Title: Gotta Run 5/6

Summary: Remember the days when Wilson and House were friends? So do I.

Word Count: 5378 total

Head Count: House, Wilson, OC. Cameo appearance by Foreman. Chase gets three lines, because it's in his contract. Cameron and Cuddy have the week off.

Directions: 2 C. fluff, 3 T. angst, 1 C. heavy drama. Beat ingredients well. Cook in hawt oven til a crisp golden brown. Season to taste (S1, S2, or S3).

Disclaimer: Don't own. Don't even rent. Just squatting illegally. (Hey, back off, Tritter. It was a joke, man! Can't you take a joke? No, really. Put those cuffs away. I--)

A/N: This is set in early fall, a few weeks post Cane and Able.


Chapter 5 The Next Telephone Pole

The truth was, for the last few months, ever since Wilson had moved in, and then out, of House's place—and more especially while House was recovering from the shooting--Friday night had meant dinner at House's apartment, followed by some kind of bad movie, a new video game, or a chance to listen to some music House had burned to CD. On rare evenings he played piano and Wilson caught up on his reading. It had become an end-of-the-week ritual, without either man really noticing.

Yet this Friday, Wilson had begged off. The next day was the New York Marathon, a crucial milestone in Anton's training regimen. They planned on completing the half-marathon together, providing moral support and pacing each other over the thirteen-mile course. Friday night, Anton had promised to prepare a special pre-Marathon meal full of whatever it was you needed to eat before marathons. Wilson didn't know what it would be; he doubted it was something that was going to take off the roof of his mouth, or come wrapped in a chocolate chip pancake.

Sure enough, it turned out to be a particularly bland mountain of pasta. Wilson found he had little appetite and had to force himself to eat. He shifted restlessly in his seat while he listened to Anton. His dinner companion talked at length about the food they needed to pack for the race—what kind of Power Bars, how much water—and then switched to news from home.

"…and Sofia is taking her first step this week. Mila sends me a photo, here let me showing you. There. But it is not the same thing as to be there to see it. It is killing me to miss this."

"Yeah. Must be tough."

"But did you know, they can all watch me running the race on the Internet? They have cameras so that…" He trailed off, and cocked his head to the side, giving Wilson a curious look. "Is everything okay? You are not eating."

Wilson put his fork down. "To be honest," he said, but he was interrupted by his cell phone sounding off in his pocket. He flicked it open. It was Foreman.

"I'm at Smokey Joe's," he said. "You might want to get down here."

"Yes," said Wilson shortly, after he'd listened for a minute. "Okay." He snapped the phone shut and sat looking thoughtfully at his plate of pasta for a moment, tapping his thumb against his water glass. Finally he lifted his head to meet Anton's questioning look. "I'm sorry, Anton. But I've got an emergency."

Anton gave him a quizzical look. "Which patient?" he asked.

"One of… Foreman's patients, actually."

"Can I be of assistance?" Anton's broad face was creased with concern.

"No, really, thanks." Wilson left the table and slipped on his coat. "I'm sorry to do this, but I've gotta run."

Wilson entered the club, paid the cover charge, and looked around for Foreman. He was sitting with Wendy, the peds nurse, at a table at the very back of the dimly lit room.

"Hey," he said, acknowledging both of them and sliding into a chair as the waitress approached. "I'll have a scotch—make that a double." He glanced over at Foreman and then up at the stage. House was seated at a piano there. Behind him was Whitey, playing sax, and a bass player and drummer. "What's going on?"

"I thought he might need someone to persuade him not to take his bike home tonight. And, well, better you than me."

"Has he had a lot to drink?"

"I think so," said Foreman, looking at the bottle on the floor by House's feet, the glass on top of the piano. "And he's also chugged a couple of Vicodin."

"I'm afraid it doesn't take much liquor," sighed Wilson. "He's a something of a lightweight."

Foreman smirked. As the waitress arrived with Wilson's drink, Foreman leaned forward, jerked his head toward the stage, and said, "Check this out." The ensemble was working its way through a version of Sweet Home Chicago, and Wilson realized that the other musicians were about to let House take the piano solo.

He listened to House play, mentally shaking his head. He'd known House for a long time and didn't think there was much left about the man that could astonish him. This astonished him. First, that he hadn't known about this side of House at all. Secondly, the skill with which he played, his right hand improvising a delicate, melancholy variation on the melody in a haunting minor key while his left worked a complicated rhythm in the bass line. But most surprising was the effect the playing had on House. While he closed his eyes to play, his face, his whole body became a sort of mirror of the emotions he was working into the music. He raised his eyebrows at a particularly aching phrase, or frowned at a slow passage, lifted a shoulder, or inclined his head. Wilson was absolutely certain he had no idea he was doing this—revealing a side of himself he was so careful to keep closed off—and it was fascinating.

As he listened, Wilson forced himself to consider the question of what drew him into this lopsided friendship. What did he get out of it besides aggravation? The answers were not ones he cared to look too closely at.

There was a brilliance to House he knew he could never find in another human being, male or female. There were times, watching him work, when he was certain he was in the presence of something unique—call it genius if you will. He'd known plenty of very smart people in his career, so it wasn't just intelligence, a high IQ, that made House different. He supposed that what differentiated a genius from a smart person was the presence of some other, ineffable quality. For lack of a better word, passion. It was this second quality that made House so eternally fascinating to Wilson: not just his ability to solve the puzzle, but his passion to solve it.

A person who lives a life of dedication is not the same as a person who lives his life with passion. Wilson was a dedicated physician, House was a passionate one. Wilson cared deeply about his patients but could go home at quitting time and leave the hospital behind. House appeared to care very little about his patients--no one would ever call him dedicated, or devoted—but he couldn't leave the hospital the way Wilson could. And Wilson was smart enough to acknowledge there was a thrill—a vicarious, envious thrill—in watching someone who had that kind of passion driving his life.

Wilson never deceived himself that the price for this single-mindedness was an enormous selfishness—a monumental self-centeredness, as he himself had once termed it. Nor had House ever pretended otherwise. He would now and then make an effort to admit other needs, perspectives, points of view existed outside his own. But it was short-lived, painfully inept, and, to be honest, rather touching to watch.

So…genius. And passion. Was that it? Was that enough to constitute a basis for a friendship?

Once again he had to admit to an uncomfortable truth. What really attracted him to House was not the man's brilliance. It wasn't the light of his intelligence, but the heat of it, more precisely the danger created by that heat. House was like some sort of bright celestial object that defied the rules of physics. He constantly pushed boundaries, rules of law and rules of medicine, all the careful conventions a society created to make life comfortable and safe and predictable. Wilson knew he himself was nothing if not deeply conventional. Beneath the charming, boyish exterior he presented the world was a badly screwed up man, as House had often pointed out. And what kept that inner screwed-up man on the rails was the outer conventional man, the one scared of authority, the law-abiding creature who wore pocket protectors, married well if not wisely, drove a Volvo, washed it every Sunday, and had never had so much as a speeding ticket. This Wilson was drawn to House like a cautious, careful moth mesmerized by a flame.

Wilson was not the only one. It was this same force that made Stacy fall for House so hard and stay so long. It was the reason Foreman didn't take that job in California, why Cuddy risked so much, why Cameron couldn't talk herself out of her crush.

House, for his part, had no idea, Wilson was convinced--hadn't a clue about the effect he had on people, except to know that sooner or later, whatever attracted them to him would invariably drive them all away. Like planets drawn into the uncertain orbit of an unstable star, those that didn't manage to leave the orbit were doomed. Nothing could burn that hot without burning itself out, and it would incinerate along with it everything in its gravitational field.