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disc0_volanteTitle: Just Five Feet Tall and Sick of Me (and All My Rattling On)
Author:disc0_volante
Characters: House and Wilson, mentioned Julie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: If I was the owner of House, Wilson would’ve been a patient of the hospital far more times than he was in the show…
Summary: Wilson comes down with a sinus infection during his actively failing third marriage. House investigates why his friend took the day off.
Words: 4351
Author Notes: For Feveruary 2026, fulfilling prompts 1 (“Don’t get too close”), 24 (Contagious), 25 (“It’s just a cold”), and 27 (“I don’t think that’s exactly hygienic”). Title comes from Lucky Ball and Chain by They Might Be Giants. Set vaguely before s2ep14.
It was only when the all-consuming, all-encompassing sound of House’s knuckles reverberated just as hard against his skull as they did his front door did James evacuate from the couch and put an end to the racket.
“What do you want?” James was trying to spit out, just as Greg began to ask, “Why the hell aren’t you at work?”
But then they both got a good look at each other—or maybe Greg just got a good look at him; his vision was a little fuzzy—and whatever ill will they were holding for each other in that moment wilted, leaving dead flowers on James’ doorstep.
James (too tired to play the part of Wilson that day) looked nothing short of a wreck, and he knew it. He was gray in complexion—with the exception of his cheeks and nose, which were mottled a deep red—, hair normally styled with ceaseless perfection now sticking out in every direction, shiny not from product, but from oil buildup. An intense chill had made its home under burning-hot skin, leaving his teeth to chatter incessantly beneath his gray McGill sweater and the only pair of sweatpants he owned.
Pathetically, even though he knew it would make his face hurt even more than it already did, he sniffled.
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks. Is that all?”, but his thanks came out more like ‘thanbks’, and he had to turn his head to the side and bury his face in his elbow to cover his sudden sneeze.
“You didn’t show up to work. You never skip work.” Greg was taking a step forward now, his soles moving from the edge of James’ front step to the middle of it.
Immediately, James took a step back in retaliation, only to find himself momentarily losing his balance. Unbeknownst to him, he had been leaning against the doorway; he must have been imitating Greg, because in his newly upright position, Greg stared at him from an angle. He blinked feverishly through the dizziness. “Don’t get too close.”
“Oh come on,” Greg groaned in response, rolling his eyes and huffing like a petulant child. He raised himself onto the tips of his toes with his good leg, putting more weight on his cane as he looked over his friend’s shoulder, his eyes roaming in search of… something. James guessed that he was supposed to know what that something was, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure it out. “So, what is it? You dying of consumption? Had a breakdown and finally decided your bald cancer kiddies weren’t worth the effort? The ‘ol ball and chain forcing you to stay home? I certainly don’t see her in there…”
“Wh—no, House, it’s none of those. It’s just a cold. Julie isn't—she’s at a—it’s contagious. Do you know what that means? Go back to work.”
“There’s no way you’re at home with a cold. If it was a cold, you’d hole yourself in your office and act like you have a migraine so you could get out of sleeping on your couch by sleeping on an even worse couch. As long as you’re not doing rounds, you don’t care who gets your germs. So what’s really the occasion?”
Greg was stepping forward again, this time putting his sneakers directly in the doorway, pushing past James almost absentmindedly—as if James were nothing more than a box of band-aids hiding the vicodin bottle stashed in his medicine cabinet (yes, he’s seen it before; he’d be an idiot not to. Or blind. Or a blind idiot).
After nearly falling over from the sudden movement, James squawked at the man, dredging through the molasses that was his fever in order to flock to his side. Greg was surveying the living room with a look on his face that signaled how he had a puzzle and everyone else had a problem.
“Are you even listening to me? I’m sick. I feel like that’s a pretty good excuse to stay home. And I’m contagious. Leave.”
Greg was eyeing the lump of blankets spilling off the couch now, coffee table littered with disgusting used tissues and empty glasses (which was a slip up on his part now that Greg was here, as Wilson never used glasses for things like this; he had a reusable water bottle at home and drank from it almost religiously).
“Where’s Julie?”
“Work. Do you seriously not understand what I’m saying?”
Greg turned his attention back over to his friend, and, suddenly, James was bumping his socked foot against the base of his shoe. Jumping at the sensation, he stumbled backwards, cursing at himself for opposing his own words. When had he gotten so close? “No, she couldn't be,” Greg almost muttered.
“What do you mean she—are you deaf? Are you incapable of comprehending what I tell you?!” His voice turned scratchy in response to his rising tone—something he didn’t even realize was happening until the words left his lips—, floundering at Greg’s attitude in a way he would never while afebrile. He threw his arms out to his sides, and for the first time in hours, his face burned. “Unlike you, apparently, my—my wife, she has responsibilities, and she’s not going to stay at home tending to my little—”
Then Greg was jamming his fingers into the area just under each of James’ eyes, stoking the steady throb into a roaring fire, and he was gasping out from the pain, reeling backward as he clutched his face with a deep, guttural hiss.
“Not a cold,” Greg relayed over the sound of James having a sneezing fit. “Sinus infection. You should’ve been able to figure that out; even a baby could diagnose it. Even Julie could. How long have you been sick?”
