Chapter Eighteen

“So…” Wilson peaked out from the kitchen once he heard the front door open and close. “No screaming, I guess that’s good.”

He was drying his hands on a dishrag as he moved into House’s line of vision, keeping it clenched in his grip almost nervously.

“Depends on the sort of screaming.” House pointed out as he went back to staring at the blank television screen.

“True,” Wilson allowed, and let a moment of silence pass between them to see if his friend would say anything more unprompted. But of course, Wilson should have known better than to even hope. “So, what’d she want?”

“Please,” House scoffed, “Like you weren’t listening.”

Wilson grasped the back of his neck with one hand, letting the one with the rag hang loose at his side. “Well, you’re apartment’s small. And voices carry.”

“True.” House agreed. “That’s where the whole stethoscope on the door thing comes in handy.”

Wilson cringed – they had invented that policy for a reason, and it wasn’t just so House could make him stay outside for hours at a time for his own twisted sense of entertainment. The first time Wilson had crashed at House’s place for more than a night, he’d unintentionally walked in on him and some little blonde thing going at it like bunnies.

“For the purpose of this conversation,” Wilson lowered his hand and crossed his arms, “Let’s not mention that.”

“Fine.” House grunted. He’d been the master of few words lately.

“Fine.” Wilson agreed, and then sighed. “So, are you gonna call your mom back?”

“Yeah. Eventually.” House didn’t look up.

“Are you gonna talk to Cuddy again? Because, I don’t think too much got resolved just now.” Wilson pressed, speaking fast and hoping for honestly.

“Maybe.”

“Are you gonna go to the funereal?” He threw in and, as expected, House finally looked up.

“You are, right?” He inquired lightly, only a slight strain in his tone.

“Yeah,” Wilson sighed again, he knew his friend didn’t want to hear this right now, but a woman – a Rhonda Foreman – had called him last night. Rhonda was apparently Rodney’s sister-in-law, and she’d flown up here to take care of all the funeral arrangements.

She’d asked him if he and House were planning on attending. He could only assume that she’d gotten House’s home number from Cuddy. He’d answered for himself and the Diagnostician.

“I’ll go.” House leaned his head to rest it on the back of the couch. “You already told whoever called yesterday that I was going to, anyway.”

Wilson’s eyes widened in shock. “How did you…”

“Voices carry, remember?” House mocked his words from earlier and Wilson couldn’t help the slight smile that he felt tugging at his mouth.

“Well, that’s good.” He said. House just nodded. “Really.”

This was far too awkward. The atmosphere around these two men hadn’t been this utterly strained for a long time. Wilson was at a loss as to how to fix it.

“You have a suit, right?” He asked, simply for something to say. He already knew the answer.

Which was probably why House rolled his eyes at him instead of verbally responding.

“Listen, House,” Wilson moved closer and sat down on the couch next to his friend. “How’re you feeling?” Which wasn’t what he’d been going to say at all, but seemed much easier now that the words were out.

“Fine.” The older man grunted. “No more breakthrough pain. Just some general and located aches.”

“That’s good.” Wilson leaned forward, bracing his arms across his legs. “But if it gets any worse, we could always get you on Percoset or-”

“I’m fine.” House interrupted.

“For now,” Wilson countered, before letting it go and leaning backwards.

House was staring straight ahead again, and both men lapsed into yet another silence – these long stretches of too intense quiet were becoming more than a little daunting. They always seemed to represent something – failure, impending arguments, or remnants of grief.

Then again, maybe this was just what was left over when someone in your life died unexpectedly, when no one knew how to act or what to say.

Or maybe he was just over thinking everything as he so often did.

He turned to House. “Say something deep and meaningful to make this all seem not so awful.” He demanded bluntly.

House looked at him and quirked an eyebrow. It wasn’t the first time over the course of their friendship that Wilson had asked for something along these lines.

And the older doctor always replied in some way or another. And he always managed to make everything at least a tiny bit better. Today he went with, “This sucks.”

