Wilson didn't really know how he got stuck in Cuddy's anteroom with her personal assistant ("secretary!" shouted a gleeful voice in the back of his mind-- he grabbed its cane and shoved it away), but it was beginning to grate on his nerves.

Cuddy was winding up a meeting with Stacy, smiling tensely and saying something Wilson couldn't hear through the doors. Wilson wondered if either of them had been up as late as he had. He'd been catching up on paperwork he'd neglected for the past week, and had finally finished the whole lot of it this morning. Then he'd found that several of them needed Cuddy's signature before he could send them off to their various recipients. His staff had all had their own duties to attend to, and since he had no patients currently in critical condition, he'd opted to deliver them to Cuddy himself.

Which... explained why he was here, again. Good to have that cleared up.

The assistant ("secretary!" insisted the voice again, and Wilson threatened to withhold its Vicodin) leaned forward over his desk with an ingratiating yet concerned smile, and said, "You don't look so hot."

Wilson blinked as his mind immediately went for a ride in the gutter, then clambered back onto dry land with a self-satisfied snicker. He sat back on the sofa, put his collection of folders on his lap, and used both hands to scrub at his face.

"I'm fine," he muttered with a weary sigh, and set about convincing his subconscious that Cuddy's secretary-- assistant-- whatever-- wasn't trying to flirt with him.

"Okay," said the secretary lightly, leaning back again and glancing at Cuddy and Stacy in the office. He turned back around to face Wilson, apparently determined to strike up some sort of conversation. "What about your friend? He giving you any trouble?"

Wilson stopped rubbing his temples, furrowed his eyebrows, and looked sideways at the other man. "Wait. You're talking about House?" That Cuddy's secretary, of all people, would make the connection between them when neither he nor House ever stopped by Cuddy's office at the same time... was a little weird. A lot, actually.

"Well, yeah," said the secretary, scoffing and twirling a pencil, "if you mean Dr. Scruffy McCane. He's always giving Dr. Cuddy trouble; she gets a headache only every time he comes by here. First they're sarcastic to each other, then he argues, she compromises, and finally he leaves with this smug look on his face. I see her popping ibuprofen after all his visits." He nodded at Wilson, who still had his hands on his head. "You look like she does after he leaves."

For one heart-stopping moment, Wilson had a terrifying mental image of himself wearing one of Cuddy's low-cut tops and had to dig the heels of his hands into his eyesockets to drive it away.

"My headache has nothing to do with House," he said, sounding a bit strained, and cursed violently in his mind for remembering a particularly flamboyant tie in his closet that would have gone perfectly with the flowery top Cuddy was wearing today. Apart from, you know, being a genderfucked fashion disaster. He made a mental note to burn the thing as soon as he got home.

The secretary grinned. "Okay," he repeated, and Wilson wondered if it wouldn't look too weird for him to carry a cane like House's so he could hit people with it whenever he wanted.

Then he thought of the rumor mills, mentally shuddered, and decided to leave that thought alone for, oh, the rest of his life. The theoretical gratification of getting to bop the stupids on the head with his very own big wooden stick was greatly outweighed by the amount of theoretical squealing and teasing that Wilson could imagine emanating from the nurses' station for the rest of his career at Princeton-Plainsboro.

"Isn't that adorable? They have matching canes!"

Not appealing.

"Really," protested Wilson. "Nothing to do with House. I just stayed up late last night doing paperwork." The secretary gave him a crooked eyebrow and Wilson blankly stared back. "What?"

"Okay," said the secretary yet again, smiling wider.

Wilson stared some more, and abruptly decided that a large stack of patient folders might actually work just as well as a cane, in terms of potential to cause blunt trauma. Maybe if he hit this guy on the head, he'd be mentally slowed enough to Wilson's current sleep-deprived level, and they could actually hold a civil conversation instead of having this rather idiotic exchange of... whatever they'd been conversing about before. Wilson was sure there had been an allusion to him having relations with House somewhere in the past minute or so. Unfortunately, he hadn't really caught it when it had come up and it would look more than a little damning for him to bring it up again.

