![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
namasteTitle: Family, Friends and Other Complications
Chapter Fourteen: When Wilson Lived With House
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, strong House and Wilson friendship, PG
Summary:
“I haven’t even told my mother,” Wilson said. “Why would I want to tell yours?”
House shrugged. “Practice?”
Wilson snorted and shook his head.
“No, think about it.” House took his legs off the table and turned toward Wilson. “Weddings have rehearsals, why not divorces?”
Find links to previous chapters inside.
Previous chapters are here:
When Blythe Met Wilson
When Greg Got Sick
When Greg Went Home
When Stacy Left
When John and Blythe Moved
When Blythe Didn’t Meet Julie
When Days Were Bad
When Greg Got His Department
When Days Were Good
When John Retired
When Greg Went For A Visit
When They Weren’t Together
When John Took Blythe to Paris
When Wilson Lived With House
“Why don’t I smell anything cooking?” House closed the door behind him and took a few steps into the apartment before he came to a stop.
“Because I haven’t cooked,” Wilson said.
House tossed his backpack onto the couch next to Wilson and unbuttoned his coat. “But you like cooking,” he said, “and I like eating. I thought that balanced out nicely.”
“I didn’t want to cook today.”
“But you like cooking,” House repeated.
“Not every day.”
House draped his coat over a chair and walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, looked inside, then leaned back to glare at Wilson. “There aren’t even any leftovers.”
“That’s because you ate them all for lunch.”
House closed the refrigerator and walked into the living room. “Are you going to be this annoying every time you talk to the divorce lawyer?”
Wilson gave a small shrug. “Well, if I go by the standard annoyance scale of one to, say, you, then I’d have to say yes.”
He pointed the remote at the TV as the basketball game went to a commercial and began flipping through the channels. House walked past him and took the remote from Wilson’s hand.
Wilson sighed and crossed his arms as House rushed past the news. “I’m doing you a favor by not cooking,” he said. “Now you’ve got a chance to get reacquainted with the delivery guys.”
House paused on wrestling, then continued past.
“They’ve been worried about you, you know,” Wilson said. “I found the guy from Panda House on your doorstep this afternoon. He wanted to know if you’d been sick. He even had a card.”
“So make him happy and order something for both of us,” House said.
“Who’s paying?”
House just raised his eyebrows.
“Right,” Wilson said. “Stupid question.”
Wilson waited a moment longer as House brought the channels back around to the basketball game. He pushed himself up off the couch, took the phone into the kitchen and pulled the take-out menu off from the refrigerator. He wasn’t really hungry, but told himself he should eat something. He’d skipped lunch -- too anxious about his afternoon meeting with the attorney, the same one he’d used for his second divorce.
He’d considered finding someone else, so it wouldn’t feel like he was just repeating the same mistakes again and again and again, only this time with Julie’s name listed on the other side of the legal documents. In the end, he’d turned to Marty’s name in his address book.
House had approved. “It’s efficient,” he’d said when he read Wilson’s calendar. “He’s already got your information on file. Think he gives a volume discount for frequent fliers?”
Wilson called in the order: vegetable stir fry for himself, Mongolian beef for House ...
“Don’t forget the egg rolls,” House called from the couch, and Wilson added the egg rolls to the order.
He hung up, then tossed the handset to House. “Call your mother,” he said.
House ignored it. “Later,” he said.
“Now.”
“Why?”
“Because when she called I told her you’d just gone out to grab some food and that you’d be back any minute.”
“You lied to my mother?”
Wilson sat on the couch again and stretched his legs onto the coffee table. “I had to tell her something,” he said. “She called this afternoon and said she was planning to leave a message, but then got worried when I picked up the phone.”
“She worries too much.”
“She’s a mother. Mothers always worry.” Wilson watched as the Duke players ran down the shot clock and Krzyzewski shouted out plays from the sidelines. “I told her we both ducked out of a meeting and you’d gone out to grab some food.” One of the players sank a three-point shot and Georgia Tech called a time out. “It was Thai, in case she asks.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?”
“What, tell her that my wife was so unhappy with me that she started having an affair so my third marriage is ending in divorce and I’m such a loser I’m sleeping on her son’s couch?”
“Maybe not in those exact words, but yeah,” House said.
