Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who reviewed chapter one. Because of your support, I made it a priority to post another chapter today. OK, to be be honest, I really didn't want to do what should have been my top priority. Hope you enjoy this chapter, and let me know what you think!

Chapter 2: Symptoms

Within a few days, James quickly became sick of having to head home to get dressed before work, or to remember to bring a change of clothes. That weekend, Greg and James cleaned out one of the closets in House's apartment, and James's neatly pressed suits and ties moved in. There were definite advantages to having your best friend become your lover. None of the awkward, uncomfortable, getting to know each other bits that accompany the dating stage of a relationship. Some things hadn't changed all that much; they often spent the evenings on Greg's couch. The only difference was that the images on the TV often went unnoticed, as they often ended up making out instead of watching TV. On the evenings when they were both exhausted, they merely curled up together on the couch.

After Wilson had been living with House for a couple of weeks, House took a week of sick leave for the first time since the infarction. He probably wouldn't have done it, except that Wilson found him retching in the bathroom, and had diagnosed the stomach flu and put him back to bed. It was an unusual sort of flu, in that there was no fever, and no diarrhea, only a feeling of being tired and the nausea that seemed to come and go at will. It seemed to be worse when his stomach was empty, or when he smelled certain things, such as coffee or any form of seafood.

After a week spent on the couch with his iPod and GameBoy, he was thoroughly bored. The one amusement was listening to the message Cuddy left on his answering machine, "House? Are you there? Wilson says that you don't have a fever, so unless you can prove that you are dying, you had better get your ass into work on Monday or I will triple your number of clinic hours." So on Monday, he took a shower and got dressed for work, even though he wasn't really feeling any better.

In the next few weeks, he managed to convince everyone that he was fine, and everyone else mostly forgot his bout with the flu. He even managed to convince himself that he was improving, but it was more that he had figured out tricks that mostly kept the nausea at bay. When Wilson was in the shower, he would reach into the nightstand and pull out a handful of crackers. The small amount of food in his stomach was usually enough to keep him from vomiting first thing in the morning. When that tactic failed, he found that the noise of the shower was enough to mask the sounds of his retching. In the mornings, he hid in his office, so that he didn't have to go into the conference room where the morning coffee was brewing. At lunchtime, he found some out of the way place to eat a piece of fruit and handful of crackers, so that he could avoid the hospital cafeteria. Occasionally he was forced to walk away in the middle of a conversation and head to the nearest restroom, but it was just one additional strange behavior for a man that was known for his odd quirks. He was losing weight, but because his colleagues saw him everyday, they really didn't take notice of the changes in him. He now had two constant companions, the bottle of Vicodin in his right jacket pocket and a package of crackers in his left.

At the end of September, Lisa Cuddy took two weeks off for a trip to California, and when she returned, she was shocked at the changes in her colleague. She immediately picked up the phone and asked Wilson to stop by her office. As soon as he entered, she didn't waste time on the preliminaries. "What's going on with House?"

He was confused; what had House done now to piss off his boss? "What do you mean?" he hedged.

"Have you taken a good look at him lately? If he loses any more weight he is going to look like a walking skeleton."

Wilson slumped in the chair. Was there something that he had missed? Maybe he just hadn't wanted to see it. "I don't know."

"I need to know if there is something that is going to affect his job? How much Vicodin is he taking? Is it drugs? If he is taking something else, like morphine or crystal meth, I need to know."

"Nothing like that. The leg has been fine."

"Everything isn't fine. Even in just two weeks, I can tell he has lost even more weight. There's something wrong. I am not just asking as his boss. I'm worried."

"Me too." Wilson thought for a minute. "I'm due to be in the clinic in ten minutes. Do you think you could find someone to cover my shift for maybe an hour? I'd like to check things out at House's place."

Lisa grabbed her lab coat. "I can do it. Just let me know if you find anything."

Wilson drove back to the apartment, wondering what he would find. What he had been missing for the past few months? The first place he looked was the metal box at the top of the bookshelf. The morphine vial was untouched. Nothing had been taken. He searched through the end table next to the couch. The only thing even slightly out of the ordinary was a plastic wrapper.

He checked the kitchen. He hadn't cooked for several weeks, and so therefore he was surprised to see fresh fruit in the bowl. Apparently House had actually gone grocery shopping. Somewhat unusual, but not unheard of. He looked in the pantry. Two boxes of crackers partially hidden behind the cans of soup. One box was normal; two seemed a little excessive, but maybe there had been a two-for-one special.

Nothing unusual in the bathroom. The last place to check was the bedroom. He checked all the places where he thought that House could have hidden narcotics. Nothing. Finally he checked the nightstand on House's side of the bed. A partially eaten package of crackers. Maybe they were left over from when House had the flu? He fished out a cracker and took a bite. Not stale, which ruled out the leftover theory.

He was deep in thought as he drove back to the hospital. That night, he kept an eye on House, trying to catalog any other possible symptoms. When he was tossing the cartons of Chinese food, he noticed that House hadn't finished his chicken teriyaki. As usual, Wilson leaned against House as they watched the baseball game, but he noticed that House dozed off before the fifth inning. Symptom, or just a natural consequence of snuggling on the couch?