"How long has Stacy been in there?" asked Wilson, checking his watch and trying to change the subject. The secretary glanced at the corner of his computer screen, then at Cuddy, who was nodding sympathetically at something Stacy had said.

"About... five minutes or so. She went in and they just started talking." He motioned helpfully at Wilson's lap. "If you don't want to wait, I can hold onto that for you," he said, smiling.

Wilson stared, slightly openmouthed. Oh, that was so not fair. Now he was doing it on purpose.

"No! Uh... no, that's okay, I can wait," said Wilson, and curled up protectively around the folders on his lap. And his lap, for that matter. He wanted very much to pull his labcoat over his head and hide in it, like a little kid. If he couldn't see the world, they couldn't see him. Or maybe that was the fatigue talking.

The secretary leaned back again, humming noncommittally. Wilson valiantly tried to convince his mind that that wasn't a disappointed tone he'd heard in that humming sound, but apparently Fatigue had decided to throw a whole party in his skull and had invited its friend, Innuendo.

Wilson and the secretary sat in silence for a while longer. The secretary fielded two phone calls with professional ease, while Wilson tried to pretend that the high, artificial bleating hadn't scared him out of his skin. He forcefully kneaded the bridge of his nose, willing Stacy to hurry up with whatever she was talking to Cuddy about and just let him go in already. He'd been waiting only a minute or so and Stacy had been in there for over five. Surely whatever it was wouldn't take much longer?

The secretary frowned at him. "I could get you an aspirin, if you've got a headache," he offered. Wilson waved his concern away with a weak smile. He winced and went back to kneading the bridge of his nose when the vision of Cuddy with a post-House headache came back, and attached to it the vision of himself wearing Cuddy's blouse and the awful tie that went with it.

He mentally filed that away in an imaginary folder labeled (in fluorescent yellow) "Things Never to Mention For The Rest of My Life."

"He drives that Corvette, right?" the secretary asked, out of nowhere.

Wilson blinked and took a moment to answer. "Corvette?"

"Uh, yeah. Only the hottest car in the hospital parking lot. It's always parked in the handicapped parking spot where everyone passing by the front entrance can see it and drool in envy," he replied with a scoff, making a vague gesture towards the front of the hospital.

Wilson fixed his gaze on a spot on the wall, in an effort to keep from rolling his eyes. It wasn't enough that he was exhausted out of his mind, was it? He had to get himself stuck in a room with this guy-- Wilson glanced at him and saw him raise his eyebrows-- still smiling-- this guy who was annoying as hell and ("Cuddy's personal asskisser," interjected the voice, and Wilson couldn't bring himself to push it away again) probably shallow.

Then again, Wilson would probably think Cuddy's secretary was much nicer if he were not so tired. Which he was, in fact, which made this... an entirely useless train of thought. He floundered briefly for another thing to think about, then remembered he was supposed to be discussing House's Corvette. He tuned back into reality in time to hear the other man say "... he drives a little carelessly, don't you think?"

"Um... yes. Yeah. I don't think he knows what he's doing, honestly. Permanently stuck on third base, never anything else." Wilson nodded knowledgeably, and tried to look like he had been listening the whole time.

The secretary frowned. "You mean in third gear, don't you?"

"I said third gear," said Wilson calmly, while frantically trying to make his brain keep up with the conversation. The door behind him opened and admitted the familiar three-step gait of... exactly the person he didn't want to see at the moment.

"No, you said House was 'permanently stuck on third base,'" said the clueless secretary, at exactly the moment when the other door opened and let out Cuddy and Stacy.

"I'm permanently what?" asked House, glancing sharply at Wilson.

"House what?" asked Cuddy, staring at Wilson.

"He what?" asked Stacy, looking a little startled.

Wilson, whose overwrought mind had tried and failed to process all three questions at once, gaped stupidly and looked a little overwhelmed at suddenly being the center of attention.

House recovered first, and leaned over Wilson with a pouty look. "Oh, of course. Why didn't you tell me you wanted to get to home plate? I didn't know you were shy." Wilson fixed a wide-eyed look on House's face, leaning back as House leaned over him, and tried to hide behind his stack of folders.