Wilson leaned back and rubbed his eyes. He told himself again that he should have moved out days ago, after he’d first called Marty to set up the meeting, after he’d finally realized he was just putting off the inevitable -- after House made him realize that he was putting it off.
“I haven’t even told my mother,” he said. “Why would I want to tell yours?”
House shrugged. “Practice?”
Wilson snorted and shook his head.
“No, think about it.” House took his legs off the table and turned toward Wilson. “Weddings have rehearsals, why not divorces?”
“Because ... because that makes no sense.”
“Why not?”
“Did you practice your speech to your Mom about Stacy moving?”
“I didn’t have to. You told her.”
Wilson didn’t bother correcting him. “Even if I did, why would I want to tell her about me, now?” He didn’t add the second part of the question: Why would she care?
“Because she likes you, and she’ll give you a sympathetic ear,” House said. He turned toward the TV again and put his feet back up on the coffee table. “And because if you don’t tell her, I will.”
----------
Greg answered the phone when Blythe called on Saturday.
“I thought you were going to call me back on Thursday,” Blythe said.
“I forgot,” he said.
She’d told herself not to worry when James told her he’d just run out for a few minutes and Greg didn’t call back.
On Friday, she called his office, but Dr. Cameron answered and said he was working in the clinic.
“Did you have a nice time in Europe?” she’d asked, and Blythe remembered how Dr. Cameron had smiled and held out her hand to John when they’d met. And how John had teased her and Greg at the same time.
John had apologized to her then, but not to Greg. “It was only a joke,” he’d said when Blythe mentioned it on the way back to the airport. “Greg knew that.”
But Blythe hadn’t been so sure. She had seen the look on Greg’s face then, the frustration that was clear to see when he’d left them in the cafeteria.
In Paris three days later, she caught her breath when she thought she saw Greg’s face staring back at her from one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits at the Musee d’Orsay: the angular lines of his face, the emotion captured even in stillness, and the haunted look in Van Gogh’s eyes.
She shook her head, told herself that she was imagining things, but the images returned again and again as they traveled, and she found herself making connections between Van Gogh and Greg in her mind for the rest of the trip -- the misunderstood genius who died young, and her son. She told herself she was being silly, being melodramatic, seeing links that didn’t exist. But that didn’t stop her mind from making them.
In Arles, she pictured Greg sitting at one of the tables outside the cafe that Van Gogh had painted. In Saint-Remy, she looked out the window from Van Gogh’s rooms in the asylum, and remembered how many times she had seen Greg staring out the windows in the weeks after his infarction. When John bought her sunflowers from the farmers’ market, she cried, and told him it was because she was so happy.
She called him from the airport on their way home, as they waited for their connection in Atlanta.
“Did you try the snails?” he asked.
She laughed, happy to hear his voice, happy to hear him tease her. “If I did, I didn’t know it,” she said.
He’d laughed, and then John told her they were calling their flight number and she had to hang up.
“Love you,” she’d told him.
“I love you too,” he’d said, without any hesitation.
That night, in her own bed, was the first time in more than two weeks that she didn’t dream of mad Dutch painters.
Life fell back into normal patterns. She went back to her volunteer work, her golf, her lunches, and she’d get the occasional cryptic package from Greg: a bicycling jersey, a fashion magazine, a DVD of the movie “The Great Escape.”
John had popped it into the player. “Tell him thanks,” he’d said.
Greg said it wasn’t for his father. James had to provide the answer again.
“He’s ... got a pet,” he’d said. “A rat. He named it Steve McQueen.”
Blythe looked in the living room where the actor was sitting with his back against a cell wall, throwing a ball against the other wall and catching it, throwing it and catching it, throwing it and catching it.
“Why did he get a rat?”
“It’s complicated,” James said, “but he’s taking good care of it.”
Sorting through her souvenirs from France, she’d come across a book that John had bought for her about Van Gogh in Provence. She hesitated for a moment before opening it, wondering what images would come flooding back into her mind. But she finally did, flipping through the pages quickly at first, then slowing down and taking her time. She no longer saw echoes of Greg on every page.
Blythe wondered why, then turned to a chapter on his friendship with Gauguin, and she knew why -- Greg had James. Van Gogh had no one when he needed someone the most.
She turned another page and looked at the painting reproduced there, another one from Arles, another late night cafe, but this one with a pool table. She could still picture Greg there, but now she could imagine James with him, the two of them in the middle of a game, both of them laughing.
