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Sometime in early 2000, they end up married.
It’s almost by accident. Almost. But they’re not quite drunk enough to justify it, the kiss on the ‘alter’ is too real, and they definitely both remember the event if the way they dance around each other afterwards is any indication.
Ah, Vegas.
If only they’d actually fucked while they were there, the whole event might have actually led to something more. As it is that single kiss and the marriage certificate they conveniently lose afterwards never get brought up again.
Wilson keeps to his serial dating, and over the years House wonders idly if he’d have serial marriages instead if he weren’t already tied down. So to speak. That’s how he knows Wilson still remembers everything about that little trip. The fact that he never marries any of the needy, beautiful women who fall into his path because legally, he can’t. And there are tons of them, those women. All of them begging for a pretty little ring around their third finger. Wilson never even mentions giving in, no matter how much he seems to love them.
House, meanwhile, hires hookers and has one night stands that don’t mean anything.
All is well. Nothing is different.
Until it’s not.
oOo
House walks into the conference room and pauses, jaw tilting up as he takes in the atmosphere. There’s so totally something up here.
Chase and Foreman look normal enough. The former was trying to balance a pen on his upper lip before House walked in, and is now sitting up straight and looking slightly hopeful that maybe House didn’t see him behaving like a bored middle school student. Fat chance. Foreman is just…Foreman. Reading a journal and being a gross, responsible adult.
But Cameron. Oh, Cameron. She’s smiling like the cat that caught the canary, practically vibrating in her seat.
“She’s been like that all morning,” Foreman deadpans, not even looking up from his reading.
House raises an eyebrow, but Cameron’s jaw is already hanging open in offense. “Been like what?” she demands.
Chase snorts, and Foreman glances over the top of his journal in amusement.
“Oookay,” House drawls slowly, glancing between the three of them. “As much as I want to know what the fuck is going on here, we have a patient and she kind of needs our help. Quickly.”
That seems to get everyone’s attention, though House doesn’t miss the way Cameron looks at him, all excitement and bright understanding. Like she’s figured something out about him. And isn’t that slightly worrisome.
But only slightly.
“Female, forty-two, projectile vomiting, extreme vertigo, chronic headache that won’t go away. Go.”
“Could be neurological,” Chase offers after a moment, and House fixes him with his best ‘no shit’ expression.
“Neurological, how amazingly vague.”
“The symptoms are vague!” Chase argues back.
Foreman sighs. “You wouldn’t have taken the case if it weren’t interesting. What’s already been tested and ruled out?”
“Everything.”
That makes Foreman raise an eyebrow. “Everything,” he repeats drolly.
“Yup.” House pops the ‘p’ as obnoxiously as he can, and then sends his little minions out to collect more information on the patient since he doesn’t actually have a file. Just heard about it while walking down the hall and decided the case was his now. That’s how this works, right?
Foreman and Chase go easily enough, but Cameron pauses by the door. She’s biting her lip to hide a smile and House narrows his eyes at her.
“What’s got you so excited? Find another cute cancer boy to marry?”
The jab doesn’t seem to land, unfortunately. “I don’t think I’m the one with marriage news,” she says, and then breezes out of the conference room with a shit eating grin.
What the fuck.
oOo
House barges into Wilson’s office later that day and points his cane threateningly at the other man. Wilson doesn’t even look up from his paperwork.
“What now, House? I’m busy.”
“Did you spill the beans? It had to have been you, there’s no one else who knows.”
That actually makes Wilson look up, though his expression reads exasperation. He closes the file on his desk and leans back in his chair, apparently aware that this is a conversation he’s not getting out of. “And what, exactly, did I spill the beans about? And to who, for that matter.”
“Cameron,” House says, hooking his cane around a chair and pulling it over so he can sit down. Immediately upon sitting he starts the arduous process of scooching it around to Wilson’s side of the desk. It doesn’t have wheels and the legs catch against the carpet annoyingly and also he can only use one leg and a cane to push so it takes a minute. Wilson stares on in quiet, put upon amusement.