The next morning, he came out of the shower and was putting on his clothes when House entered the bathroom and turned on the water. He pressed his ear against the door, and then he heard it, the unmistakable sounds of someone retching. He pushed open the door, and saw House hunched over the toilet. He filled a glass with water and passed it over to the man on the floor. House took it gratefully and rinsed out his mouth. "Thanks."

"How long has this been going on?"

House sighed. "Since I had the flu. It never got any better."

"That's almost two months. How much weight have you lost?" House only shrugged, not meeting Wilson's eyes. "Come on. Let me help you up." He fitted actions to his words, and then guided House to the bathroom scale. They looked down at the numbers that were displayed. "Nine pounds. You've lost nine pounds. How long were you going to wait before you tried to do something about it? Is there anything else I should know about? Any other symptoms?" House moved so that he could sit on the closed lid of the toilet. "Fatigue?" House nodded. "Fever?" House shook his head. "Anything else?" House shook his head, but wouldn't meet Wilson's eyes. There was something he wasn't telling Wilson. He thought back over the last few days, thinking there was something he should have noticed. Finally he remembered their lovemaking the other night, and decided to hazard a guess. "Sore nipples?"

House sighed. "A little."

In his mind, Wilson was tallying the symptoms, and any possible conclusions he could come up with were not good. "Let me run a few tests. Maybe we can figure out what's causing this."

"No. I won't become a guinea pig, just for a little nausea."

"Two months of throwing up is not just a little nausea. All you need to do is give me some blood. I just want to run a few tests."

"Fine. Now will you leave me alone so I can take a shower."

Later that day, James walked into Cuddy's office with the tubes of blood and a stack of lab slips. "I need you to authorize these tests."

She looked through the slips. Tox screen. CBC. Chemistry panel. Cancer markers. HIV. "Thorough."

"Yeah, I need to make sure I run everything, because I doubt he'll let me do any more tests if this batch yields nothing."

She signed the slips, and then looked up. "You'll let me know what you find?"

Wilson nodded, "I'll have the lab page you when they've delivered the results to me." Then he walked down to personally deliver the vials to the lab.

All day long, he tried to concentrate on work, but mentally he was counting down the hours until the results would arrive. Finally his assistant knocked on the door and handed the folder to him. Now that it was here, he placed it in the center of his desk, and tried to find the courage to open it. He sighed, and began leafing through the pages, scanning the numbers quickly while he searched for the value he was looking for. He picked up the last page and found it -- Beta-hCG 25,300 IU/L. The computer had helpfully highlighted the reading with several asterisks, as if a number that was four orders of magnitude higher than normal levels wouldn't have been obvious enough to an oncologist.

Oh God. Not this. It was one thing to have some vague fears and suspicions, but quite another to have them confirmed in black and white. He sat there for quite a while, trying to control his emotions. Why now? When he was truly happy for the first time in his life. How could he tell House? How would he react? And then an even worse thought came into Wilson's mind – would House agree to treatment? He was so proud, so stubborn. So reluctant to be seen as weak. Even after all of these years, Wilson could not predict what his response would be. He had to be calm, for any minute Cuddy would be knocking on his door, and above all else, House's privacy had to be protected.

Soon enough, the knock came, and his boss sat down in the chair in front of his desk, a curious reversal of their normal positions.

"It's not drugs. Tox screen came back negative for everything except Vicodin, and even that was on the low end of where I would expect it to be. There's nothing in this report that should concern you as an administrator of this hospital."

She noted his choice of words, and looked at her head of oncology, who wasn't as good at hiding his emotions as he thought he was. The man looked shattered. "So you do know what's wrong with him?"

"Yeah. It'll be fine." Wilson replied, even though it was far from the truth.

Cuddy looked at him for a moment before making a decision. "Is there anything I can do to help? Anything you need, no questions asked."

Wilson looked over at her, grateful that she had accepted his lie so easily. He thought for a moment. "I need a key to the clinic. I'll let you know if any supplies are used so that you don't come up short when it is time to do inventory."

"You'll have one within an hour," she replied.

He watched as the Dean of Medicine left his office, grateful that she hadn't asked any questions that he couldn't answer. Forty minutes later, the maintenance supervisor personally delivered the key. Now for the hard part.

It was almost 6:30 PM, and unless they had a new patient, House's team should be gone for the day. He found House in his office, chair tipped back, feet on the desk, eyes closed as he listened to music on his iPod. When Wilson entered the office, his eyes opened and focused on the manila folder. Without speaking, he held out his hand for the results, and Wilson forced himself to hand over the folder. House calmly flipped through the sheets until he stopped on the last page. He sighed. "Testicular cancer."

"Yeah. Probably."

To be continued.....

Author's note: Fanfiction apparently doesn't allow Greek letters. So therefore I had to write out "Beta". Sigh.

Some References:

Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, Putnum (2000).

Wikipedia Tumor_marker

Wikipedia Human_chorionic_gonadotropin