Greg told her when Stacy left town with her husband. “It was no big deal,” he said, “but I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else and get the wrong idea.”
Blythe knew that something big must have happened, but she didn’t push Greg for more information, and she didn’t call James. She’d let Greg keep this secret.
She hadn’t been surprised when James answered the phone when she’d called Greg two weeks ago, but didn’t know what to think when he was alone at Greg’s place on Thursday, even though he’d assured her he was just waiting for her son.
Now she could hear someone else in the background even as she talked to Greg, and she knew it was James without even hearing his voice.
“I thought you were making pancakes,” Greg said on the other end of the line, and it took Blythe a second to realize he was talking to James.
“I thought it’d be nice to have something different for a change.” James’ voice was faint in the background, but Blythe could still make it out.
She wondered if this meant that James had fought with Julie again. For his sake, she hoped not, but then she reminded herself that she’d never met Julie. She’d always assumed she must be good for James, but the few times Greg mentioned her, he didn’t sound pleased.
“I like pancakes,” Greg was saying, and Blythe remembered how he’d loved them when he was a boy.
“Then you can make them,” James said, “otherwise, don’t complain about what I make.”
“Tell you what. You talk to my mother, and I won’t complain about anything you cook for one day.”
“Greg, James doesn’t have to talk to me,” Blythe said.
“Yes he does.”
She heard nothing but the sound of metal on metal -- something heavy. Blythe guessed it was a frying pan being placed on the stove.
“Three days,” James said.
“Greg,” Blythe began, but he ignored her.
“Two,” Greg told James.
It was silent on the other end of the line for a moment, then Blythe heard James’ voice. “Deal,” he said.
“Mom, Wilson wants to talk to you,” Greg said, and Blythe heard the phone pass from one hand to another.
“Hi Blythe,” James said. “Do you have a minute to talk? I ...” he paused for a moment, and she heard the sounds of his steps, as he moved away from the kitchen -- and away from Greg, she guessed. “I have something to tell you.”
Chapter Fourteen: When Wilson Lived With House
Author: Namaste
Rating: Gen, strong House and Wilson friendship, PG
Summary:
“I haven’t even told my mother,” Wilson said. “Why would I want to tell yours?”
House shrugged. “Practice?”
Wilson snorted and shook his head.
“No, think about it.” House took his legs off the table and turned toward Wilson. “Weddings have rehearsals, why not divorces?”
Find links to previous chapters inside.
Previous chapters are here:
When Blythe Met Wilson
When Greg Got Sick
When Greg Went Home
When Stacy Left
When John and Blythe Moved
When Blythe Didn’t Meet Julie
When Days Were Bad
When Greg Got His Department
When Days Were Good
When John Retired
When Greg Went For A Visit
When They Weren’t Together
When John Took Blythe to Paris
When Wilson Lived With House
“Why don’t I smell anything cooking?” House closed the door behind him and took a few steps into the apartment before he came to a stop.
“Because I haven’t cooked,” Wilson said.
House tossed his backpack onto the couch next to Wilson and unbuttoned his coat. “But you like cooking,” he said, “and I like eating. I thought that balanced out nicely.”
“I didn’t want to cook today.”
“But you like cooking,” House repeated.
“Not every day.”
House draped his coat over a chair and walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, looked inside, then leaned back to glare at Wilson. “There aren’t even any leftovers.”
“That’s because you ate them all for lunch.”
House closed the refrigerator and walked into the living room. “Are you going to be this annoying every time you talk to the divorce lawyer?”
Wilson gave a small shrug. “Well, if I go by the standard annoyance scale of one to, say, you, then I’d have to say yes.”
He pointed the remote at the TV as the basketball game went to a commercial and began flipping through the channels. House walked past him and took the remote from Wilson’s hand.
Wilson sighed and crossed his arms as House rushed past the news. “I’m doing you a favor by not cooking,” he said. “Now you’ve got a chance to get reacquainted with the delivery guys.”
House paused on wrestling, then continued past.
“They’ve been worried about you, you know,” Wilson said. “I found the guy from Panda House on your doorstep this afternoon. He wanted to know if you’d been sick. He even had a card.”
“So make him happy and order something for both of us,” House said.
“Who’s paying?”
House just raised his eyebrows.
“Right,” Wilson said. “Stupid question.”