“Ow!” Snuffling wildly, James kept his hand under his nose, walking to his coffee table and plucking out one of the last tissues in the box with a speed that made his head spin. Once he sufficiently blew his nose, he caved into the man’s unyielding questioning. “Fine. A day or two.” And, in case House began prying into that: “You were working a case. Sinusitis isn’t serious.”
“Not until it makes you go blind.” That passive, noncommittal tone Greg always used in concern’s stead poked out from his words like hair escaping the back of a baseball cap. It was then followed by, to James’ confusion, him puttering off towards the man’s kitchen, beginning casually to look around his cabinets.
James had meant to trail behind House and push him out of his kitchen when he first saw his friend walking towards it, but at some point between when he came to the couch and now, he had sat down, and with the pounding pressure in his face and the rampantly rising chills, getting up felt like an impossibility. “Sure. An incredibly rare side effect that would never in a thousand years happen to me—because I’m staying home. Of course you’d decide on that to harp on. What are you doing in my kitchen?”
“I don’t see any bowls over there,” Greg called over his shoulder; the only piece of an explanation he was willing to part with. “Julie doesn't have work on Tuesdays. She should be here, fluttering around you like the worried wife she’s apparently supposed to be imitating, but instead you’re all alone. And sleeping on the couch, no less.”
“Does Cuddy know you’re here?” Deflection was a weapon both men wielded with grace, but was also one either could easily refute. James, as if shielding himself from the inevitable blow, grabbed hold of his tangle of blankets, dragging them over his trembling frame and trying to get comfortable. He knew he should’ve been getting up instead.
“Cuddy knows what she wants to know. But I don’t. You mind answering my question, Jimmy-Boy?”
Over the sound of House finally pulling something out of his kitchen cabinet, Wilson hesitated before giving a, “She’s… busy.” It was not disimilar to waving a slab of meat in front of a starving dog, he realized far too late.
“Uh-huh.” The flinch he made at the clamor of his metal pots clanking together caused a sneezing fit to dislodge itself from his sinuses. Once James had gotten rid of the gunk, Greg continued: “So who actually was it this time? Because every time I ask you, you just ignore me. The new nurse from peds? The Russian intern?”
“There’s—” he was blowing his nose now, trying not to think about how low his tissue supply was getting. “—No one, House. Just because the answer doesn’t… doesn’t interest, you, doesn’t make it a lie.”
“The idea of you not cheating on your wife is very interesting to me, Wilson. I just know it’s an impossibility.”
Tossing his used tissues onto the nearest flat surface was, as the working part of his brain could still berate him for, grossly unhygienic and a horrible way to deal with the mess. James still distractedly threw the tissue in his hand at the growing mound of wadded-up papers on his coffee table. He told himself it was because he was so caught up in his conversation with Greg that he forwent common decency in favor of being on par with the man and his slob-like tendencies, but he knew that wasn’t true.
Speaking of Greg, he heard the sound of his stove turning on and a can being opened. “Sorry. Just because I don’t—just because my—my actions don’t… fit into your worldview, doesn’t make them an impossibility. Get out of my kitchen!”
“Oh, it was so the intern.”
“I’m not cheating on my wife!” In exasperation, he rose from his supine position; something Greg obviously did not see. “We’re going through a rough patch, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear!? We got into an argument. She had a last minute work conference to go to. But even if none of those things were true, it isn’t her responsibility to take care of me when I am fully capable of taking care of myself. Now can you please leave? I’m sick. I’m miserable. I’m contagious. If I had to take a day off because of this thing, I couldn’t imagine what it would do to you.”
Some time during James’ inflamed speech, Greg had turned around to meet his gaze. His vision continued to be ever-so-slightly blurry (he hadn’t put his contacts in, he realized), but still could he make out the mans piercing pupils boring into his own. As per usual, they were staring straight into him; something James did not reciprocate.
With a noise only interpretable as a sigh, Greg turned back around and resumed… whatever he had been doing in the kitchen. Nothing good, James knew—just as he knew that he should get up and figure out what it was—but he laid back down anyway. His face hurt, his head hurt, his body hurt, his everything hurt; if Gregory wanted to be sickeningly (hah) stubborn in his attempts to annoy him, so be it, and… wait.
The faint aroma of chicken stock had fled the kitchen and entered the living room, and it all clicked. “Are you making soup?”
“I almost mistook your cabinets for an apocalypse bunker. Someone might as well use this stuff.” Actually, truly nice. That was what he was doing again; feigning nonchalance to hide the genuinely kind act he was exhibiting. Not something outside his capabilities, but a rarity nonetheless.
James put the back of his hand up to his forehead: hot, burning hot, almost, though exacerbated by the clamminess of his hands. Greg always had a better read on these kinds of things, but he could hazard a guess that his fever was somewhere around 102 degrees. “You. Making food. For me. My doomsday prepping might have some use after all.”
He liked to think Greg smiled at that. He sneezed. Life moved on.
A few minutes later, just as James was throwing the last balled-up dirty tissue onto his admittedly impressive pile, Greg walked over with one of James’ nicer bowls filled with soup in his free hand. He stopped just shy of the coffee table, and grimaced.
“I don’t think… that,” gesturing his right foot towards the mess, “is exactly hygienic. Or contagion friendly; something you care so much about.”