When their chairs are pushed together as close as possible, House leans over and places his head on Wilson’s shoulder and flutters his eyelashes. The move is completely at odds with his dry, even tone. “She knows I’m married.”
He can physically feel the way Wilson freezes underneath him, all his muscles going tense at once. It takes a moment for him to react, and then he’s pushing House away, putting some distance between them.
“I thought we didn’t talk about that.”
“You know, if you really didn’t want to talk about it, all you had to do was pretend you didn’t know what I was talking about. I would have dropped it,” House says conversationally.
Beside him Wilson snorts. “No you wouldn’t have.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t have.”
A beat of silence and then, “So. Cameron knows?”
“I’m guessing you didn’t tell her then,” House muses. He’s got his head lolled against the back of the chair now, and a quick glance to the right reveals Wilson to be in a similar position.
“Do you know how many women I’ve dated in the four years since then?” Wilson asks, apropos of nothing.
House does, actually. But he doesn’t admit to it.
“Seventeen.”
Eighteen, actually, but House is counting a quick little fling right after Vegas that Wilson has probably forgotten about. Eighteen women, in only four years. Four point five women a year. Wilson’s probably broken a world record or something, if there are records for sleeping and ditching women very quickly, in a very romantic fashion.
“Seventeen women, and not once have I ever mentioned the fact that I’m legally married.”
House sighs and sits up in the chair, folding both hands over the head of his cane and then resting his chin on them. “Then how the hell did she figure it out?”
Does she even know it’s Wilson I’m married to? he thinks but doesn’t say aloud.
“It can’t possibly be that hard to look that kind of thing up. And lord knows you’ve trained your fellows in the art of spying. Looking up a marriage license can’t be nearly as hard as breaking and entering, and you have them doing that every other week.”
“It saves lives,” House snaps, but it’s an automatic response and they both ignore it. They’ve already had that discussion. “Why would she be looking that kind of thing up in the first place?”
This time Wilson sighs. “Look, House, as interesting as being your sounding board is, I really do have work to do.”
House turns and wiggles his eyebrows in a faux enticing look. “Didn’t know you were interested in sounding, honey.”
Wilson, always quick, levels him with a completely blank expression. “I’ve cathed enough patients to never, ever be interested, but thanks for the offer. Now get out of my office, honey.”
House gets.
oOo
Their patient, despite being in serious discomfort, doesn’t seem to have anything life threatening. This is good, because it means House has the time and mental energy to spare for snooping around.
The answer is glaringly obvious and sitting in his inbox. Not that he ever checks his mail; that’s what Cameron is for. Maybe he should start screening it or something.
It’s an innocuous enough looking letter if you consider spam mail innocuous. He’s not even sure why Cameron had bothered to open it in the first place; boredom, perhaps? Someone needs more clinic hours apparently.
The letter is from the seedy chapel that had performed their wedding. There had been legal marriage registration papers on the front counter, and the clerk had asked them for two forms of ID and that had been that. They’d stumbled somewhat drunkenly into the next room, laughing, arms around each other’s necks, and gotten hitched. The letter wants to know if they’d like to come back to renew their vows and then, on a separate sheet of paper, goes on to offer them discounts for the hotels owned by the same company.
At the very least Cameron doesn’t know who he’s married to. He probably could have resolved this whole thing without alerting Wilson. Somehow, he isn’t upset about having his hand forced though. Maybe it’s time they get it out in the open, do something with it once and for all, even if it’s just to file for divorce.
House rolls both sheets of paper up and tosses them in the trashcan. A minute later he limps over, pulls out the first one about their vows, and stashes it in a drawer in his desk without smoothing it out.
His minions find him half an hour later, both feet propped up on the conference table and gameboy in hand. Patient history is clear, and the tests they’d rerun have come back just as clean as whoever ran them before. She also has the interesting new symptom of being unable to walk.
“Can’t even make it two steps before she falls over,” Chase says.
“She’s complaining that everything is too loud, but she’s also lost hearing in one ear,” Cameron adds, her good mood apparently dampened after dealing with the patient. “We had to move her to a room in the very back of the unit just to calm her down.”
