House Arrest chapter 20
A/N – for the people who have questioned why I started calling him "Greg" occasionally, it was just to inject a little bit of a different perspective; that's all. Brighid45 is one of my favorite authors and she refers to him by his first name in her fics. Referring to someone by their first name shows more respect than referring to them by their last name, and I think it's fun once in awhile to show that he can give respect once in awhile as well as receive it from others. Straub's is the best grocery store in St. Louis and Schlafly beer is also the best beer in St. Louis. Beats Anheuser Busch any day.
At Straub's, House reflected on how much fun he was having shopping for this surprise dinner for Wilson. He changed his plans at the last minute and bought the twice-baked potatoes at the deli, already cooked. That way all he'd have to do is heat them in the oven when the steaks were done. He'd called the store ahead of time while he was still in the cab, and had the butcher cut the steaks so that they were ready when he got there. All told, he was in the store about 15 minutes before the shock hit him full bore. The ankle monitor. He'd forgotten to call the monitor company. Oh my god, I'm going to have a heart attack right here and now in front of all these strangers. He hurried, as fast as his bad leg would allow, to find a place to sit down and make that damn phone call. With his kind of luck, House figured the cops were probably already on their way by now.
When the operator answered the phone, he explained where he was and that he'd forgotten to call them ahead of time. Grateful for the relative anonymity that a phone call represented, he was also glad that this operator had never spoken with him before. He just hoped and prayed that the guy wouldn't think he was lying; then he remembered that they verify his stated location with the GPS coordinates. Fortunately, they hadn't alerted the police yet and he was able to avoid a complete disaster. The operator reminded him that he was not in one of the approved locations, and that he had a limited period of time in which to get home.
He had been so grateful to the cabbie for the free ride that he told the cabbie to turn the meter on in the parking lot and wait for him; he'd pay the cabbie not only for the return trip but also for the wait time. That wisdom now saved him from another trip to the slammer, as the cab was already waiting for him and he'd be sure to be home before the monitor company got sick of his unauthorized trip and call the cops on him yet again.
They were home within ten minutes. He even offered to help House carry the bags inside when they got home. House gladly accepted the help and greased the cabbie's palm with a few more high-value greenbacks to show his thanks. Well, it was either to show his thanks or to bribe the cabbie; either way, the cabbie was more than happy to help.
They walked in to find Wilson ensconced on the couch, still in his work attire, sipping a beer; Schlafly Oatmeal Stout to be specific. It was a seasonal brew; made by a local brewer and only produced during the winter. The six o'clock evening news was on TV, but Wilson wasn't really watching it. He was listening to something obviously good on his iPod, and didn't hear House and the cab driver come in.
House and the cabbie tried to be as quiet as possible, which was difficult when both men carried paper grocery bags full of food, but Wilson wouldn't have heard anything anyway with his earbuds in and Old Crow Medicine Show playing "Fall on my knees" at top volume.
They made it into the kitchen without ruining the surprise for Wilson. One more high-dollar tip for the cabbie and the man started eagerly asking House when he would be needed next.
"Shh. This is all a surprise for the guy on the couch in there. Don't bother him. I'll probably need you again tomorrow; I'll call you when I do. Bye."
The man tiptoed out. House unwrapped, wiped the steaks, and got down some salt, pepper and paprika for seasoning. One of the many things his team didn't know about him was that he was already a good cook before he took those cooking lessons with Wilson. There was a reason he had expensive, good quality pots hanging from the hooks in his kitchen. He knew how to use them. He'd learned quite a bit in his mother's kitchen. He knew that Delmonico steaks, like most expensive cuts of meat, don't need much in the way of seasoning. Just a few sprinkles of salt, pepper and paprika on both sides would do the trick nicely. They also wouldn't need to broil long, so he set the table right after he popped the steaks under the broiler.
The potatoes were already cooked. All he needed to do was pop them in the microwave for a few minutes after the steaks were done. The only thing left to prepare was the salad and all he had to do was chop the scallions, chop the green pepper, grate the cheese and mix everything together. Over the years since his infarction, he'd stopped cooking very often because it usually meant being on his feet longer than he could tolerate. This dinner came together perfectly, though, and in less than 20 minutes House was yelling at Wilson to turn the iPod off and come to the table for dinner.
"I knew I smelled something good!" Wilson chirped. "Do I need to check it for poison first?" Then the reality of what House had just done dawned on him. "Oh my God! Was it worth you taking the risk of going back to jail? House, my God, they could have busted you right in the store!"
"Go get Sarah if you're worried about being poisoned. Speaking of, where the hell is she? What'd you do, give her back? Who's giving her her daily insulin fix while you're here? She'll eat anything, and she's lived long enough anyway. As far as the cops, I didn't even think about the damn monitor until I was already in the store. I called the monitoring company, and since we don't see any cops out there, I guess they didn't call the fuzz on me." House said with his trademark smirk.
