House was smart. He wasn't funny, not witty, nor sharp. He was all these things, but under a different name, one supposedly, no-one has invented yet. He was sharper than that too familiar pain of giving a patient the worst news, on the best day.
He made Oscar Wilde look like an old man writing out pretty quotes on bookmarks for a living. Like one of those crazy people on the street, with a parrot on his shoulder and long, greying hair struggling down his back.
He wasn't funny. Funny is your uncle-in-law making a pun joke about tin cans or microwaves or women playing golf. Funny is laughing out loud, struggling for air, and rolling on the floor, if your friend does a fart in a packed-out theatre.
You never laugh at House's jokes. You can smile. But only a little. Chase might huff, sometimes. But House, he can joke about a mother of four with what looks like terminal lung cancer. His brain sends this stream of crassness to his mouth. Like his lifeboat. Like his mask. But it never reaches his eyes. Eyes are the window to one's soul. Even House can't fake it. And he fakes so much.
Now, that Stacy's back, it is all so much different. He is still insensitive and straight to patients, to Cuddy, to Foreman, Chase, and I, don't doubt it. But before, when he never smiled, he couldn't smile. When he made fun of patients, or outsmarted them or us, or made us feel like crap because of it, he would smirk.
His smile is not his smirk, don't get them mixed up. When he is fascinated, or intrigued, or superior, he smirks. Now Stacy is here, he smiles. He smiles, and it reaches his eyes.
House still banters and argues and yells to intimidate us. He runs us around in circles, and then blames us when there's no petrol left. He humiliates friends and patients, as if they both mean nothing to him. He craps on Stacy, too.
But now, his smile has come. I've only seen it once, mind. We had no real patients, at the time. In that limbo of time, where we sit down, elbows on our knees. When we invite everything back. All the energy, the anger, the blank faces, the staring contests, the games of chicken with the patients. The lies, the inferiority, the guilt, and the mistakes. Ready, again.
One afternoon, late, he was sitting at his desk, after yet another miracle diagnosis. I was making coffee in the next room. He didn't know I was there. I didn't know I . . .
Stacy came in. She didn't see me, only House. She was going on and on about billing procedures or patient confidentiality or some crap lawyer superiority talk. She just kept going, but finally sat down in the chair. They say in silence for a while, and I zoned out.
After some time in limbo, I heard some whispering. Getting a bit louder, and more frantic, but I couldn't understand it. She laughed, loud and clear, like a bell chime, but much sweet.er. House had made a laughing joke. He'd never told us, his team, a laughing joke.
She walked out, and when she got to the door, turned and smiled.
About twenty minutes later, I walked in, making some excuse about a file.
He was sitting there, with this goofy, teenaged smile on his face.
I couldn't look away.
He made some sarcastic remark about caring, smirked at me, and paged Wilson in for a consult, of some kind.
But Stacy's leaving tomorrow. She quit last night, and is moving back to her happy ever after with Mark. Good luck to her.
If House could change so much, so soon, why couldn't I change him?
He smiled. I can make him smile. Give me time.