The next afternoon, House was reclining—or attempting to recline—atop the examining bench in Room 173, watching TV and munching on Wilson's Doritos. Wilson sat across from him, glaring at him between commercial breaks and sending him a fusillade of subliminal messages which read quite clearly "I really wish you would either buy your own Doritos or choke on one of mine so I would be able to eat my own food again." House ignored Wilson. He was more concerned about the fate of the pregnancy; the pregnant woman in question had fallen recently and there had been a disgusting and relatively familiar squishing noise, which did not bode well for the hairless inhabitant—or inhabitants, should it come to that—of the woman's abdomen.
Just as the Downy bear began dancing across the television screen, House took a large bite of Wilson's Reuben (which, incidentally, he knew very well Wilson had purchased with him in mind; Wilson hated Reubens) and said, "I hate that bear, you know."
"You hate everything cute and fuzzy and good," Wilson remarked, still glaring at him. "It's some kind of complex."
"You think that's 'cute and fuzzy and good'?" House repeated, gesturing to the animal. "You're the one with a complex."
"Yet I'm not the one who convinced myself my leg was hurting because I'm such a terrible masochist," said Wilson.
House thought Wilson was more upset over the chips than previously assumed.
"Sorry," said Wilson.
"Wimp," said House, and they were friends again.
And then the door opened, and it wasn't Cuddy. It was, however, Cameron, and she was quite angry. But while "angry" for most people should inspire at least a touch of fear, Cameron's state of anger was "couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag with a meat cleaver," so House was not threatened at all. Neither, needless to say, was Wilson. In fact, he was smirking. House wasn't sure why he was smirking, aside from his usual insanity, until he looked at the object Cameron was currently holding aloft in her left hand and realized it was his boxers.
Odd, he thought idly, he could've sworn he'd been wearing those.
"Why were these on my desk?" Cameron said.
"I don't think that's the most relevant question here," House said.
"And what would the most relevant question here be, then?"
"The most relevant—is there an echo in here?—question would be 'Why aren't you cradling those to your heart and inhaling their manly fragrance like a madly-crushing schoolgirl?'"
Wilson winced and made, as inconspicuously as possible, the face he always made when he was trying not to laugh.
"Oh, shut up," Cameron sighed, tossed the boxers in House's general direction, and left. She slammed the door and knocked the boxers themselves from their precarious position dangling on the cabinet where they'd landed; they fell two feet and draped over Wilson's eyeballs; he reached up with one hand and plucked them gingerly away from his face, where he really thought they should not have been in the first place. He wasn't even sure why they were in his hand and not under House's pants where they belonged.
Instead, he ran a finger down the left leg. "Silk?" he said, and coyly raised his eyebrows.
"It makes me horny," House said.
"Do your 'Mini-Me's know about this?"
"What, the silk or the boxers? The silk, no. The boxers, not yet, but they will as soon as Little Miss I-Love-Dying-People gets within twenty feet of them."
"Gimme the Doritos," said Wilson.
"But I loves 'em! They're my precious! My precious!" said House, and futilely clutched the crumpled bag to his chest.
"Oh, come on, you hate that movie; now give me the chips, or I'll make sure the whole floor knows Greggy-Weggy likes the feel of silk against his unmentionables. And that includes the nurses' station."
"Pretend you know how to have fun," House said, threw the chips at Wilson, received a very terrible boxer-toss in return, and faced the set. "Shut up," he said, "show's on." And Wilson's pager went off, just in time for House to miss the words of the doctor as he came back in to the room of the woman with the baby, who was sprawled sexily in her hospital bed with a sleep-mask over her temporarily sightless eyes. "Idiot," House said, and then the door opened again.
Before he saw the identity of this new perpetrator, House said, "I don't want to hear from you if you are Chase, because I already know you want me with the heat of a thousand suns; I don't want to hear from you if you are Foreman, because you should be out breaking into Stacey's house like the little convict you are and not here annoying me; I don't want to hear from you if you are Cameron, back to complain about my boxers, because you know why they were there and I know you did not forget what we were up to last night because those squeals meant you were having too good of a time to ever forget; and I don't want to hear from you if you are Cuddy, because I told you we are over, girlfriend, and you can wave those breasts of yours at me all you like, that's still not gonna change."
"It's Susan," said Wilson, as he got up.
"Susan what?" said House; it was his turn to glare, because he had no idea what Wilson was talking about.
"It's Susan," Wilson said again. "Susan, not Stacey."
"Don't you have a bald kid to attend to?" House asked, and then the actual door-opener stepped forward shyly. It was It. "Oh my Gawd, it's It," House said.
"What?" said It.
"Your name," House said.
"What?" said It, rather cluelessly. Wilson rolled his eyes. House thought that if there were any of the blond, busty nurses around, they would have swooned. Then he thought that if they had, Wilson would have caught them, and that made him want to roll his own eyes. Luckily, he resisted the urge.
"It's your name. I've renamed you It," he said. "Don't worry, I've named worse."
TBC, if anyone's interested. Please let me know if you are.