"You wouldn't poison me anyway. Who would you steal lunch from every day?" Wilson retorted with a smile. "Nora has her. I think I'm going to let Nora keep her. Oh, by the way, Nora said to say hi. Seriously, this is really nice. I'm just sorry you had to take the risk of going back to jail over it. Whatever possessed you to do this?"
"I'm actually offended that you think I have to be possessed in order to do something nice for you. I am capable of being nice. I'm just very good at hiding it," House said with a big huff, putting on an air of being offended when in reality he knew Wilson was being complimentary.
"Well, let's dig in before it gets cold. Wow! Delmonico steaks, twice baked potatoes, and fresh salad! I'm flabbergasted. Where's the wine?" Wilson asked with a sneaky, devious smile. "Never mind. I know just what kind of libation we should have with this magnificent repast. You did the cooking. Let me fix the beverage." Wilson left for the kitchen with a purpose. He wasn't sure if House had any club or lemon lime soda since House routinely drank his liquor straight up, but sure enough, there was an old but still usable bottle of lemon lime soda in the fridge. He scrounged up the ingredients for a really good Sangria.
2 cups orange juice
2 tablespoons honey
Two oranges, peeled and sliced
1 cinnamon stick
A 1 liter bottle of lemon lime soda or ginger ale
2 liters of red wine. House's wine rack was well stocked, fortunately.
Mix the orange juice and honey together. Mix the lemon lime soda or ginger ale and the red wine together, and add the orange juice/honey mixture.
Use iced tea glasses. Put an orange slice in the bottom of each glass, pour the Sangria in, add a cinnamon stick for stirring, and top with another orange slice. If the ingredients were not cold to begin with, pour over ice cubes in the glass.
Easy and quick way to make a great Sangria. Wilson had it mixed in a few minutes and emerged from the kitchen with two tall glasses full of iced Sangria. It was an amazing complement for a nice steak dinner.
The men ate raptly, replete with slurping and chewing noises, typical of ravenous pigs. The meal was the best either of them had had in ages. House considered finishing his meal with a great big loud belch, but somehow or another it just didn't seem appropriate this time. He was having too much fun with the sight of Wilson enjoying his food.
He squelched the belch, and satisfied himself instead by staring and grinning at Wilson. House opened his mouth. Wilson thought he knew what was about to emanate from House's insides, and looked away quickly. When he didn't hear a belch, he looked back in House's direction. "You are so uncouth. That's what you are. Well, that amongst other things. Uncouth," Wilson said. He wiped his mouth with his napkin, patted his stomach and proclaimed, "But even people with no manners can cook well. You already knew how to cook before you took those cooking lessons with me. I knew it!" Wilson emphatically pounded his fist on House's antique operating table that served as a kitchen table. "Who the hell comes to a cooking lesson already knowing a trick to keep meat from burning?"
House bowed and shook his head pensively. The smile remained, but it softened a bit. A pleasant childhood memory came to mind. "One of a few chummy Mummy memories I have of my childhood is that of my mother teaching me to cook. Dad had her so scared of burning the food that one of the first things she taught me was how to brown meat without burning it. The vinegar wasn't necessary. I just did that to impress you. Who wants to eat meat brushed with vinegar?"
"You saved my ass that day. Thank God the instructor never tasted those perfectly browned meatballs." Wilson rose to begin doing the dishes.
"Now comes dessert. I get to have even more fun watching you do my dirty work," House quipped. "That was my master plan all along. I do the fun stuff and I get to sit back and watch you clean up the crap – oops, scraps – afterward. Brilliant!" House looked at Wilson from his seat at the table, with his chin in his hand and a great big smile, staring intently at Wilson with those piercing blue eyes.
"Speaking of dessert, I thought I saw pecan pie somewhere," Wilson said hurriedly. House's blue eyes spoke volumes, and it was pretty clear they weren't saying anything about pecan pie.
"Not the kind of dessert I want now," House said huskily.
Wilson's mind began to spin. Oh yeah… "We can't let this food dry on the plates. Give me a minute to wash these," Wilson said breathlessly.
"Actually, let's just watch some TV. Just come on; sit on the couch with me and watch TV. You know, quality guy time," House quipped. Actually, he really did want much more. He was still having trouble adjusting to the fact that Wilson wanted intimacy with him just as badly as he wanted it with Wilson. It wasn't so much the man-on-man thing that bothered him. Intimacy with anyone was still difficult, even though Wilson had certainly proven to him more and more recently that he could be trusted with intimate matters. To really be intimate with someone meant so much more than just getting bare with them. It meant baring one's soul. Having sex and being intimate were not necessarily one and the same, in House's mind.