Wilson snorted. It wasn’t exactly deep and meaningful, but it was exactly what he’d needed to hear. “Yeah...it does.” He let out a deep breath, “You wanna beer?”

o0oo0o

Chase had stopped dead, and was now staring at her like a – as House would probably say – little Wombat caught in the headlights. Cameron wasn’t sure what had prompted her to ask the question she just had, but Chase’s reaction was unexpected, if nothing else.

“Wh...What?” The man stuttered, still standing in the middle of her kitchen holding a coffee filter in one hand.

“I was just…” she sighed, and looked down at the table she was sitting at. Solid wood - she’d bought this at a garage sale from a little old lady one of the first weeks she’d moved to Princeton. She’d always loved it. “Curious.”

“Yeah,” Chase visibly swallowed. “Understandable.”

“It’s just…you haven’t talked about it. And God knows House is never going to offer up any information voluntarily.” She took a deep breath, shifted her propped up, cast-clad leg and tried to make her voice not quiver as she spoke. “I just want to know what really happened.”

“Are you sure?” Chase finally set the coffee filter on the counter and took a step closer to her. He ran a hand through his hair, making it ruffled and skewed. She’d always liked him better when his hair wasn’t perfectly in place. “Are you really, really sure? Because sometimes-”

“Ignorance is bliss.” She interrupted. She wasn’t sure if that’s what he’d been going to say, but it seemed fitting either way.

She remembered when she’d told House that, after giving him the hundred dollars he’d won off her from their bet on the happily married couple. She had never been able to figure out if he’d just been too caught up in the case to remind her of the money, or if he had been intending to actually let it go.

She thought about that woman now – the one who’d been poisoning her husband, trying to kill him, for reasons they’d never be able to fully understand.

For weeks after that woman had been arrested and her husband had been released from the hospital, the team tried to figure it out. The purple finger lady, the purple finger murder – they’d come up with quite a few bizarre names for her and the case, all based on House’s unusual manner of not only solving a medical mystery, but also unearthing an attempted murder.

She thought that it was probably a good thing House had never wanted to be a cop or, more accurately, a detective – though he’d have made a damn good one – his talents were more needed in the hospital. Plus, he wouldn’t have been able to keep working after the infarction.

“Cameron?” Chase’s tentive voice interrupted her drifting thoughts.

They still almost always referred to each other by their surname’s when they were together, despite the changed context of their relationship. She briefly wondered if that would shift over time, before realizing that she didn’t care much. As long as they had the time in which to figure that out.

“I want to know.” She spoke firmly, completely confident that – in this case at least – ignorance would bring everything except bliss. “What really happened the night John Haring died?”

o0oo0o

“What happened the night John Haring died?” Wilson asked the question after dinner – and three beers – hoping that House would be calm enough to answer honestly.

The other man just looked at him with purposefully ambiguous eyes. “What do you mean?” He asked slowly.

“I mean,” Wilson took a deep breath and set his own beer bottle down on the table. “We haven’t talked about it since that morning. I said that the police might suspect that you’d…murdered him. And you agreed.”

House took a drink and licked his lips once the bottle was lowered and resting on his left thigh. “They didn’t arrest me, Wilson. That’s a pretty big tip-off as far as that goes.”

“True.” Wilson nodded. “But we still haven’t talked about it.”

“We don’t actually have to talk everything to death.” House’s tone was an attempt at light, but something much stronger was lurking just below the surface. “We’re not chicks and this isn’t a soap opera.”

Wilson closed his eyes and counted to seven - he never had been able to make it all the way to ten when dealing with House. “I know,” he allowed and took in practiced, controlled breaths. “But can you just answer one question for me?”

The Oncologist had been expecting sarcasm, off-beat humor, complete ignorance, an irritating metaphor, some statistical analogy or something else equally unhelpful.

But, for one of the first times in their entire friendship, House looked at him and spoke sincerely. “I guess I probably owe you that much, huh?”

Wilson didn’t want to confirm or deny that, so he just asked what he wanted to ask, before House’s mood shifted again.

“Did you lie to the cops?”

TBC…