024. Colleagues
Conference Questions
James Wilson was rapidly starting to remember why he hated going to conferences. While it was always nice to gain the respect of his colleagues for whatever paper it was he'd chosen to present this time, it was those same colleagues that tended to drive him up the wall.
Conferences inevitably involved a great deal of drinking and sex. It was remarkable how quickly everyone regressed to their college days when they got together at some swanky location away from work, family and friends. On the whole, Wilson didn't mind the drinking and had on occasion taken advantage of the sex, but it was the prying questions he always hated.
It had taken until his third conference after House's infarction to discover that his friendship with the man had apparently become the stuff of legends…or at least intense speculation. House's reputation as a sarcastic bastard had always been well known across the medical landscape but his ability had always relegated that reputation to the 'annoying but a man must have his eccentricities' basket. After the infarction, House's reputation had grown exponentially and so, subsequently, had Wilson's as a result. Now Wilson had to admit that most of what he heard, and sometimes overheard, about House was actually fairly accurate which often made it a little difficult to answer the questions that got thrown in his direction.
When his colleagues were sober, those questions were generally professional, mostly just slightly diffident questions as to House's likelihood of agreeing to take a look at a particularly vexing patient. He usually told them to go ahead but if they did to make sure it was something interesting. He was never entirely sure how many, if any, of those cases House ever looked at. He'd certainly never mentioned anything about them.
However when his colleagues had been drinking, their questions became increasingly intrusive. All of them had heard stories about House's ability to verbally savage the unwary and each and every one inevitably asked him how on earth he put up with the man. The women tended to be even bolder and many of them would just ask him barefaced if they were lovers, was that the reason he could tolerate what drove off so many others?
He'd tried all sorts of answers to the questions from the completely dismissive to the evasive. None of them really seemed to work and the truth was so complex that he wasn't even going to attempt to try that option.
How did he explain to them that he liked House because House never expected him to be anything other than himself and that House seemed to like that Wilson more than the version everyone else liked? That he generally found House's verbal savagings amusing and often quite justified, even though he'd never have the courage to say things like that himself or even when they were directed at him. That he'd seen sides of House over the years that made the times that House actually did manage to get to him bearable. That underneath the pissy exterior he knew that House actually did care as much about this seriously bizarre friendship as he did. That in his own unique way House was a better friend than any other he'd had in his life.
He could tell them all that but he knew they wouldn't understand. He knew they'd think he was completely barking mad. So he was evasive and dismissive, obtuse and even deliberately oblivious and every now and then even contemplated bringing House along to one of these things. Partly for the entertainment value of watching him verbally flay everyone in the room but mostly for the entertainment value of watching everyone else try and figure out why he was there.