Sighing (despite the gurgled noise that came out), James slowly dragged himself upwards, rubbing his eyes before taking the bowl balanced precariously in Greg’s outstretched hand. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Even with the mess lying in front of him, Greg sat down on the couch opposite James, watching as the man rotated himself until he could set the bowl down on his lap. Socked feet kicked at the tissues littering the floor until they had enough space to settle down on it. The soup tasted lifeless when it entered his mouth, but he knew his friend wasn't at fault for that: he had thrown away the slice of toast he made himself that morning after the bite he took tasted like pulp.
“Not even Julie?” An eyebrow raise.
“She’s at a work conference. It’ll be a few days before she gets back from it. Who knows, she might end up spending a few more with her parents.”
“That bad, huh?”
Forcing another few spoonfuls of soup down his throat, James reached over to the coffee table, snatching up his TiVo remote before Greg could get a hold of it. He started scrolling through his captured T.V. “…Yeah.”
He ended up landing on an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Not really paying attention to the content, he realized he didn’t remember recording it because it was probably Julie who did. He hated Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Placing the TiVo remote back on his coffee table and leaning back, Greg laughed. “Is this your way of telling me something? Putting on an episode of reality T.V?”
“Other than the fact you have terrible fashion sense?” He sniffled and forced himself to chew listlessly at the noodles he had scooped up onto his spoon. They were reduced to a nonsensical mush the second they entered his mouth. “…It’s Julie’s.”
Greg hummed at that, and James continued to eat until he was scraping the bottom of the bowl (it wasn’t good; he couldn’t taste much of anything; it’s just the fact it was made for him), and the Fab Five were helping a man with his wedding suit, and James wondered if maybe Julie had recorded this specifically for him as some weird personal slight. Then his face—or more accurately his sinuses, now that he knew they were infected—throbbed yet again with ceaseless persistence, and he knew his internal clock was blaring at him to blow his nose again. Pinching the bridge of it, he groaned, shoving the bowl off his lap before attempting to stand.
Instead of standing, however, James was pushed back down; a hand was pressed stubbornly against his shoulder, keeping him in place. “Don’t,” was the initial explanation, until it was instead laid against forehead. “You have a fever.”
If James could snort, he would’ve. “What else don’t I know?”
“That people with fevers need to take proper rest?” Grabbing his cane, Greg—no, House, now that he was doing something medical—rose up from the couch, looking around the living room. “Where does Julie keep the thermometer?”
“I keep it in the kitchen; top cabinet to the left near the pantry. And there should be a few boxes of tissues in the pantry.” Greg shot daggers at him until he was horizontal over the cushions, leaving only after James began pulling his blankets back on top of himself.
James could tell that House, in some capacity, was worried about him. If he pushed on this fact, House would, in turn, push it away, but no possible deflections could stop the statement from being true. Normally, James would have some strong feeling about this—either concern, some butchered form of pride, or annoyance—but all he could muster up in the moment was despondency.
He forced himself to stare at the T.V. screen. He forced himself to watch the show coloring his face blue until the sound of it, and the sound of House once again rummaging through his cabinets, and the clock on the wall and his snuffly breathing all congealed into one disgusting mass in his ears. Then all he could think about was how badly his face hurt; how cold he was; how much he needed to sneeze—which, by all measures, was easier than the alternative.
But, eventually, House was talking to him again, blocking his view of the television with a voice that cut through the racket like a butter knife. “Thermometer’s first; I’m thinking 1-oh-2-point… 4.”
“Sure feels like it,” he murmured, rolling onto his back and sticking the thermometer House was giving him under his tongue. Stealing a glance at the man, he noted how House stared down at him with an expression far more emblematic of Greg than House, his brows furrowed in what was easily interpretable as concern. A few moments later, the shrieking beep of the instrument placed in his mouth slapped him in the face, and he discarded it back into House’s grasp before it bruised.
“. . . two points off.” Following the thermometer being thrown towards the coffee table, the box of tissues House had been assigned was thrust into James’ lap. “Pick your feet up.”
Then James was shuffling in his seat, and House was slotting himself underneath his legs, and James was blowing his nose and House was changing the show and House was Greg now, with a National Geographic special playing on the screen.
“What?”, was all James could ask when he finally refocused on his television, the tumor of noise lodged into his ear canal being blasted by Sir David Attenborough-induced chemotherapy.
“You’ve been staring at the screen like you’re about to cry for the past five minutes. Didn't think you were homophobic, man.”
James found that funny, but couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He huffed, thought about moving, then realized he was technically lying on top of Greg and thought better of it. The scene, he could imagine, would be absolutely absurd if he gave himself the time to actually ponder it over; treating Greg like a cat on his lap, even though it was basically the other way around. If his feet were on top of the man’s injured thigh, he certainly didn’t insinuate it.
All in all, this—the position he was in, his head at an awkward angle on the arm rest with his legs propped up onto his friend’s lap—was wildly uncomfortable. He knew it was wildly uncomfortable. And yet, even with this fact swirling around in his brain, he still felt the slight, almost invisible tendrils of sleep wrapping around his limbs, beckoning his mind away from his body. Greg was shifting the upper-most layer of blankets to lay on top of them both, and bats were flying across the T.V screen, and wow, Greg sure had the ability to make any place feel more like home when he wanted to.
“Did Julie seriously not think to take care of you?” James’ eyes fluttered back open, unable to meet Greg’s own. “Because this, is miserable.”