House curses under his breath as his character dies on screen. Heaving a sigh, he grabs his cane and pulls his feet off the table. The whiteboard already lists headache, nausea/vomiting, and vertigo, so he adds sensitivity to sound, hearing loss, and underlines vertigo three times. When he turns back to his fellow he raises his eyebrows expectantly. “And? What does that tell us?”
“I talked to her and she apparently suffered some head trauma a few weeks ago,” Foreman offers.
“Great! Neurological it is.” Why the patient hadn’t bothered to offer this information sooner is fucking beyond House, but whatever. Wouldn’t be the first time people were stupid, and it certainly won’t be the last. “Get her in the MRI and lets see what part of her brain she fucked up.”
Foreman just shakes his head. “There was trauma, but it was minimal. She just knocked the side of her head on the card door. Made her ears ring for a minute, but that was it, she was fine afterwards.”
“Fine, until she came in here vomiting and dizzy,” House corrects. “Get her the MRI, we can’t rule out trauma until we’ve seen her brain.”
oOo
The MRI comes back completely clean, but after a decent (drugged) night’s sleep, House has it figured out. He bursts through the conference room doors ten minutes late and completely unrepentant about it.
“Quick,” he says, loudly enough to be heard over whatever conversation was already happening, “someone tell me the name of the three bones found in the inner ear.”
Three pairs of eyes swing towards him and a confused silence fills the room. Cameron finally breaks it with a polite cough. “Uh, they’re the malleus, incus, and stapes. Why?”
“Superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome,” House declares solemnly. “Not life threatening on it’s own to break one of those tiny little bones, but what causes bones to be fragile enough that just a tap on the head can break them?”
“If she had a disease that caused her bones to be brittle, she’d be more likely to break her skull when she hit her head than one of the bones in the inner ear,” Foreman says. “They’re too small.”
“Unless it’s not the bones that are brittle, but the inner ear itself,” Chase continues.
“Autoimmune inner ear disease?” Back to Cameron. “The antibodies could be attacking the bones, making them more fragile, and could also be causing the hearing loss. But the autoimmnue panel came back clean.”
“Start her on steroids for the autoimmune disease, and run the panel again,” House orders. “Then get her into a CT scan so we know which ossicle she broke. Once we know we get her some corrective surgery, and barring the surgeon fucking up her auditory nerve or cochlea, the hearing loss won’t be permanent.”
Once again everyone moves to file out, and once again Cameron pauses by the door. She smiles softly at him, less excited than she was yesterday. “I know it was a Vegas marriage but…I’m happy for you,” she says honestly. “And whoever she is, she’s a very lucky woman.”
The door swings shut behind her.
House watches the departure and turns the words over in his head. He’d known she’d had something of a high school crush on him of course, but she hadn’t shown any signs of disappointment or rejection yesterday. Too excited over stumbling across personal information about him maybe? A dirty, embarrassing secret about a marriage in Vegas. Something about his reaction has convinced her that the marriage and relationship must be real though otherwise she wouldn’t have walked out looking like a kicked puppy.
He thinks about the fact that autoimmune inner ear disease isn’t curable, only treatable. For the rest of this woman’s life she’ll be fighting hearing loss, will always carry this issue with her wherever she goes.
oOo
The patient is cured, an easy open shut case with no dramatic seizures or heart attacks. Boring, honestly.
Which is probably why House finds Chase rooting through his desk the next morning when he comes in. It has to be boredom. He mentally adds twelve more hours a week to Chase’s clinic duties.
Entering the office, he bangs his cane loudly against the glass door and Chase jumps guiltily. His head swings up, eyes stretched wide. “Uh, this isn’t-” he starts, then stammers when House raises an eyebrow at him. “I mean, the marker for the whiteboard was out, and there wasn’t one on top of the desk so I opened a drawer to look for one and-”
“And you found the letter inviting me to renew my vows,” House finishes.
“...Yes,” Chase admits sheepishly. And of course, without the extra sheet about hotel discounts and gambling, the vow thing looks almost legitimate.
They stand there in silence for a moment before House rolls his eyes and gestures expansively with his cane. “Go on then, ask me whatever stupid question you’ve got sitting on your tongue. I can practically see you trying to hold it back.”