What to do, what to do? Wilson vaguely remembered needing to give the folders he was holding to Cuddy, but that would involve giving up his House-shield, which wasn't good. He couldn't go into Cuddy's office because she and Stacy were still in that doorway, and House was sort of looming over him from the other direction.

The oncologist glanced at the secretary for help, only to find the damn boy snickering at him.

Stacy looked at Wilson, sitting with a deer-in-the-headlights look on the sofa, then at House, leaning over him with a positively lecherous expression on his face. "Oh, you..." she started, then shook her head, threw her hands up, and shoved past House on her way out of Cuddy's office.

The secretary snickered harder. Cuddy gave him a disapproving look and he snorted and hiccupped once, then stopped laughing. Wilson noted that his shoulders were still shaking with silent laughter, and his face was red with the effort of holding his amusement in.

"I need Dr. Cuddy to sign these," squeaked Wilson, and couldn't recognize his voice underneath all the tension. House's cattish grin ratcheted up a few more degrees in intensity. Wilson hastily stood up and handed the folders to Cuddy, who wasn't expecting the sudden movement and got the corner of the stack jabbed into her stomach. She yelped, fumbled to take the folders, and almost dropped them.

Wilson was suddenly feeling very awake, and very hot in the face. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor, wishing the other three people remaining in the room would look anywhere but at him. Cuddy rearranged the folders in one arm and sighed.

"Dr. Wilson, I think you need a day off."

House brightened.

"Not you, House," said Cuddy over her shoulder, already walking back into her office.

House's expression went from bright back to pouty. Wilson tilted his head and found himself staring at the wet shine on House's lower lip, then caught himself and dug the heels of his hands into his eyesockets again. Gah. Damn fatigue. He could hear the secretary starting to snicker again.

"Shut up," muttered Wilson irritably, and walked around House in a three-foot radius on his way to the door, clutching his temples and squinting.

The secretary stopped laughing long enough to try to be helpful again. "I do have aspirin, if you still want--"

Wilson whirled around, eyes very wide, and said, "I'm not wearing Cuddy's blouse with that tie!"

House's eyebrows twitched as he gave Wilson a look. The exhausted oncologist stood in silence for a few moments, closed his eyes, and blankly tried to figure out how he'd made the jump from aspirin to crossdressing. Then he gave up and figured it was probably all House's fault he was spouting non sequiturs anyway.

"Of course not," said House slowly, making a show of turning around and examining Cuddy's current outfit through the door of her office. "It would clash horribly."

("Also, I just don't think you have the cleavage to pull it off," he continued, and Wilson was suddenly very, very creeped out at the thought of House talking to him in his mind.)

"What cleavage?" questioned Wilson, and immediately regretted it when both House and the secretary stared at him.

"Nobody said anything about clea--" began the secretary tentatively, but right then House grabbed Wilson about the shoulders, spun him around, and frogmarched him out the door of Cuddy's office.

"Somebody needs a nap," said House decisively, and directed his friend into an elevator. "I think your patients will appreciate you more if you weren't spouting random sexual references every other minute."

Wilson made a mental note to himself to remember that the folder in his head labeled "Things Never to Mention For The Rest of My Life" would be severely compromised when he'd been awake for over forty-eight hours straight.

The elevator dinged and Wilson would have walked down the wrong corridor if House hadn't hooked his cane around his arm and yanked him back.

"I thought I was going home?" asked Wilson, practically sleepwalking, next to and a little in front of House. He recognized the diagnostics hallway and paused in confusion. House poked the head of his cane into Wilson's back to get him to keep walking.

"My couch is closer."

It took a few more minutes-- where Wilson almost walked through the glass wall next to the door and House was obliged to grab him by the scruff of the neck to keep him from embarrassing himself further-- but eventually Wilson was sprawled on House's couch and starting to doze off.

"What were you saying about cleavage?" asked House with mild interest, sitting at his desk and watching Wilson shift around to get comfortable.

Wilson paused and thought the question over very carefully. "That one... goes in the folder," he said slowly, nodded with some satisfaction, and promptly fell asleep with his mouth open.