It's possible," House muttered, taking a swig of his drink.
"Who does it belong to?" The sinister possibilities of House turning up with an unlabelled box in the middle of the night began to enter Wilson's mind. "Did you steal it? Is it anything illegal? It's not alive or anything is it?"
House gave a short, bitter laugh. "I have no idea, but if it was alive it's been in the trunk of my car for almost a week, so I doubt it's still in that condition."
"In your car? The Mercedes?"
"It was part of the bequest from Andrew Barnes. I forgot about it until tonight."
"From your father?"
House winced. "Can you not use that word?"
"What, father?"
"That would be the one."
"Why not?"
"Because I'd like to forget that I'm related to him, if it's possible."
Wilson frowned. "And yet on the other hand, here you are with a box of stuff he willed to you." He gestured to the as-yet unopened mystery.
"I know. It doesn't make sense." House rubbed his cheek with his palm, looking confused and serious. Wilson was instantly concerned.
"Right, so it doesn't make sense. That makes it a puzzle – and what do you like more than a puzzle? There's only one way to start solving it." Wilson grabbed the lid of the box in both hands. "Shall I?"
House took in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "That's why I'm here."
Wilson lifted the lid and a small puff of dust escaped, settling on the coffee table around it. "It's been shut up for a while," Wilson observed.
House moved forward to the edge of the sofa, his elbows on his knees, peering into the top. "They said it was 'papers'."
"It looks like papers," Wilson said. He pulled the top item out and looked at the cover before opening it and flicking through pages. "It's a college magazine from Johns Hopkins."
"What year?" House asked, pulling out a similar looking publication.
"1982. November." Wilson scanned the contents page. "Wait," he said, pointing at the page. "There's an article in here – Why ABBA Should Be Banned On Campus by Gregory House."
House chuckled. "That's right. I had a music column for about a year – that was one of my better articles. They canned it after I wrote that Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon was electronic baby food for stoners and they got so many complaints they had to sack me."
"But why?"
"I was being ironic. They didn't get it"
Wilsons shook his head. "That's not what I meant House. Why are magazines with your short-lived music column in a box from your biological father?"
"Oh, yeah, you're right. Weird."
Together they dug through the box, finding about half a dozen more editions of the Johns Hopkins magazine, each featuring a column by Greg House.
House pulled out the next item and held it up between two fingers. "Now I'm getting freaked."
"Why?" Wilson peered closer. "It's an old copy of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology."
"My first published paper."
Wilson took the journal from House's hand and opened the cover. He scanned the contents page before reading, "Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor-induced renal failure: causes, consequences, and diagnostic uses, by G House, R Dunn and K Lawrence. Sounds heavy."
"Yeah, and pointless, as it turned out."
Wilson paused, looking at the box that was still almost full. "You know House, I'm guessing this is your biological father's brag box. He couldn't be part of your life, so he followed it instead. I bet we'll find more stuff in here like this."
House flopped back against the sofa. "Yeah, I think you're right."
"So?" Wilson's eyes were alight with interest. "Isn't this fantastic? He cared about you; he followed your life, your career." He delved into the box to pull out the next thing. "I can't wait to see what we find next."
"I can."
Wilson paused, realising he'd got carried away with his own enthusiasm without realising that House did not share it. In fact, House was the very opposite of enthused. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
Wilson knew it was a blatant lie, but having known House for as long as he had, he knew that pushing right now would not provide further information.
"Come on, help me. Let's pull everything out of the box and sort it out."
House rolled his eyes, but sat up straight again. He reached for his drink and finished it in one gulp. "Yeah, let's get this sorted out."
-
-
About half an hour later House and Wilson were surrounded by about a dozen small piles. House wouldn't have bothered with the piles himself, that had been Wilson's doing, but it did make it easier to get a sense of what they had uncovered.
There were six Johns Hopkins' magazines, plus a couple more from Michigan – all containing articles House had written, even one poem House had dearly wished history had forgotten. There was a high school yearbook from his senior year and a couple of college yearbooks too. There were a handful of photographs: a few grainy black and white shots of him as a child, a family portrait of House at his graduation with his mom and John House, a few school portraits, and a couple of snapshots from his early adulthood that House didn't think he'd even seen before. There were more journal articles and a few yellowed newspaper clippings from his early days of medicine when people had still been impressed by his talents. There were some odd things too: a local sports magazine with an article about House's lacrosse team that didn't even mention him, and a report card from grade school. The teacher had written: Greg is comfortable taking the lead, but he can sometimes hurt his classmates' feelings by not listening to them or taking their ideas into account. There was an old spirit-duplicated page – the purple ink very faded – of one of his hand-written school assignments.
"Do you think your mother sent him some of this?"