Mustering up the energy to quip back with anything but sincerity felt like an impossibility. “She knows how I am while sick.”
“Pathetic and whiny?”
“Begging to be left alone.” Then, predicting what Greg’s response would be: “Her bedside manner is fine. I just don't want to get her sick. I never know if I’ve caught the cold or some… some hospital super-bug. Better safe than sorry.”
James was glad he couldn’t see Greg’s expression then. Rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms, he sniffled, grabbing a tissue and swiping at his nose. He discarded it before Greg began speaking. “…So you’d rather die from dehydration before risking your wife getting ill. Do you enjoy ignoring the ‘in sickness and in health’ clause?”
“No, I don’t enjoy it. I wish she was here. But she’s mad at me. I'm not her responsibility. It’s contagious. It’s simpler, like this.”
“This is simpler.” James closed his eyes. There went the ‘feeling like home’ thing. Or maybe it felt too much like home. “If she was sick, would you take care of her?”
The question was absurd. His response still came out as a mutter.
I’m a doctor.”
“So you don't really care about spreading illnesses. You just care about it being your fault. Because in your world, any bad thing that happens should only happen to you. It’s not just a martyr complex, is it? Because martyrs still let themselves be taken care of. No,” he analyzed, and James was really suppressing the urge to writhe away now, “It’s guilt. It’s fear. Why?”
Stubbornly, James forced his eyes to keep closed and his legs to keep still. In a low tone, he groaned, wriggling just enough to grab another tissue and blow his nose. Ignoring Greg was the only way to get him to knock it off, he surmised; or, well, he could just kick the man until he shut up, but beyond proving a point, that would just be cruel. If he really was as close to his injured thigh as he assumed he was, at least.
Except Greg wasn’t able to let this go for whatever reason. James thought the imagery of him sick and miserable would get Greg to back off, but he miscalculated how far the other man could really throw his empathy. That, or this was intentional—he was, in a way, inebriated by his fever, and he always gave Greg the best pieces of personal information while drunk. “Come on, Wilson. What was it? Brother get sick? Bad hospital visit? Neglectful parents? Abusive ex? I’m not stopping until you give me a good answer.”
James groaned even louder this time. Intentionally threw his tissue onto the ground, though he knew it wouldn't be anyone’s problem but his once he finally beat this bug. He knew that all the incidents, all the events in Gregory’s life had explanations, had reasons for occurring (even if the only attributed reason was random chance) and that caused him to view the world through the lenses he did—but James had a different prescription. Sure, most circumstances he’d experienced could be explained if he contorted and simplified them enough: he wanted to be an oncologist because his uncle died from cancer; his brother disappeared because he’d hung up on that phone call; he could never attach himself to relationships because he always cheated. But some couldn’t be. His fear couldn’t. Not its manifestations, anyway.
He was exhausted and feverish and thoroughly miserable, but he focused enough on the anger squirming tapeworm-like around his stomach to impart it onto his voice, tone raising a few decibels to match. “I. Don’t. Know. Okay?! My parents were fine, my brothers were fine, my hospital visits were fine—hell, even my exes were fine. It was all fine. If I seriously knew the answer, I’d have tried working through it by now. Because this sucks. The fear sucks. Being sick and knowing nobody will be there to take care of you sucks. I know in your world, all things have… have reasons; explanations, meaning—but they don’t. This doesn’t. So just leave it. I’m tired.”
Choking down a yawn, James tugged another one of his blankets closer to his chin, intent on pulling it over his head like a child cowering in the face of a thunderstorm if Greg didn’t back off. Usually, James was good at getting angry, but being sick seemed to dampen this, the fatigue encasing him in its cocoon far faster than normal.
The world, for once in his life, seemed intent on answering his prayers, and Greg didn’t push. But maybe what he said instead was worse.
“Just… call me next time. Work’s boring without you when I don't have a case, and I need you to give me my shocking revelations when I do. I was…” worried, James finished for him, and he didn’t know how to feel about Greg nearly expressing such a thing out loud. “Cuddy was exerting her feminine wiles on me, telling me about how worried she was about you and how sick you sounded over the phone; that if I came here and made sure you were okay, I wouldn’t have to do clinic duty this week. So, really, you getting sick was in my best interest.”
A congested mm-hm noise was all he levied in response to the other man’s exaggerated explanation, but both of them knew Greg was omitting most of the actually important details. Of course, James—or, more accurately, Wilson—could pick apart and psychoanalyze why exactly that was, but he's done that hundreds of times, and Wilson—or, more accurately, James—wasn’t lying when he said he was exhausted. So he let it hang in the air like miasma; a decision Greg was just as content with as he was.
Eventually, James got more comfortable, and Greg shuffled around to match. The sounds of the National Geographic documentary kept the two of them in their weird, perverted version of peace, the only other sound being the clock on the opposite wall, ticking in a rhythm melodic enough to fade into the background. He missed Julie; she was his wife, after all, the woman he had tied his third knot for, however unsteady it was—but nobody would ever compare to Greg’s all-encompassing, eternal, cacophonous company.
Finally, just as James was lulled to sleep, he mumbled in an overly stuffy, overly placid tone, “Thank you,” and Greg must have said something close enough to “you’re welcome” to parry the platitude before James succumbed to that always eternal, awfully silent affair that was slumber.