“Whoisit?” Chase asks so quickly the words are all mashed together.
“Er, wrong question! That’s boring and I’m not going to answer it, and you only got one question so get out of my office now.”
Chase’s jaw flaps for a moment before he draws himself up straight. “Whoever she is I feel sorry for her. You talk about hookers and-and one night stands and all this time…”
“Still boring,” House cuts in. He limps his way around Chase and then collapses into his desk chair. “Either say something new and exciting or get. Out.”
It’s amusing to watch Chase’s jaw clench in righteous anger. Like he actually knows anything about the situation, like he understands what’s really happening here. Without saying anything the younger doctor turns on his heel and leaves.
First Cameron, then Chase. All that’s left is Foreman and House muses on that one for a while. Better to tell him, or let the gossip mill run? Cameron might have kept it to herself, but Chase certainly won’t. Probably in some misguided attempt to keep House from flirting with any of the staff.
This’ll be fun to tell Wilson. With a groan House levers himself to his feet and heads for the clinic downstairs where he knows Wilson will be. After barging into exam rooms one and two, he hits the jackpot on room three.
“I didn’t call for a consultation,” Wilson says without looking up from the small child’s ear he’s examining.
House pauses. “How did you know it was me?”
“You have a very distinctive step,” Wilson says dryly. “Also I heard Mrs. Wilkers yell at you from next door. Pretty sure she was having a cervix exam, no?”
The mother holding the small child shoots Wilson a rather dirty look.
House pushes his lips into a pout and concedes the point with a little head bob. “She wasn’t very appreciative of an audience, and I can’t say I wanted to be that audience. Never been a geriatric voyeur.”
Now it’s House’s turn to be glared at by the mother.
Wilson pulls the otoscope out of the kids ear and flicks it off with his finger. “Nothing more than an ear infection,” he tells the woman with a smile. “I’ll write him a prescription for an antibiotic and it should be cleared up within the week.”
A minute later the huffy woman is carrying her son out of the exam room without a backwards glance, and House is shutting the door after her so Wilson can’t escape.
“Are we talking about that thing we’re not supposed to talk about again?” Wilson asks without looking up from the chart he’s filling out.
“Yeah see, if it’s something we’re not supposed to talk about then you get points off for bringing it up in the first place. But now since you’ve brought it up, I can’t not talk about it, which means I’m not the one breaking the fight club rules. So I’m free of culpability in this situation.”
Wilson glances up, but only to fix House with a look that speaks volumes for what he thinks about House and culpability. He sighs and turns back to finish scribbling something in the file. “I suppose that’s your roundabout way of saying yes, we are talking about it again.”
“You know me so well, buttercup,” House simpers, adding in a little eyelash flutter for effect.
With a flourish, Wilson finishes up with the file and then snaps it closed. “Who else knows?”
House pauses then says seriously, “Chase. And he’s not happy, he’ll have the rumor mill spreading it by lunch.”
Wilson rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Great. I guess it’s too late to file for divorce? It’ll get out no matter what we do now.”
Tapping thoughtfully at the floor with his cane, House considers not sharing the fact that nobody knows who he’s married to. If only to wind Wilson up. But that would also have Wilson pushing for a divorce faster.
“Neither of them know who I’m married to,” he says after a moment. “Just that, legally, I’m married. Chase is all pissed because he thinks I’ve been cheating.”
Wilson barks a dry, humorless laugh. “Out of the two of us, I think my adultery has been a lot worse.”
“All we need is a little couples therapy, I swear we can work it out. Think of the children!”
“The children are the cause of this,” Wilson says with a sigh. He’s got a hand on the back of his neck now. House watches him for a moment, the tense posture, the shape of his mouth kept carefully neutral.
“You know the easiest thing here to do is divorce before anyone finds out and fake ignorance over a funny office rumor,” House says diplomatically.
A beat of silence, and then, “You’re absolutely right.”