Wilson waited a moment longer as House brought the channels back around to the basketball game. He pushed himself up off the couch, took the phone into the kitchen and pulled the take-out menu off from the refrigerator. He wasn’t really hungry, but told himself he should eat something. He’d skipped lunch -- too anxious about his afternoon meeting with the attorney, the same one he’d used for his second divorce.
He’d considered finding someone else, so it wouldn’t feel like he was just repeating the same mistakes again and again and again, only this time with Julie’s name listed on the other side of the legal documents. In the end, he’d turned to Marty’s name in his address book.
House had approved. “It’s efficient,” he’d said when he read Wilson’s calendar. “He’s already got your information on file. Think he gives a volume discount for frequent fliers?”
Wilson called in the order: vegetable stir fry for himself, Mongolian beef for House ...
“Don’t forget the egg rolls,” House called from the couch, and Wilson added the egg rolls to the order.
He hung up, then tossed the handset to House. “Call your mother,” he said.
House ignored it. “Later,” he said.
“Now.”
“Why?”
“Because when she called I told her you’d just gone out to grab some food and that you’d be back any minute.”
“You lied to my mother?”
Wilson sat on the couch again and stretched his legs onto the coffee table. “I had to tell her something,” he said. “She called this afternoon and said she was planning to leave a message, but then got worried when I picked up the phone.”
“She worries too much.”
“She’s a mother. Mothers always worry.” Wilson watched as the Duke players ran down the shot clock and Krzyzewski shouted out plays from the sidelines. “I told her we both ducked out of a meeting and you’d gone out to grab some food.” One of the players sank a three-point shot and Georgia Tech called a time out. “It was Thai, in case she asks.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her the truth?”
“What, tell her that my wife was so unhappy with me that she started having an affair so my third marriage is ending in divorce and I’m such a loser I’m sleeping on her son’s couch?”
“Maybe not in those exact words, but yeah,” House said.
Wilson leaned back and rubbed his eyes. He told himself again that he should have moved out days ago, after he’d first called Marty to set up the meeting, after he’d finally realized he was just putting off the inevitable -- after House made him realize that he was putting it off.
“I haven’t even told my mother,” he said. “Why would I want to tell yours?”
House shrugged. “Practice?”
Wilson snorted and shook his head.
“No, think about it.” House took his legs off the table and turned toward Wilson. “Weddings have rehearsals, why not divorces?”
“Because ... because that makes no sense.”
“Why not?”
“Did you practice your speech to your Mom about Stacy moving?”
“I didn’t have to. You told her.”
Wilson didn’t bother correcting him. “Even if I did, why would I want to tell her about me, now?” He didn’t add the second part of the question: Why would she care?
“Because she likes you, and she’ll give you a sympathetic ear,” House said. He turned toward the TV again and put his feet back up on the coffee table. “And because if you don’t tell her, I will.”
----------
Greg answered the phone when Blythe called on Saturday.
“I thought you were going to call me back on Thursday,” Blythe said.
“I forgot,” he said.
She’d told herself not to worry when James told her he’d just run out for a few minutes and Greg didn’t call back.
On Friday, she called his office, but Dr. Cameron answered and said he was working in the clinic.
“Did you have a nice time in Europe?” she’d asked, and Blythe remembered how Dr. Cameron had smiled and held out her hand to John when they’d met. And how John had teased her and Greg at the same time.
John had apologized to her then, but not to Greg. “It was only a joke,” he’d said when Blythe mentioned it on the way back to the airport. “Greg knew that.”
But Blythe hadn’t been so sure. She had seen the look on Greg’s face then, the frustration that was clear to see when he’d left them in the cafeteria.
In Paris three days later, she caught her breath when she thought she saw Greg’s face staring back at her from one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits at the Musee d’Orsay: the angular lines of his face, the emotion captured even in stillness, and the haunted look in Van Gogh’s eyes.
She shook her head, told herself that she was imagining things, but the images returned again and again as they traveled, and she found herself making connections between Van Gogh and Greg in her mind for the rest of the trip -- the misunderstood genius who died young, and her son. She told herself she was being silly, being melodramatic, seeing links that didn’t exist. But that didn’t stop her mind from making them.