Author:
disc0_volanteCharacters: House and Wilson, mentioned Julie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: If I was the owner of House, Wilson would’ve been a patient of the hospital far more times than he was in the show…
Summary: Wilson comes down with a sinus infection during his actively failing third marriage. House investigates why his friend took the day off.
Words: 4351
Author Notes: For Feveruary 2026, fulfilling prompts 1 (“Don’t get too close”), 24 (Contagious), 25 (“It’s just a cold”), and 27 (“I don’t think that’s exactly hygienic”). Title comes from Lucky Ball and Chain by They Might Be Giants. Set vaguely before s2ep14.
It was only when the all-consuming, all-encompassing sound of House’s knuckles reverberated just as hard against his skull as they did his front door did James evacuate from the couch and put an end to the racket.
“What do you want?” James was trying to spit out, just as Greg began to ask, “Why the hell aren’t you at work?”
But then they both got a good look at each other—or maybe Greg just got a good look at him; his vision was a little fuzzy—and whatever ill will they were holding for each other in that moment wilted, leaving dead flowers on James’ doorstep.
James (too tired to play the part of Wilson that day) looked nothing short of a wreck, and he knew it. He was gray in complexion—with the exception of his cheeks and nose, which were mottled a deep red—, hair normally styled with ceaseless perfection now sticking out in every direction, shiny not from product, but from oil buildup. An intense chill had made its home under burning-hot skin, leaving his teeth to chatter incessantly beneath his gray McGill sweater and the only pair of sweatpants he owned.
Pathetically, even though he knew it would make his face hurt even more than it already did, he sniffled.
“You look like shit.”
“Thanks. Is that all?”, but his thanks came out more like ‘thanbks’, and he had to turn his head to the side and bury his face in his elbow to cover his sudden sneeze.
“You didn’t show up to work. You never skip work.” Greg was taking a step forward now, his soles moving from the edge of James’ front step to the middle of it.
Immediately, James took a step back in retaliation, only to find himself momentarily losing his balance. Unbeknownst to him, he had been leaning against the doorway; he must have been imitating Greg, because in his newly upright position, Greg stared at him from an angle. He blinked feverishly through the dizziness. “Don’t get too close.”
“Oh come on,” Greg groaned in response, rolling his eyes and huffing like a petulant child. He raised himself onto the tips of his toes with his good leg, putting more weight on his cane as he looked over his friend’s shoulder, his eyes roaming in search of… something. James guessed that he was supposed to know what that something was, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure it out. “So, what is it? You dying of consumption? Had a breakdown and finally decided your bald cancer kiddies weren’t worth the effort? The ‘ol ball and chain forcing you to stay home? I certainly don’t see her in there…”
“Wh—no, House, it’s none of those. It’s just a cold. Julie isn't—she’s at a—it’s contagious. Do you know what that means? Go back to work.”
“There’s no way you’re at home with a cold. If it was a cold, you’d hole yourself in your office and act like you have a migraine so you could get out of sleeping on your couch by sleeping on an even worse couch. As long as you’re not doing rounds, you don’t care who gets your germs. So what’s really the occasion?”
Greg was stepping forward again, this time putting his sneakers directly in the doorway, pushing past James almost absentmindedly—as if James were nothing more than a box of band-aids hiding the vicodin bottle stashed in his medicine cabinet (yes, he’s seen it before; he’d be an idiot not to. Or blind. Or a blind idiot).
After nearly falling over from the sudden movement, James squawked at the man, dredging through the molasses that was his fever in order to flock to his side. Greg was surveying the living room with a look on his face that signaled how he had a puzzle and everyone else had a problem.
“Are you even listening to me? I’m sick. I feel like that’s a pretty good excuse to stay home. And I’m contagious. Leave.”
Greg was eyeing the lump of blankets spilling off the couch now, coffee table littered with disgusting used tissues and empty glasses (which was a slip up on his part now that Greg was here, as Wilson never used glasses for things like this; he had a reusable water bottle at home and drank from it almost religiously).
“Where’s Julie?”
“Work. Do you seriously not understand what I’m saying?”
Greg turned his attention back over to his friend, and, suddenly, James was bumping his socked foot against the base of his shoe. Jumping at the sensation, he stumbled backwards, cursing at himself for opposing his own words. When had he gotten so close? “No, she couldn't be,” Greg almost muttered.
“What do you mean she—are you deaf? Are you incapable of comprehending what I tell you?!” His voice turned scratchy in response to his rising tone—something he didn’t even realize was happening until the words left his lips—, floundering at Greg’s attitude in a way he would never while afebrile. He threw his arms out to his sides, and for the first time in hours, his face burned. “Unlike you, apparently, my—my wife, she has responsibilities, and she’s not going to stay at home tending to my little—”
Then Greg was jamming his fingers into the area just under each of James’ eyes, stoking the steady throb into a roaring fire, and he was gasping out from the pain, reeling backward as he clutched his face with a deep, guttural hiss.
“Not a cold,” Greg relayed over the sound of James having a sneezing fit. “Sinus infection. You should’ve been able to figure that out; even a baby could diagnose it. Even Julie could. How long have you been sick?”