House waits for more but there’s nothing forthcoming. Wilson is avoiding his gaze and his body language is purposefully blocking House out. He thinks again of the woman he’d cured, with the autoimmune disease. How she’d have to carry it around the rest of her life. He could do that, if he wanted. He could leave things as they are right now and Wilson wouldn’t call him out on it. They’d stay in this homeostasis, never actually moving, caught up in each other but pretending they’re seeing other people. Treating the symptoms but incurable.
Or…it’s not autoimmune disease at all.
“Huh,” House says just as his pager starts to blare. Better go save his patient’s life.
oOo
The steroids wouldn’t have killed the patient, but they wouldn’t have made things much better either. Boring.
House holds up the CT scan and eyes the tumor with distaste.
“I thought acoustic neuromas were supposed to grow closer to the cochlea and auditory nerve,” Chase mumbles.
House rolls his eyes and puts the scan aside. “Acoustic neuromas only occur in the inner ear. What, skip the lesson on hearing science, doctor Chase?”
“And it’s not a facial nerve neuroma because she doesn’t have any paralysis,” Foreman blithely continues, not even paying attention to the way Chase sinks into his chair a little.
Cameron pulls the scan closer so she can look it over. “I really thought the autoimmune disease was right.”
“It was clever,” House says, “but inaccurate. No need to dwell. We need to biopsy the mass. It doesn’t look like polyps but we can’t count on in being benign.”
When it tests as cholesterol granulomas some two hours later, House rubs the bridge of his nose in annoyance. “Did nobody think to fucking look in her ears? The hospital, we have these great little things you know, they’re called otoscopes!”
“I did examine her ears!” Foreman argues. “There was no sign of the fluid granulomas usually creates, and I could see no swelling of the tympanic membrane.”
“No swelling, and yet the graunlomas were so big they managed to weaken her ossicles. That’s what you’re telling me.”
Foreman’s jaw sets with stubbornness and he nods his head. For a moment House just stares at him in disbelief before physically shaking himself of the issue.
“Whatever just. Prep her for an excision and a bore ventilating tube to keep it from cropping up again.”
oOo
It’s later in the day, and lunch has passed, meaning Wilson is probably in his office doing more paperwork before his last few appointments. House bursts in in a mirror to the day prior, only this time it makes Wilson pause and glance up.
“Yes?”
“It’s curable,” House announces.
Wilson’s brow furrows and then smoothes. “Ah, your patient?”
“Yes,” House says, pushing further into the room and then coming around Wilson’s desk. “And no.”
Wilson leans back and stares up at him, obviously confused now. “No?”
“No,” House repeats, then leans down and kisses the other man.
It takes a moment for Wilson to respond, but respond he does. His mouth opens under House’s, soft and inviting, and House can’t help but lick his way inside. He slides one hand along Wilson’s cheek and into his hair, tugging gently, and Wilson makes this delicious noise in the back of his throat.
And then House’s leg spasms and he pulls away with a curse, leaning heavily against the desk to keep from falling.
Wilson stares him, eyes dark and wide, face flushed. He licks his lips distractingly and asks, “What the fuck was that?”
“A cure,” House explains, even as he roots around in his pocket for his pills. He pops one and then laughs at the expression of confusion and slight irritation on Wilson’s face. “Do you really want me to explain the thought process that connected an autoimmune disease to our relationship, or would you rather kiss me again?”
It’s not even a question really. Wilson pulls him in by his lapels, careful not to jostle his leg.
A risky cure, but one that’s paying off. Wilson had been so reluctant to even discuss a divorce though, House figured this had to be the reason.
oOo
House walks into the conference room the next day with a hickie high up on his throat, but Wilson walks in thirty minutes later with a matching one just under his ear.
All three fellow’s jaws actually drop and the rumor mill basically explodes.
In a fit of pure evil, House manages to get on the hospital intercom later that week and yell, “Assflash, newshole, we were married the whole goddamn time,” into every single room. It means an infinite amount of clinic hours for…well, forever, but it sends the entire hospital into a tizzy and, more importantly, it makes Wilson laugh until he’s snorting and leaning against House for support, tears in his eyes. House considers it a win, especially because of the fantastic sex he gets later that night.