Chapter Text
“Don’t inject me with that! You sick monster! I’m going to get Asperger’s or, or, fucking polio!”
“Oh my god, it’s saline, you idiot!”
“The only saline I want is sailin’ away from your bulshit!” The patient bucked and screamed against the rushing flow of nurses and restraints.
House slammed the patient’s arm down again against the rocking hospital bed. “Are you high?!” he shouted, incredulous.
One of the nurses currently positioned at the patient's other thrashing arm shot a worried glance across the scene. “Dr. House, you’ll never get that needle into his median cubital vein with him like this…”
“Oh, I’ll fucking try,” House gritted. His determined hands guided the needle close to the patient's arm.
“Oh no you fucking won’t!!” The patient, god knows what his name was, made a last-ditch display of Herculean strength and whipped his opposite arm out from under the nurses, grabbed his catheter bag, and swung it against House’s head.
With an earth-shattering ripping noise, everything and one froze as the catheter bag tore apart and exploded over House with its contents. Urine spattered onto every cubic inch of the diagnostician and dribbled down his face. It leaked into his nose and his eyelashes; it burned its way down his throat and ears; House began to feel warm liquid drip down his neck as hot emotion burned back up.
The nurses, infuriatingly untouched except for a merciful drop here or there on their scrubs, wisely took advantage of the shocked stillness of the room and finally fully restrained the patient. Once this was done, a few ran out to gather towels for the diagnostician while the rest ran out because they were not new to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and did not wish to be present for Dr House’s inevitable fury.
A dripping and sopping House, now halfheartedly draped with two towels around his neck and back, slowly and surely began to register what the freakoid had just happened.
The patient, who now lay innocently calm on the bed, gave House a smug grin, then immediately started to sway in his bed as he relapsed into tachycardia. He was saved by the bell, or rather, the shrieking beeps of his heart monitor and the squweeking of the same nurses’ clogs making a 180 against the tile floor.
Shoved out of the room to give the nurses space to shock the patient, House stood just outside the sliding glass door of the room, utterly baffled. He was wet, he was apoplectic, and he was being stared at by the approaching members of his diagnostic team.
Forman was the only one who dared to speak. “…What happened to you, House?”
One of the towels slid off House’s back onto the growing puddle of piss on the ground. “If his heart doesn't kill him first, I’m gonna kill him,” House rasped. He gripped his cane as tight as needed to keep his hands from ripping open the door behind him and delivering a series of punishments onto the lowly maggot currently being shocked with paddles, and with pointed determination, stuck one foot in front of the other before his self-restraint broke free.
…
Hot, steaming water cascaded onto House’s body, of which was fully clothed and shaking with anger. He just needed the taste of piss out of his mouth; House only had the capacity for focusing on one thing right now. Taking it one step at a time, he let the shower water run through his open mouth and leak onto the front of his (probably ruined) shirt. Once he could swallow freely again, he moved to focusing on stripping off his clothes.
Peice by peice in the steril employee showers, House pulled off the components of his ruined outfit.
Stepping out of his pants and leaving them soaked on the shower floor next to his shirts—they were all already ruined, why try keeping them dry?—the diagnostician ripped the pathetic bar soap from its wire bed on the side of the shower wall and scrubbed like there was no tomorrow; which, if he got his hands on his current patient, would be accurate for at least one of them.
Turning up the water to the highest setting (a futile attempt to boil the germs off him), he dragged and scraped the soap across his whole body for what felt like hours. House wasn’t exactly your neat freak kinda guy (although someone else he knew was), but he hated the thought of some wacko’s urine seeping into his pores, as he hoped most people were.
After he felt like he could breathe again, he moved onto his hair, still using the same quickly dwindling bar soap. He figured when he inevitably went home and showered again, said neat freak would encourage him to wash his hair fully with an actual soap.
Wilson had been living “temporarily” in House’s apartment for a week and a half now, and House was having the time of his life. To be honest, House really couldn’t tell a difference, considering one of the reasons Wilson was sleeping on his couch was because he always slept on his couch. His wife (soon to be “ex” if House had any say on it) was upset with how much time Wilson spent with House rather than with her. The same thing happened with the other wife, too. House tried to care (ok lie but whatever) but couldn’t deny the sick kick he got when Wilson initiated most of their hangouts. House jeeringly offered to invite whatever woman Wilson had tied himself down to on the occasions that it came up, but Wilson always denied. House would never tell him, but he found it immensely attractive.
House was fully aware of the embarrassing —ugh, spare him— emotions he felt for Wilson. He knew right when he first saw him, dishevelled and an emotional wreck that night in New Orleans. He tried his absolute best to stifle them down, but that effort only really lasted about a week. He was hooked on him far deeper than anyone else he had ever been interested in, and every day it felt like drowning.
The shower water eventually began to sputter and turn lukewarm. Before it could freeze on him, House bedridginly rinsed off the current layer of soap he was smothering himself in and stepped out into the ice-cold air. He instinctively grabbed his arms and shivered.