House limped over to the sofa with a little smile on his face. He was perfectly happy to let Wilson do the dishes. He relished the thought that the nice thing he did for Wilson was recognized and appreciated for what it was – just a nice thing to do for someone he cared about. Actually, he could have cared less if Wilson did the dishes. He'd have done them himself the way he usually did dishes; in small batches. It was difficult for him to stand in one spot long enough to do dishes from a big dinner all at once; not that he ever cooked big dinners, but on the rare occasions he cooked more than a few courses for himself, he would do the dishes in small batches and take his time. If this thing with Wilson proved to be permanent, the next item to purchase for their home would have to be an automatic dishwasher.
The noises from the kitchen stopped. "Want anything from the kitchen before I shut the light off in there?" Wilson asked.
"It has a light?" House quipped. "No. The only thing I want from the kitchen is you, out here on the couch with me. Hurry up. Elf is on."
"And I'm sure it'll be on fifteen more times before the end of this week. I'll be out in a second," Wilson finished.
Wilson washed and dried his hands, deliberately taking his time. He was mildly disappointed, but not surprised, that dessert apparently didn't mean what he thought it meant. He needed a few extra moments to compose his thoughts and decide what to say if House should happen to bring the subject up more directly.
"I'll bring out two slices of the pecan pie," he said before leaving the kitchen. "At least you won't bother me once we get engrossed in this enthralling movie that I haven't seen fourteen times before. You know what James Caan does to me."
Wilson appeared in the living room and put two slices of that delicious pecan pie from Straub's, each on its own plate, on the coffee table. He'd put a generous dollop of whipped cream on each plate next to the pie, and even brought out two cups of hot decaf coffee to go along with the pie. It was a good dessert, but not the one Wilson thought House had in mind.
"Yeah, I have wet dreams about James Caan too," House said drolly.
Wilson plopped down next to House. House immediately put his feet up on the coffee table. The pie and the coffee were still sitting on the table. "Eww; that's so disgusting! There's food on the table!" Wilson exclaimed.
"Yeah, and there are feet and cups of coffee on the table too. So what?" House replied.
"So I'm not eating pie that you just put your dirty Nikes next to, that's what."
"I didn't want the pie in the first place. I told you all I wanted was you," House said honestly.
House thought he'd proven his point; he soon realized, too late, that he hadn't read Wilson well enough. This conversation wasn't over.
"Why do you want a relationship with me?" Wilson asked while staring straight ahead at the TV. Somehow or another, he wasn't sure he really wanted to hear the answer to that question, but he had to ask it anyway. It seemed to Wilson like it would be more comfortable to ask the question if he wasn't looking at House when he asked it.
"I mean, seriously. You say you want me here with you, and I want to be here too. I want to be with you. Every time I assume that you want it just as badly as I do, you try to push me away. I don't mean that you try to push me out of your life or anything like that. It's just that you say you want me, but you're not sure that you want ALL of me. I thought we'd moved past that. I'm not trying to rush into something that neither of us is ready for, but I want all of you, and I can finally say I'm ready."
House looked at Wilson with an air of resignation. "I can tell that you're not going to stop talking about this until I come up with some pithy, wise explanation. I'm not going to get to enjoy this movie in peace until I do that, correct? It's not enough to just enjoy your company. I have to bare my soul, right?"
Wilson was thankful he had taken the time earlier to compose what he thought was the best reply he could make.
"My reaction to your first question is yes, you can enjoy the movie in peace and give me an honest answer at the same time. As far as the second question, it's just nice knowing we can talk with each other beyond the stupid guy stuff we already talk about."
House took a deep breath and moved his gaze to his feet, still comfortably propped up on the coffee table between Wilson's pie and his own. Stupid guy stuff, as Wilson so aptly put it, was safe. Boobs and monster trucks, food and drink, poker and music. All of that constituted stupid guy stuff, and all of those topics were shallow-end-of-the-pool safe. Anything else was deep enough that he would have to tread water, and treading water was something he hadn't done in almost twenty years.
Until recently he would not dream of taking the risk. Guys don't talk like that. But maybe guys who want to be together the rest of their lives do talk like that. It was virgin territory, so to speak, for House. It was also time to break that ice and give it a try.
"I like safe stuff," House started off.
"And you think I'm safe? Remember when I stopped talking to you for three months? I've been through three wives. That hardly counts as safe," Wilson answered softly.
"You keep coming back. No matter what I do, you keep coming back. You're safe. You asked why I wanted a relationship with you, and I answered you. Now can we go back to the movie?"
Wilson chuckled softly.
"I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what's so funny?" House asked pointedly.
"I was just thinking I guess that's about as deep as you go," Wilson said, smiling.
"No, this is as deep as I go. I'm not telling you. I'm asking you to shut up while a grown man dressed in a green elf tunic and tights has a heart to heart talk on Santa Claus' lap and teaches us about the true meaning of Christmas."