Title: Meeting
Author: sy dedalus
Rating: K+
Pairing: Gen if you're not wearing slash goggles, slashy if you are
Warnings: one instance of poetry
Summary: One possible first meeting fic for House and Wilson. Inspired directly by a poem by Hart Crane. Gen if you like gen, slash if you've got slash goggles.
Note: The characters don't belong to me and neither does the poem.
This is the first time, 1. studying for comps has directly met the escape of fic for me, 2. a poem has spoken so keenly to this particular fic universe, and 3. I've ever written fic inspired directly by a poem.
The poem is by Hart Crane and I've reproduced all of it here because I couldn't find the text online (meaning someone holds the copyright, meaning please don't sue me). The poem is probably true autobiography, as Crane did work in his father's candy factory as a handyman and stock boy, and thus would have encountered a worker with a gash in his finger. Crane was also openly and somewhat notoriously gay. Even if you hate poetry, read this one. It's beautiful.
This extremely conventional fic is more to expose people to the poem than it is for itself. It simply can't match the beauty of the poem.
The poem is meant to be a follow-up scene to the single scene here. Hence I've placed it after the fic scene.
Meeting
Wilson was young, a new hire fresh from a fellowship whose impressive research made him the talk of the department, walking tall on the ward with everything but his underwear starched to the point of insanity by his young, new wife. He'd heard of House—who hadn't?—someone not as young and, some in Wilson's department argued, not as brilliant. These same people had taken him aside and warned him about the erratic doctor he'd encounter sooner or later.
Now, standing with a shocked expression on his face and an empty cup in his hand, Wilson fervently wished someone had warned him not to walk around with open cups of coffee in his hand.
House, who had already been barking at an intimidated colleague, cursed loudly and slammed his burning fist into wall. The colleague saw her chance and scuttled away.
Stunned, Wilson watched as the unshaven, lab coat-less, too-slim man yelped and fell to a crouch, cradling his hand. He'd seen House in the halls; his colleagues had pointed House out to him. House was always either yelling at someone or half-running with all of his attention focused on a print-out in his hand. This—punching a wall—wasn't how Wilson would have predicted House would react.
Alarmed and not a little curious, Wilson crouched next to him while he fussed and hissed and cursed. Wilson tilted his head to the side and narrowed one eye.
"Why did you do that?" he asked.
Anger, pain, and frustration so raw and intense it gave Wilson pause met him when House glanced up.
"It hurt," he answered.
Wilson was befuddled—and still very curious. Who did something like this?
"And that made it not hurt," he said flatly.
"No," House began, stopping to shake his wrist and curse again, "that put the pain on my terms. It's my pain now."
Wilson knew his face showed his assessment of that statement. "Ah ha."
House hissed, clenched and unclenched his fist, and met Wilson's eyes again. "You're not going to apologize?"
Wilson shrugged, wondering in a far corner of his mind why he hadn't begun apologizing profusely as soon as he'd spilled the coffee. His over-starched shirt collar irritated the back of his neck. (Later he would realize that House reminded him of his brothers. He'd always been the one to clean the gravel out of their knees and make them rip a t-shirt to stop the bleeding.)
"I didn't slam your fist into the wall," he said simply.
"Yes, you did," House accused.
Wilson tilted his head again. "If you say so." He stood up. "You should let me take a look at it."
House rose out of his crouch, too. "You do owe me that," he admitted. He shook his hand again, clenching and unclenching his fist with a wince. He looked from his hand to Wilson as if seeing him for the first time.
"It's fine," he said and brushed passed Wilson without another word.
Confused and with his sense of obligation in overdrive, Wilson caught up to House quickly and put a hand on House's shoulder to stop him.
"That coffee was hot," he said, taking House's hand without permission.
House snatched it back with the distrust of a wounded animal. He had a cutting comment on his tongue when he noticed the name on Wilson's i.d. tag.
"I know who you are," he said slowly as if a mystery had just revealed itself to him. "Your article in JAMA about non-Hodgkin lymphoma etiology was good, but there was a flaw in your methodology."
Wilson listened with surprise. First, surprise that the famed House remembered his article. Second, that the famed House was right. Third, that the famed House's suggestion was so perfect it had to be right too.
"I never considered that," Wilson said to himself.
Just as House turned to march triumphantly away, Wilson caught him with a question. He stopped.
Eyebrow raised, House replied with a question about the details of one of the cases.
Intellectually curious and knowing now how to satisfy his feeling of obligation, Wilson kept his smile to himself.
"Let me make sure I didn't burn your hand and I'll tell you all about it."
House immediately grimaced, but Wilson saw that he was equally curious about the case.
"Fine," House grumbled, "but you're gonna owe me lunch if it's burned."
"But not if it's broken," Wilson shot back.
House studied him, a smile spreading slowly over his face. "You're gonna buy me lunch anyway."
Wilson shrugged and fell in next to House, eager to discuss the case.
The unexpected interest made him flush.
Suddenly he seemed to forget the pain,—
Consented,— and held out
One finger from the others.
The gash was bleeding, and a shaft of sun
That glittered in and out among the wheels,
Fell lightly, warmly, down into the wound.
And as the fingers of the factory owner's son,
That knew a grip for books and tennis
As well as one for iron and leather,—
As his taut, spare fingers wound the gauze
Around the thick bed of the wound,
His own hands seemed to him
Like wings of butterflies
Flickering in sunlight over summer fields.
The knots and notches,—many in the wide
Deep hand that lay in his,—seemed beautiful.
They were like the marks of wild ponies' play,—
Bunches of new green breaking a hard turf.
And factory sounds and factory thoughts
Were banished from him by that larger, quieter hand
That lay in his with the sun upon it.
And as the bandage knot was tightened
The two men smiled into each other's eyes.
—Hart Crane, "Episode of the Hands" (1920)