"What's that for?" Chase questioned the small gift bag in Cameron's hand as they began walking down the second floor hall.
"It's for House," she stated simply as if he should have known what the present was supposed to be for. "It's his birthday, remember? Don't tell me you didn't know that?"
Chase stopped walking, his eyes wide at her answer. House's birthday? Nobody told him about that. He was for sure that nobody directly told Cameron that either, so how would she have known that? If House was the one to tell them, he wouldn't keep his mouth shut about it, and Chase can't recall rolling his eyes at their boss's attempt at telling the team his birthday was coming up. Surely, she had to be messing with him. Yeah, that had to have been it.
"You serious?" Chase asked, moving to catch back up with Cameron. "Or are you joking?" He only frowned when Cameron flipped the small tag on the bag handle that showed it was for House. So she wasn't joking. Lovely. "You didn't tell us?"
Cameron stopped, staring at him blankly.
"We were all there when Wilson mentioned it," she stated seriously.
"When Wilson…." He trailed off, trying to recall the conversation, but was unable to which frustrated him. He wished he was able to pay better attention to side conversations like Cameron was able to. "Well, what'd you get him?"
As she was about to answer, their pagers had started going off. Checking, they saw that House was calling them into the conference room. From how he worded his message, it sounded urgent, but urgent for House could be entirely nonurgent for everybody else. He could call the team in, sounding extremely calm when there was a patient barely hanging on, but turn around and start freaking out when he couldn't find something.
Chase had gone on ahead into the conference room while Cameron made a quick stop at his office to drop off the present onto his desk. She knew how private of a person House could be at times, so she figured that opening a present in front of the team would be too much for him. Which was understandable, it could be a bit awkward to open presents. Any thought of himself being vulnerable would cause him to close himself off immediately and put on the tough guy act. It was an act that everybody could easily see through, but calling him out on it would only make him more defensive, and the more defensive he got, the worse the work day would be. So the best thing the team could do in that situation was let him act how he needed to until he felt better about himself.
When Cameron entered the conference room, House had his back to them while he wrote something on the whiteboard. She couldn't tell if it was something case-related or something else entirely.
"This!" House said loudly, moving out of the way of the whiteboard looking at his team as he tapped the board with the marker he was holding. "This is our life now," he stated as the team was trying to take in what he wrote.
He had drawn a poorly made table with his name on one side and God on the other, with two tally marks underneath God and one under his name.
"What the hell is that?" Foreman questioned, rolling his eyes. It was way too early for whatever shenanigans House was up to.
"What's it look like?" He tapped the whiteboard again. "I wanna see how many times I can defy God."
"For fuck's sake…." Foreman pinched the bridge of his nose. It was times like this that made him wonder if they should make potential doctors take a psych evaluation before giving out medical licenses. "Why?"
"Blame Wilson. This whole thing is his fault," House added another mark underneath his name on the table. "Every time we get a patient that other doctors gave up on, and we send them home safe and sound, I get a mark."
"That's not defying-"
"This is what we're doing now," he interrupted Foreman.
House had to admit he did enjoy having a team working for him. At first he was completely against it, going as far as blowing up Cuddy's phone to keep telling her that he didn't want a team and would quit if she forced him to have one. For years, House was used to doing things on his own, going through school alone, going through life alone, and getting his foot in the door with his career alone. He had assumed that he would have to go through his entire career all by himself because he had conditioned himself that that was what he wanted. To be alone. He didn't need anybody. He had thought that he didn't need Cuddy defending him. He had thought he didn't need a friend like Wilson. He certainly thought he didn't need a team to rely on. Now that House had all that, he couldn't image life without it, but he wouldn't be afraid to push anybody away, even if that made him depressed. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, they were his friends now, even if they didn't consider House their friend.
"So… is there no case?" Chase questioned, wondering if this was the 'urgent' page that their boss had just sent out.
"What? No. Not at all. I just wanted to make you all aware of the new policy."
Chase snorted a small laugh. Of course there wasn't a case. Why would there be?
"Yeah, yeah… Happy birthday, House," Chase added purely to see the expression on House's face.
He personally didn't tell anybody about his birthday; he didn't want anybody to know it was his birthday. Something about people wishing him a happy birthday was embarrassing and a sign of weakness. In fact, he made it a point to not do anything as an adult since he was never allowed to do anything for his birthday as a child. There was no point to it; why celebrate a day he forcefully came into existence?
"Oh… well…. Thanks…." House mumbled, looking back at the whiteboard, mindlessly drawing on it so he didn't have to face his team.
"Oh, right," Foreman said, digging in his pocket before tossing a pack of cigarettes that they knew that House smoked onto the table. He had no idea what to get House for his birthday, but he knew that House smoked this specific type of cigarette, so something was better than nothing. "Happy birthday."
House let out a small grumble under his breath. He had no idea how to react to his team giving him stuff and saying happy birthday. His parents never did birthdays and he never went to anybody's birthday parties while growing up, so this was all so foreign to him.
Chase couldn't help but chuckle a bit as he stood up, knowing exactly how to get under House's skin but to show that he cared about him. While House's back was to him, Chase hugged him from behind, causing House to tense up and freeze in place.
"What is this?" House said, his muscles physically hurting from how tense he was.
"I'm hugging you," Chase said, trying to hold back a laugh.
"Why?"
"Because it's your birthday," Cameron jumped in, not wasting any time standing up from her chair and joining in on the hug.
"Okay, okay, I get it!" House shouted, trying to squirm out of the group hug but was unable to. "Thank you for the hug against my will; I appreciate it."
Foreman rolled his eyes but couldn't help but smile as he stood up, wrapping his arms around the team and their boss. House let out a low groan, not enjoying the hug, but knew that they were doing this just to annoy him and because he hated physical contact. Although, there was a small part of him that thought that the hug was nice. Would he ever admit it? Absolutely not.
"Off! Off, off, off, off!" House finally said, now getting slightly overwhelmed as he shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, happy birthday to me. Off!"
They moved away, but not before Cameron took the marker that House was still holding onto. On the whiteboard, she put three tally marks under God, seeing as House didn't kill them for hugging him like that.
At the end of the work day, House finally returned to his office. Surprisingly, he and the team had been busy with a case that came in unexpectedly and took up much of their time, including his, so he hadn't been in his office that day. As he grabbed his backpack behind his desk, he noticed the small gift bag Cameron had placed on his desk before their small meeting earlier. At first, he was annoyed that somebody had been in his office without telling him and was worried that they had moved stuff around without his knowledge. Once he realized that he was only being paranoid, he plopped down on his chair before grabbing the small bag. The tag didn't have who the gift was from, which confused him, but it wasn't like he would thank them anyway; that was too vulnerable for him.
He threw the tissue paper out of the bag, revealing the huge sticky hand toy. House had a huge smile on his face. The gift wouldn't be much to anybody else besides a child, but to House it was the best thing that anybody could have gotten him. He already had plans of how to torment the entire hospital with it.
House looked at the tag again, now determined to figure out who got him the best thing in existence.