“Ow!” Snuffling wildly, James kept his hand under his nose, walking to his coffee table and plucking out one of the last tissues in the box with a speed that made his head spin. Once he sufficiently blew his nose, he caved into the man’s unyielding questioning. “Fine. A day or two.” And, in case House began prying into that: “You were working a case. Sinusitis isn’t serious.”
“Not until it makes you go blind.” That passive, noncommittal tone Greg always used in concern’s stead poked out from his words like hair escaping the back of a baseball cap. It was then followed by, to James’ confusion, him puttering off towards the man’s kitchen, beginning casually to look around his cabinets.
James had meant to trail behind House and push him out of his kitchen when he first saw his friend walking towards it, but at some point between when he came to the couch and now, he had sat down, and with the pounding pressure in his face and the rampantly rising chills, getting up felt like an impossibility. “Sure. An incredibly rare side effect that would never in a thousand years happen to me—because I’m staying home. Of course you’d decide on that to harp on. What are you doing in my kitchen?”
“I don’t see any bowls over there,” Greg called over his shoulder; the only piece of an explanation he was willing to part with. “Julie doesn't have work on Tuesdays. She should be here, fluttering around you like the worried wife she’s apparently supposed to be imitating, but instead you’re all alone. And sleeping on the couch, no less.”
“Does Cuddy know you’re here?” Deflection was a weapon both men wielded with grace, but was also one either could easily refute. James, as if shielding himself from the inevitable blow, grabbed hold of his tangle of blankets, dragging them over his trembling frame and trying to get comfortable. He knew he should’ve been getting up instead.
“Cuddy knows what she wants to know. But I don’t. You mind answering my question, Jimmy-Boy?”
Over the sound of House finally pulling something out of his kitchen cabinet, Wilson hesitated before giving a, “She’s… busy.” It was not disimilar to waving a slab of meat in front of a starving dog, he realized far too late.
“Uh-huh.” The flinch he made at the clamor of his metal pots clanking together caused a sneezing fit to dislodge itself from his sinuses. Once James had gotten rid of the gunk, Greg continued: “So who actually was it this time? Because every time I ask you, you just ignore me. The new nurse from peds? The Russian intern?”
“There’s—” he was blowing his nose now, trying not to think about how low his tissue supply was getting. “—No one, House. Just because the answer doesn’t… doesn’t interest, you, doesn’t make it a lie.”
“The idea of you not cheating on your wife is very interesting to me, Wilson. I just know it’s an impossibility.”
Tossing his used tissues onto the nearest flat surface was, as the working part of his brain could still berate him for, grossly unhygienic and a horrible way to deal with the mess. James still distractedly threw the tissue in his hand at the growing mound of wadded-up papers on his coffee table. He told himself it was because he was so caught up in his conversation with Greg that he forwent common decency in favor of being on par with the man and his slob-like tendencies, but he knew that wasn’t true.
Speaking of Greg, he heard the sound of his stove turning on and a can being opened. “Sorry. Just because I don’t—just because my—my actions don’t… fit into your worldview, doesn’t make them an impossibility. Get out of my kitchen!”
“Oh, it was so the intern.”
“I’m not cheating on my wife!” In exasperation, he rose from his supine position; something Greg obviously did not see. “We’re going through a rough patch, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear!? We got into an argument. She had a last minute work conference to go to. But even if none of those things were true, it isn’t her responsibility to take care of me when I am fully capable of taking care of myself. Now can you please leave? I’m sick. I’m miserable. I’m contagious. If I had to take a day off because of this thing, I couldn’t imagine what it would do to you.”
Some time during James’ inflamed speech, Greg had turned around to meet his gaze. His vision continued to be ever-so-slightly blurry (he hadn’t put his contacts in, he realized), but still could he make out the mans piercing pupils boring into his own. As per usual, they were staring straight into him; something James did not reciprocate.
With a noise only interpretable as a sigh, Greg turned back around and resumed… whatever he had been doing in the kitchen. Nothing good, James knew—just as he knew that he should get up and figure out what it was—but he laid back down anyway. His face hurt, his head hurt, his body hurt, his everything hurt; if Gregory wanted to be sickeningly (hah) stubborn in his attempts to annoy him, so be it, and… wait.
The faint aroma of chicken stock had fled the kitchen and entered the living room, and it all clicked. “Are you making soup?”
“I almost mistook your cabinets for an apocalypse bunker. Someone might as well use this stuff.” Actually, truly nice. That was what he was doing again; feigning nonchalance to hide the genuinely kind act he was exhibiting. Not something outside his capabilities, but a rarity nonetheless.
James put the back of his hand up to his forehead: hot, burning hot, almost, though exacerbated by the clamminess of his hands. Greg always had a better read on these kinds of things, but he could hazard a guess that his fever was somewhere around 102 degrees. “You. Making food. For me. My doomsday prepping might have some use after all.”
He liked to think Greg smiled at that. He sneezed. Life moved on.
A few minutes later, just as James was throwing the last balled-up dirty tissue onto his admittedly impressive pile, Greg walked over with one of James’ nicer bowls filled with soup in his free hand. He stopped just shy of the coffee table, and grimaced.
“I don’t think… that,” gesturing his right foot towards the mess, “is exactly hygienic. Or contagion friendly; something you care so much about.”