Limping tentatively to the wooden slats across from him, House grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist before sitting down. Shuddering, he reached for his phone (the one thing he did cast aside away from the wrath of the shower head). It’s not like he could put his old clothes back on, but also couldn’t saunter back up two floors with only a towel in a public hospital, no matter how much he may have tried. In his rush to get to the showers, he had forgotten his spare change of clothes, if he even remembered to replace them after another incident a few months ago.
House jabbed the speed dial button and pressed it against his ear.
“Wilson,” the other line introduced.
“I need you to get my spare clothes from my office.”
“Trying out some new disguises to catch a glance down Cuddy’s shirt? I wouldn’t bother; it’s lower today than yesterday; not worth the effort.”
“Bottom drawer, on the left.”
“Care to share why you need these?”
“No need; I can hear you already walking over.”
Wilson sighed over the phone. It made House’s neck tickle. After a moment of rustling from the other side of the call, Wilson spoke up. “Bottom drawer, on the left?” He sounded concerned.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“My left or your left?”
“My god Wilson, you’re a doctor, it’s always the patient’s left!”
“House, I don’t see anything in here. Other than a few dvds I won’t t report you for..”
Now it was House’s turn to sigh. He rubbed a raisiny hand against his brow. “I didn’t replace them, then,” he bit.
Wilson must have sensed the despair in his voice. “Do you really need a change of clothes? What about the ones you were wearing this morning, they seemed fine?”
“Some psycho threw his piss at me. I can’t wear them.” House slumped over, resting his elbows on his knees, frustrated. He stared at the skin on his arms and legs, peeling and red from the agitation of the soap. He picked at it angrily.
Wilson cringed audibly. A pause; he was thinking. “Did you do a STD test on him? Are you safe??” he interrogated frantically.
House shot a dry glare at Wilson through his phone. Awfully interested, arn’t we, Wilson? “No, he’s clean.” House stuck out his tongue with an exaggerated gagging noise. “Slightly dehydrated, though.”
“Do you need my spare set? They’re in my office, I could go get it,” Wilson chimed. House could hear the creases in between his eyebrows.
“Fine,” he resolved, defeated. “I’m in the staff lockers.”
“Alright, I’ll be there in a few.” Wilson ended the call.
.*.
“Ugh, did it really get all over you?” Wilson asked, stepping into the shower area. One hand was outstretched, holding a small, black duffel bag to House.
The older man grabbed it, relieved. “Yeah. The ducklings were supposed to be in there preparing him for an LP, but he went berserk. Ripped out all his IVs and monitors.” House immediately zipped open the bag to pull out the clothes.
Wilson’s eyes darted from House’s hands to a spot on the wall behind him. “What are his symptoms? Do you think going berserk could be one?”
“Could be. Don’t care enough right now,” House lied. Without hesitation, he stood up and began to change, removing the soaked towel around his waist. House watched Wilson out of the corner of his eye. His face was flushed, and he was clearly staring.
House dug around in the duffle for a moment and mercifully found a convenient spare pair of boxers stashed in the bottom. He mentally thanked Wilson’s anal approach to thoroughness. Out loud, he remarked, “Boy Scouts teach you this one?” He began to pull the boxers on.
Wilson startled and choked out an absent-minded affirmation.
House slid them up to his waist and patted just below the waistband. “Bit small for me,” he teased.
Wilson nodded fervently, then realised what he was doing and, much too late, arranged a look of offence on his red face. “Uh, I’ll go stand outside… let you do that..” Wilson whipped around before House could respond and dashed out of the tiled walls.
Wilson’s clothes were stiffer than House’s, no doubt a result of idle hands searching for a purpose in an unhappy marriage. They were soft, though, and their cold fabrics felt like lotion on his cracked skin. His pants, too; freshly washed, ironed, but House could feel the moulding of Wilson’s legs in their worn stitching.
House limped out of the showers with a combination of he and his best friend’s two styles: Wilson’s undershirt, dress button up, boxers (permanently House’s; like hell he was giving those back), and pants, but worn sloppy and untucked, and the classic Wilson tie left untouched in the duffle. Even in different clothes, House filled the air with the same arrogance and resolve, still refusing to button up the shirt all the way, leaving only five buttons done in the middle. House could practically hear the wheels melting in Wilson’s head.
The oncologist was utterly transfixed. His eyes moved up and down House like a high school popular girl judging a nerdy kid’s outfit, although, despite the many popular girls he had been acquainted with in high school, he was pretty sure they didn’t have that much lust in their eyes. At least he hoped not.
House cleared his throat.
“Right, yeah, they uh,” Wilson squeaked, “they fit alright?”
“Yeah, pretty well.” House limped to Wilson’s side. “The shoulders are a little tight, but I’ll survive.”
“Good,” Wilson crackled out. “Where uh, are your other clothes?”
House proudly produced the black duffel bag in his hand shoved into his best friend’s face, now dripping water onto the floor.
“Great, thanks,” Wilson remarked wryly.
House grinned and began his ascent back to the elevators up to his patient, feeling much better with a portable Wilson scent draped around him. “See you at home!” he called out behind him.
“Yeah, home,” Wilson said in a daze, watching House leave in his clothes.