It starts when House spends a solid forty minutes looking for his Xbox, he
sees the Post-It note on the back of Wilson's DVD player saying: CONSIDER
THIS YOUR COMEUPPANCE.
House stares at it for a long time before he says, "Oh, no he didn't."
It turns out he did, and when House stalks into Princeton Plainsboro the
next morning, it's straight to Wilson's office. His dramatic entrance and
plan to bludgeon Wilson into giving him back his gaming system suffers a
hitch in that Wilson's not there—House knows because he might have broken
in through the balcony door.
He thumps around the hospital snarling and everybody—with the exception of
the oncology nurses, who all seem to smile at him—gives him a wide berth.
Eventually, he finds Wilson in with his most favorite terminal cancer
kids, because there's no masochism like forming relationships with kids
who are dying, House thinks in irritation.
The tearjerkers of the week are a redheaded boy reading a battered copy of
Martin the Warrior, a blond girl with stringy hair and sallow skin curled,
sleeping, around a bunny with its stuffing falling out, and a tiny Latino
girl with huge dark eyes. Wilson's sitting Indian style behind her as he
explains something about chemo, his shiny, French leather shoes glinting
in the overhead light as he braids her wild locks and ties it off with a
bright red scrunchy.
"Do you have any questions?" he asks her gently, letting the braid fall
midway down her back.
She turns to face him seriously and puts her hands on her hips
matter-of-factly as she asks, "Where'd you learn how to braid hair?"
"I got a book last year for Hannakah," Wilson says wryly and House
remembers with a smile the Macramé for Dummies set he'd sent via hospital
courier. He attached a card that read: HAPPY JEW CHRISTMAS.
For New Year's, Wilson hung up a little braided effigy of him in
oncology—complete with dollhouse cane.
She touches the braid and smiles sweetly. "Does it look pretty?" she asks.
"It looks very nice," Wilson laughs, and strokes the crown of her head as
he unfolds himself to stand up again. "Remember—if you any other
questions—"
"Ask the nurses or ask the nurses to ask you," she says by rote, grinning.
"Good girl," Wilson says approvingly, and turns toward the door, where his
melancholy smile shifts instantly to panic when he spies House—but only
for a moment before he smirks, and his face morphs into one of supreme
smarmy self-satisfaction.
House scowls, but waits until Wilson has closed the door to the abandoned
office-cum-playroom before he says, voice dripping with fraternal concern,
"You know, they rape you extra hard in prison for stealing from cripples."
"I'll take my chances," Wilson says dryly.
"Just keep in mind that the same reasons all those women find you
irresistible will make you the hottest trade in cellblock D."
"I've always wanted to be popular," Wilson tells him earnestly, pushing
into his office and making a beeline for the phone, checking his
voicemails before shuffling through the interoffice mail, a distracted
frown on his face.
"Give me back my Xbox," House demands, knowing he sounds petulant.
Wilson rolls his eyes and ignores him, so House plows onward:
"I've had a very rough year. My ex-girlfriend won't make an honest man out
of me; one of my serfs had the audacity to go and become deathly ill;
and—surprise surprise!—still a cripple."
"Well, I'd feel bad for you if I didn't know that you'd be the first one
to trade me for cigarettes in jail," Wilson says easily, and starts
flipping through one of four billion files on his desk. It's only Monday,
and the piles will be higher by the end of the week.
"You know I've got three highly trained doctor slaves just next door and
all of them know how to break into houses," House points out. "Foreman
might be backwards but he's still black and he can totally supervise."
Wilson's pager goes off and he says, "Go forth, break and enter—you're not
going to find it."
He's got that smile on his face that House knows means he's going to lose
this round.
"You thieving slut!" House calls down the hallway after Wilson's
retreating back, shaking his cane as Wilson turns—throwing open his arms
in mock apology and smirks as he continues backwards down the hall.
When a thorough tossing of Wilson's lock-picked office turns up nothing,
House briefly considers and then dismisses as pointless messing up
Wilson's desk.
Firstly, Wilson would never notice, and secondly, even if he did, he'd
just tell Cuddy who sides with Wilson all the time anyway—probably because
she wants to carry his little Jewish doctor babies.
House can think of more terrible things than Cuddy and Wilson breeding,
but it's hard.
There's also the point that Wilson would probably want House to be the
crotchety uncle and Cuddy would want a restraining order, and the ensuing
theatrics and recrimination and Wilson's feeble attempts to balance
between House and Cuddy would supercede even Sonny and Jason on GH for
melodrama.
And anyway, House isn't good at sharing, and apparently, this fatherhood
business takes time.
Time better spent watching America's Next Top Model with House over Thai
food.
Later that day, when his shamefaced trio of fellows report that breaking
into Wilson's apartment yielded no precious, Microsoft gaming systems, he
banishes them to do his clinic duty and play Spider Solitaire until he
comes up with a better idea.
It takes him two hours and sixty-four losses to realize Wilson gave it to
his battalion of battle-axe nurses. House has never felt so defeated in
his life.
"That's just wrong," House growls.
Wilson dismisses it with a wave of his hand, automatically paying for his
lunch as well as House's usual salad-over-his-steak. "A man does what he
must."
Over the course of the next three months House sabotages all of Wilson's
attempts to date, which actually seems to make him happier, stuffs porn
into Wilson's patient files, forwards dozens and dozens of pieces of
Disney erotica, and keeps breaking into Wilson's new apartment, if only on
principle—but to no avail.
"I could report you to the police," House threatens.
"I could report you to so much more than just the police," Wilson rejoins.
During the fourth month, the new play lounge opens in oncology, and House
ignores it for almost a week until he passes by to see small, bald
children having upright seizures, arms flailing and stomping as horrible,
horrible techno music pumps faintly from the closed door—
House limps as quickly as he can to the glass-walled enclosure, and when
he gets there he sees his Xbox and two Dance Dance Revolution pads and a
dozen kids and Wilson, sitting in a corner doing backlog paperwork and
smirking at him, mouthing: GOTCHA.
That afternoon, House goes to Wilson's apartment and burns all of his
underpants before stuffing his underwear drawer full of plus-sized women's
lingerie.