Sighing (despite the gurgled noise that came out), James slowly dragged himself upwards, rubbing his eyes before taking the bowl balanced precariously in Greg’s outstretched hand. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Even with the mess lying in front of him, Greg sat down on the couch opposite James, watching as the man rotated himself until he could set the bowl down on his lap. Socked feet kicked at the tissues littering the floor until they had enough space to settle down on it. The soup tasted lifeless when it entered his mouth, but he knew his friend wasn't at fault for that: he had thrown away the slice of toast he made himself that morning after the bite he took tasted like pulp.
“Not even Julie?” An eyebrow raise.
“She’s at a work conference. It’ll be a few days before she gets back from it. Who knows, she might end up spending a few more with her parents.”
“That bad, huh?”
Forcing another few spoonfuls of soup down his throat, James reached over to the coffee table, snatching up his TiVo remote before Greg could get a hold of it. He started scrolling through his captured T.V. “…Yeah.”
He ended up landing on an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Not really paying attention to the content, he realized he didn’t remember recording it because it was probably Julie who did. He hated Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Placing the TiVo remote back on his coffee table and leaning back, Greg laughed. “Is this your way of telling me something? Putting on an episode of reality T.V?”
“Other than the fact you have terrible fashion sense?” He sniffled and forced himself to chew listlessly at the noodles he had scooped up onto his spoon. They were reduced to a nonsensical mush the second they entered his mouth. “…It’s Julie’s.”
Greg hummed at that, and James continued to eat until he was scraping the bottom of the bowl (it wasn’t good; he couldn’t taste much of anything; it’s just the fact it was made for him), and the Fab Five were helping a man with his wedding suit, and James wondered if maybe Julie had recorded this specifically for him as some weird personal slight. Then his face—or more accurately his sinuses, now that he knew they were infected—throbbed yet again with ceaseless persistence, and he knew his internal clock was blaring at him to blow his nose again. Pinching the bridge of it, he groaned, shoving the bowl off his lap before attempting to stand.
Instead of standing, however, James was pushed back down; a hand was pressed stubbornly against his shoulder, keeping him in place. “Don’t,” was the initial explanation, until it was instead laid against forehead. “You have a fever.”
If James could snort, he would’ve. “What else don’t I know?”
“That people with fevers need to take proper rest?” Grabbing his cane, Greg—no, House, now that he was doing something medical—rose up from the couch, looking around the living room. “Where does Julie keep the thermometer?”
“I keep it in the kitchen; top cabinet to the left near the pantry. And there should be a few boxes of tissues in the pantry.” Greg shot daggers at him until he was horizontal over the cushions, leaving only after James began pulling his blankets back on top of himself.
James could tell that House, in some capacity, was worried about him. If he pushed on this fact, House would, in turn, push it away, but no possible deflections could stop the statement from being true. Normally, James would have some strong feeling about this—either concern, some butchered form of pride, or annoyance—but all he could muster up in the moment was despondency.
He forced himself to stare at the T.V. screen. He forced himself to watch the show coloring his face blue until the sound of it, and the sound of House once again rummaging through his cabinets, and the clock on the wall and his snuffly breathing all congealed into one disgusting mass in his ears. Then all he could think about was how badly his face hurt; how cold he was; how much he needed to sneeze—which, by all measures, was easier than the alternative.
But, eventually, House was talking to him again, blocking his view of the television with a voice that cut through the racket like a butter knife. “Thermometer’s first; I’m thinking 1-oh-2-point… 4.”
“Sure feels like it,” he murmured, rolling onto his back and sticking the thermometer House was giving him under his tongue. Stealing a glance at the man, he noted how House stared down at him with an expression far more emblematic of Greg than House, his brows furrowed in what was easily interpretable as concern. A few moments later, the shrieking beep of the instrument placed in his mouth slapped him in the face, and he discarded it back into House’s grasp before it bruised.
“. . . two points off.” Following the thermometer being thrown towards the coffee table, the box of tissues House had been assigned was thrust into James’ lap. “Pick your feet up.”
Then James was shuffling in his seat, and House was slotting himself underneath his legs, and James was blowing his nose and House was changing the show and House was Greg now, with a National Geographic special playing on the screen.
“What?”, was all James could ask when he finally refocused on his television, the tumor of noise lodged into his ear canal being blasted by Sir David Attenborough-induced chemotherapy.
“You’ve been staring at the screen like you’re about to cry for the past five minutes. Didn't think you were homophobic, man.”
James found that funny, but couldn’t bring himself to laugh. He huffed, thought about moving, then realized he was technically lying on top of Greg and thought better of it. The scene, he could imagine, would be absolutely absurd if he gave himself the time to actually ponder it over; treating Greg like a cat on his lap, even though it was basically the other way around. If his feet were on top of the man’s injured thigh, he certainly didn’t insinuate it.
All in all, this—the position he was in, his head at an awkward angle on the arm rest with his legs propped up onto his friend’s lap—was wildly uncomfortable. He knew it was wildly uncomfortable. And yet, even with this fact swirling around in his brain, he still felt the slight, almost invisible tendrils of sleep wrapping around his limbs, beckoning his mind away from his body. Greg was shifting the upper-most layer of blankets to lay on top of them both, and bats were flying across the T.V screen, and wow, Greg sure had the ability to make any place feel more like home when he wanted to.
“Did Julie seriously not think to take care of you?” James’ eyes fluttered back open, unable to meet Greg’s own. “Because this, is miserable.”
