Work Text:
Life, Lupus, and Other Miseries
Foreman and Wilson are conventional. It's the most irritating thing in the world.
House tries to catch them at...anything. Anything in the world. He'd love to know that Foreman has a secret life as a drag queen; that Wilson posts to message boards as his fursona; that they're secretly planning to adopt an unfortunate, congenital-disease-ridden orphan; that they're blank-faced cyborg hitmen in their spare time, wearing dark suits and sunglasses and staring stony-faced at their victims before finishing them off with a one-two shot through a silencer.
Seriously. Anything. Anything would be better than...normal.
They arrive at the hospital together most mornings. Sometimes Foreman drives; sometimes it's Wilson. They don't kiss in public, but they do smile at each other. God, those insipid smiles. House never wants to imagine Wilson saying snookie-wookums or Foreman's mouth forming the words sweetie-pie, but those smiles make him think it every time, and it's starting to drive him a little insane.
"Who made the first move?" House asks when he barges into Wilson's office one day and flops down on the couch.
"I did," Wilson answers serenely, his pen scratching smoothly across his paperwork.
"Last time you said it was him."
"I assumed since you're asking again, the answer must have changed."
"Who tops?" House asks, and what he's really wondering is if there's chains or whips involved, or if they sell tapes of their sexcapades on the internet (so far House has had no luck finding and downloading them, if so).
"Actually, we're both Cuddy's sex slaves," Wilson answers. "Sometimes I see him when the blindfolds come off, but other than that..." He shrugs. Blandly. House hates it when Wilson lies to him and he can't tell, but he hates it even more when Wilson lies to him and doesn't even try to hide it.
"I bet you're boring in bed," House says. "Both of you. I bet..." But that's where his imagination fails him. That's really the problem. Whatever the sex is like, House's brain shies away from picturing it. Too much...naked Foreman and Wilson, and House would rather imagine Thirteen with Cameron if there's a severe clothes shortage in his mind. He knows how it started--well, he was there when it started, albeit on the other side of the restaurant window, while Wilson and Foreman met inside for what was not a consult, or a business meeting, or anything where the words 'just friends' could be applied. House snorts in disbelief at the idea that they have ever been friends.
"You think this will last?" he badgers Foreman during a differential. "I've known him for fifteen years and he left me when his girlfriend died."
Foreman raises an eyebrow--that infuriating, self-confident, I know something you don't know smug bastard of an eyebrow--and says, "Maybe it's lupus."
It's not.
What is lupus is Foreman and Wilson. What's lupus is the quiet way they greet each other at the end of the day (or the beginning of the day, if House makes Foreman run pointless tests all night). It's lupus when House shows up at their (their, for fuck's sake) apartment and finds them working quietly in the office, or watching a TV show that they apparently agree on, or Foreman has his sleeves rolled up and is washing dishes while Wilson sits at the kitchen table and they are, to all appearances, having a conversation.
House pouts. He'd never admit to anyone in a million years that that's what it is, but he can, sometimes, admit it to himself. Wilson is supposed to be a cheating womanizer. Foreman's not supposed to be able to make a meaningful relationship work. House is supposed to be able to mock them just right so that they'll break up. But somehow, it turns into sneering when Foreman's a few minutes late, or rolling his eyes when Wilson leaves House's place a little early. It turns into the way he comments on Cuddy's breasts or Kutner's enthusiasm. It turns into...life.
Life is miserable. But, in the end, Wilson's still his friend and Foreman still bristles when House belittles his career. So House lives with it, and probably, that's as good as it's going to get.
end