In Arles, she pictured Greg sitting at one of the tables outside the cafe that Van Gogh had painted. In Saint-Remy, she looked out the window from Van Gogh’s rooms in the asylum, and remembered how many times she had seen Greg staring out the windows in the weeks after his infarction. When John bought her sunflowers from the farmers’ market, she cried, and told him it was because she was so happy.
She called him from the airport on their way home, as they waited for their connection in Atlanta.
“Did you try the snails?” he asked.
She laughed, happy to hear his voice, happy to hear him tease her. “If I did, I didn’t know it,” she said.
He’d laughed, and then John told her they were calling their flight number and she had to hang up.
“Love you,” she’d told him.
“I love you too,” he’d said, without any hesitation.
That night, in her own bed, was the first time in more than two weeks that she didn’t dream of mad Dutch painters.
Life fell back into normal patterns. She went back to her volunteer work, her golf, her lunches, and she’d get the occasional cryptic package from Greg: a bicycling jersey, a fashion magazine, a DVD of the movie “The Great Escape.”
John had popped it into the player. “Tell him thanks,” he’d said.
Greg said it wasn’t for his father. James had to provide the answer again.
“He’s ... got a pet,” he’d said. “A rat. He named it Steve McQueen.”
Blythe looked in the living room where the actor was sitting with his back against a cell wall, throwing a ball against the other wall and catching it, throwing it and catching it, throwing it and catching it.
“Why did he get a rat?”
“It’s complicated,” James said, “but he’s taking good care of it.”
Sorting through her souvenirs from France, she’d come across a book that John had bought for her about Van Gogh in Provence. She hesitated for a moment before opening it, wondering what images would come flooding back into her mind. But she finally did, flipping through the pages quickly at first, then slowing down and taking her time. She no longer saw echoes of Greg on every page.
Blythe wondered why, then turned to a chapter on his friendship with Gauguin, and she knew why -- Greg had James. Van Gogh had no one when he needed someone the most.
She turned another page and looked at the painting reproduced there, another one from Arles, another late night cafe, but this one with a pool table. She could still picture Greg there, but now she could imagine James with him, the two of them in the middle of a game, both of them laughing.
Greg told her when Stacy left town with her husband. “It was no big deal,” he said, “but I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else and get the wrong idea.”
Blythe knew that something big must have happened, but she didn’t push Greg for more information, and she didn’t call James. She’d let Greg keep this secret.
She hadn’t been surprised when James answered the phone when she’d called Greg two weeks ago, but didn’t know what to think when he was alone at Greg’s place on Thursday, even though he’d assured her he was just waiting for her son.
Now she could hear someone else in the background even as she talked to Greg, and she knew it was James without even hearing his voice.
“I thought you were making pancakes,” Greg said on the other end of the line, and it took Blythe a second to realize he was talking to James.
“I thought it’d be nice to have something different for a change.” James’ voice was faint in the background, but Blythe could still make it out.
She wondered if this meant that James had fought with Julie again. For his sake, she hoped not, but then she reminded herself that she’d never met Julie. She’d always assumed she must be good for James, but the few times Greg mentioned her, he didn’t sound pleased.
“I like pancakes,” Greg was saying, and Blythe remembered how he’d loved them when he was a boy.
“Then you can make them,” James said, “otherwise, don’t complain about what I make.”
“Tell you what. You talk to my mother, and I won’t complain about anything you cook for one day.”
“Greg, James doesn’t have to talk to me,” Blythe said.
“Yes he does.”
She heard nothing but the sound of metal on metal -- something heavy. Blythe guessed it was a frying pan being placed on the stove.
“Three days,” James said.
“Greg,” Blythe began, but he ignored her.
“Two,” Greg told James.
It was silent on the other end of the line for a moment, then Blythe heard James’ voice. “Deal,” he said.
“Mom, Wilson wants to talk to you,” Greg said, and Blythe heard the phone pass from one hand to another.
“Hi Blythe,” James said. “Do you have a minute to talk? I ...” he paused for a moment, and she heard the sounds of his steps, as he moved away from the kitchen -- and away from Greg, she guessed. “I have something to tell you.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-17 02:46 pm (UTC)You completely captured me with this--at first it took me aback, but then I began to see exactly what Blythe saw. It was also really fun to read the rest of the Van Gogh meditations because I've been to all those places (Musee D'Orsay, the asylum, Arles) and seen all the paintings you described.
Nice job, as usual.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-17 02:57 pm (UTC)