Wilson's words echoed exactly what House was thinking – how had Andrew Barnes got his hands on this stuff? House had no idea how to even begin a conversation with his mother about it all.
"I don't know," House said gruffly. "I guess she could have. Lots of it is publicly available – not hard to get. The photos and the report card . . ." House shrugged. His mother must have sent them to him. All this time, behind his back. He wondered if his mother had any idea what kind of man Andrew Barnes really was.
"I guess," Wilson echoed. "Want another drink?"
House rolled his eyes at the stupidity of Wilson even needing to ask.
Wilson refilled their glasses before sitting down on the sofa with a sigh. He gestured around them to all the piles of paper. "So, what's this all about?"
"Manipulation," House said, the answer springing to his lips.
"Huh?"
"Manipulation," he said again. "He wants me to think of him as the caring father I never had."
"Wants you to think that? But House, collecting all this stuff, over so many years, it's more than manipulation."
House was silent, his thoughts churning. He knew there was more to it than what appeared on the surface – a father trying to connect with his absent son. There was an angle he hadn't seen yet, something else going on.
Something connected to Kitty.
"Hypothetical," he said, sitting up straight and looking at Wilson. "Say you're a stripper."
"What?"
"Just play along for now. I'm trying to work something out."
Wilson sighed. "Okay."
Despite the gravity of the situation, House couldn't resist. "No, say you're—"
"Okay, okay. I'm a stripper," Wilson huffed.
House chuckled. "Right, you're a stripper who's doing it to bring in money to support your dying mother – your only family. One night a customer offers you a lot of money to have sex with his friend."
Wilson frowned. "Whose hypothetical is this?"
"Doesn't matter," House said dismissively. "Point is, even though you agree, the friend refuses the sex, says he wants to help instead. He gives you money to go back to school and pays for your mother's care. Looks after you. Acts like a father to you."
"Sounds like a nice guy."
"You'd think that, wouldn't you? Only there's a price."
"Of course there's a price. There's always a price."
"The price is that every now and then he gets you to help out with a business associate he wants to impress."
"What, stripping?"
"Sex. Blow jobs mostly." It was a guess, but House was almost sure he was right.
"Oh."
"And he gets to watch."
"Oh. Ugh." Wilson frowned. "I'm assuming that as a stripper I'm legally an adult?"
"Yes."
There was a moment of silence. "So?" Wilson asked House. "What's the question?"
House realised he'd outlined the situation without being entirely sure of what it was he wanted to know. "Oh right. So, why would you do it?"
"Well, if I was the stripper I'd be grateful for the money. And if I was young, and my mother – my only family – was dying and someone appeared who took on a parental role, someone who helped with my mother and who took care of me, well . . . that would be very appealing. I guess I'd do it for my mother and for myself."
"Exactly." Wilson had just confirmed House's own thinking. He wasn't confused as to why Kitty had accepted Andrew Barnes's offer. Barnes had offered her something she needed and he'd been a father figure when her sole parent was dying. Kitty's decision to accept that was perfectly understandable. "But what's in it for the guy?"
"The, uh, benefactor?"
"The pervert."
Wilson frowned and House knew he'd said that a little too vehemently. He couldn't remember ever using the word pervert before, either. Sex, as long as it was consensual, could mean anything and everything, in House's book. One person's perversions were just other person's creativity, as far as he was concerned. Except not this time.
"Hmmm." Wilson thought for a while. "Sexually speaking, maybe he's dysfunctional in some way and can't actually perform the act with someone."
"Yeah, I guess."
"And maybe he just liked her and wanted to look after her? In a messed up kind of way."
House scoffed. "As simple as that?"
"Well, maybe he doesn't have children and she's like a substitute daughter. Again – in a messed up kind of way."
"He has children. One daughter and a son. Two sons," House said, correcting himself. Two sons. One of which he finds unsatisfactory. The other of which is estranged to him. The pieces started to arrange themselves in House's head. The estranged son is a doctor: ambitious, driven, motivated. All characteristics he sees in the blonde stripper – med student – that life has brought his way. An almost-orphan in desperate need of a parent.
"Maybe she's like a substitute son," House mused aloud.
"Huh?"
"Don't worry about it." House grabbed his cane and stood up. "It's late, I'm going home."
Wilson screwed up his face in an expression of frustration that House was intimately familiar with. "But House, you can't just go. What was all that about? Is the guy your father? Who was the stripper? Was she a transvestite?"
"All good questions," House replied in a way he knew would be infuriating. But now that he had begun to make sense of things there were only two thoughts on his mind. The first was to get some sleep; he was exhausted. The second was to go back and see Kitty Brecht again. He hadn't solved the puzzle yet. He knew she still held a number of pieces that he needed.
And he still hadn't got laid. Getting Kitty's magnificent legs wrapped around him was still pretty high on his priority list too.