Mustering up the energy to quip back with anything but sincerity felt like an impossibility. “She knows how I am while sick.”
“Pathetic and whiny?”
“Begging to be left alone.” Then, predicting what Greg’s response would be: “Her bedside manner is fine. I just don't want to get her sick. I never know if I’ve caught the cold or some… some hospital super-bug. Better safe than sorry.”
James was glad he couldn’t see Greg’s expression then. Rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms, he sniffled, grabbing a tissue and swiping at his nose. He discarded it before Greg began speaking. “…So you’d rather die from dehydration before risking your wife getting ill. Do you enjoy ignoring the ‘in sickness and in health’ clause?”
“No, I don’t enjoy it. I wish she was here. But she’s mad at me. I'm not her responsibility. It’s contagious. It’s simpler, like this.”
“This is simpler.” James closed his eyes. There went the ‘feeling like home’ thing. Or maybe it felt too much like home. “If she was sick, would you take care of her?”
The question was absurd. His response still came out as a mutter.
I’m a doctor.”
“So you don't really care about spreading illnesses. You just care about it being your fault. Because in your world, any bad thing that happens should only happen to you. It’s not just a martyr complex, is it? Because martyrs still let themselves be taken care of. No,” he analyzed, and James was really suppressing the urge to writhe away now, “It’s guilt. It’s fear. Why?”
Stubbornly, James forced his eyes to keep closed and his legs to keep still. In a low tone, he groaned, wriggling just enough to grab another tissue and blow his nose. Ignoring Greg was the only way to get him to knock it off, he surmised; or, well, he could just kick the man until he shut up, but beyond proving a point, that would just be cruel. If he really was as close to his injured thigh as he assumed he was, at least.
Except Greg wasn’t able to let this go for whatever reason. James thought the imagery of him sick and miserable would get Greg to back off, but he miscalculated how far the other man could really throw his empathy. That, or this was intentional—he was, in a way, inebriated by his fever, and he always gave Greg the best pieces of personal information while drunk. “Come on, Wilson. What was it? Brother get sick? Bad hospital visit? Neglectful parents? Abusive ex? I’m not stopping until you give me a good answer.”
James groaned even louder this time. Intentionally threw his tissue onto the ground, though he knew it wouldn't be anyone’s problem but his once he finally beat this bug. He knew that all the incidents, all the events in Gregory’s life had explanations, had reasons for occurring (even if the only attributed reason was random chance) and that caused him to view the world through the lenses he did—but James had a different prescription. Sure, most circumstances he’d experienced could be explained if he contorted and simplified them enough: he wanted to be an oncologist because his uncle died from cancer; his brother disappeared because he’d hung up on that phone call; he could never attach himself to relationships because he always cheated. But some couldn’t be. His fear couldn’t. Not its manifestations, anyway.
He was exhausted and feverish and thoroughly miserable, but he focused enough on the anger squirming tapeworm-like around his stomach to impart it onto his voice, tone raising a few decibels to match. “I. Don’t. Know. Okay?! My parents were fine, my brothers were fine, my hospital visits were fine—hell, even my exes were fine. It was all fine. If I seriously knew the answer, I’d have tried working through it by now. Because this sucks. The fear sucks. Being sick and knowing nobody will be there to take care of you sucks. I know in your world, all things have… have reasons; explanations, meaning—but they don’t. This doesn’t. So just leave it. I’m tired.”
Choking down a yawn, James tugged another one of his blankets closer to his chin, intent on pulling it over his head like a child cowering in the face of a thunderstorm if Greg didn’t back off. Usually, James was good at getting angry, but being sick seemed to dampen this, the fatigue encasing him in its cocoon far faster than normal.
The world, for once in his life, seemed intent on answering his prayers, and Greg didn’t push. But maybe what he said instead was worse.
“Just… call me next time. Work’s boring without you when I don't have a case, and I need you to give me my shocking revelations when I do. I was…” worried, James finished for him, and he didn’t know how to feel about Greg nearly expressing such a thing out loud. “Cuddy was exerting her feminine wiles on me, telling me about how worried she was about you and how sick you sounded over the phone; that if I came here and made sure you were okay, I wouldn’t have to do clinic duty this week. So, really, you getting sick was in my best interest.”
A congested mm-hm noise was all he levied in response to the other man’s exaggerated explanation, but both of them knew Greg was omitting most of the actually important details. Of course, James—or, more accurately, Wilson—could pick apart and psychoanalyze why exactly that was, but he's done that hundreds of times, and Wilson—or, more accurately, James—wasn’t lying when he said he was exhausted. So he let it hang in the air like miasma; a decision Greg was just as content with as he was.
Eventually, James got more comfortable, and Greg shuffled around to match. The sounds of the National Geographic documentary kept the two of them in their weird, perverted version of peace, the only other sound being the clock on the opposite wall, ticking in a rhythm melodic enough to fade into the background. He missed Julie; she was his wife, after all, the woman he had tied his third knot for, however unsteady it was—but nobody would ever compare to Greg’s all-encompassing, eternal, cacophonous company.
Finally, just as James was lulled to sleep, he mumbled in an overly stuffy, overly placid tone, “Thank you,” and Greg must have said something close enough to “you’re welcome” to parry the platitude before James succumbed to that always eternal, awfully silent affair that was slumber.