Title: Blood Letting
Title: Blood Letting
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Notes: Written for wtf27, prompt #9, supernatural (creatures). Thanks to mer_duff and perspi for beta-reading.
House knew this was a conversation Wilson had plenty of times, enough to get it down pat, and he’d listened in on it frequently enough to know the script on the other end of the line. He also knew that if most people walked in while Wilson was still on act one, he’d go to an emergency intermission and push them back into the hall, not give them a wave to come in and sit down.
“The twenty-seventh, yes.” A pause. “Yes, that’s correct.” House turned to watch a small brown bird land on the balcony’s partition. “May I ask why not?” It was a house sparrow, by the look of it, which was worth a spark of amusement. “I understand, and I’ll be paying for the hotel deposit myself.” It began grooming itself from the oil glands right over its tail. “Well, I’d prefer to travel the day prior to the original booking.” Stopping to reassess its surroundings, it moved to its wings, a counterpoint to Wilson’s paper-shuffling. “I recognize that I am making an odd request, but I don’t see how it’s so strange you can’t change -” It must’ve heard something, because it took off. “Thank you. I appreciate you doing this.” Back to Wilson, House watched him flip through his desk planner and scribble in something new. “Yes. Yes. Thank you. Have a good afternoon.”
Wilson’s encore huff wasn’t meant for the travel agent, or anyone in particular, but it was part of the script just the same. House had only heard Wilson come out and say why it was he needed to leave a day early once, his ultimate trump to get hapless travel agents understand why it wasn’t him being fussy.
“This the Atlanta conference?”
He didn’t look at House. “You’d think six months would be far enough in advance to change a plane flight without a hassle.”
“Oh, you know people. We don’t like anyone messing with our schedules.”
“Can’t be helped.”
“Anyway, am I still invited this weekend?”
“My parents are very forgiving. Yes, you can still come.”
“Excellent. Anyway, thirty-five year old female -”
“I’m assuming you’ve already done the STD tests.”
“Pregnancy is technically an STD, so yes.” A flicker of amusement was better than nothing, and it let House know Wilson was actually paying attention; ten minutes of debate later, he was racing to the lab, ready to shout for an all-clear.
-
Every time he went to Wilson’s parents’ house, he forgot how long the drive was - the mind had ways of suppressing that sort of thing, to make the world seem better. Traffic was with them, cutting the trip down to just over an hour and a half, not counting the stop just before the outskirts of Teaneck for him to get out and stretch his leg and talk about Wilson’s parents’ sense of humor and naming abilities.
The gravel crunched under his shoes. “Housecooling? Seriously?”
“Well, if they’re moving out, it’s not warming the place up.”
“The logic is sound, the wit less so.” Onto the grass to pivot, spin around, and catch Wilson’s eye as he leaned against the car.
“Be glad for them. They were terrified to leave.”
“Is Danny going with them?”
He didn’t break eye contact and managed to hold himself still. “Yes, Danny’s going with them.”
“Good.” House went back to pacing. “Keep him on a short leash, maybe he won’t run off this time.”
“Please promise me you won’t say that to my parents.”
“I’ll promise whatever you want as long as you’re willing to believe me.”
Once they got there, Wilson’s mother opened the door, greeting both of them with hugs and a kiss to Wilson’s cheek, ushering them inside, explaining the kids were running around out back and how the property values had gone up so nicely and asking if they wanted something to drink. House smiled and nodded enough to look like he was paying attention, keeping his eyes open for - that. Right there. Over ten years gone and now back in his childhood kitchen, barefoot, pouring himself a glass of lemonade.
“You must be Danny.” Barely ten minutes younger than Wilson, and less than a half-hour behind Reuben, he looked years older than both of them. Which made sense, and probably didn’t sit too well when he had to sit across from them at the Sabbath dinners. The basic features were the same, clearly fraternal faces down to the eyebrows and nose, but off-model enough that nobody who didn’t know better would think they were littermates.
He set the glass down. “And you must be House.” Just a bit of a round twang, well-grafted onto the flatter New Jersey sounds - South Carolina, maybe, or Georgia, even down to Florida, all places where a migrant worker could blend in no matter where he’d come from. “Jim told me about you.”
House cocked his head. Not many people didn’t automatically offer a hand. Smart kid.
-
Dinnertime wasn’t for another couple of hours, and all the kids were running around out back with their grandpa and dad with everyone else inside, which meant it didn’t take much work for House to get himself right where he wanted to be: on the couch next to Wilson’s mother Deborah and Reuben’s wife Laurel while ‘Deb’ flipped through a photo album. Both women smiled at House’s genuine interest in the conversation, with Laurel laughing at the sight of her husband in his little baseball jersey while her mother-in-law told stories about the temple’s league. House kept his cheeks up and waited.
Wilson’s mother opened up a new album and sighed. As happy as he was to finally get to what he’d waited for, House barely managed to stop himself from a double-take. “Romulus, Remus, and Spot?”
She laughed. “That’s Reuben and Daniel, and James on the end. Just have a decent-sized litter and get it over with, I always say.”
“Huh.”
“Oh, I know,” Laurel remarked, leaning in, “it’s so much easier, they all wean at the same time, and you only go through it once.”
House looked back at the picture and then to Laurel. “So does that mean you go on all fours to nurse?”
She shrugged, smiled. “When they’re that little, yeah. A lot of the books say to wake all of them up when one’s hungry to feed them at the same time.” The picture was pencil-dated on the margin at four days after the mutual birthday, and House could see women around the world wishing for some extra sets of nipples to make feeding times go a bit faster.
Keeping his face looking open and nodding in just the right places, storing all the data away for later, his smiles were genuine even if the women wouldn’t appreciate the cause, it suddenly became less fun when Reuben joined them. Not that it wasn’t good to get further bribe material from a primary source, but more that it meant Wilson would either be out back with his dad or commiserating with his other brother. The one House didn’t know, and hadn’t had a good chance to talk to yet, and with this set of circumstances even finding out Wilson hadn’t walked on two legs for most of his early childhood unless he’d had to - and he could imagine a four-year-old Wilson resenting new moons just as easily as he knew the present-day Wilson resented full ones - if he wanted a chance to meet Danny it’d be now or next Passover, and he wasn’t willing to wait another ten months.
Finding the backyard full of children in various shapes and sizes playing with their grandfather but not any uncles meant he’d have to search the house without heading back into the den, plus hope Wilson’s own roaming patterns didn’t revert to ones he didn’t have data on. That, or take other items into consideration and use those along with the strategy that he used for most of his cases: wait until something changed. It didn’t take long for the idealized object to walk into the kitchen with an empty glass in hand, still barefoot. Some people walked by radiation chambers with chocolate bars in their pockets, and other people waited for someone else to run out of lemonade.
“Hi there.”
When in doubt, go for broke. “Pour me a glass, will you?”
“Uh, sure.” Danny stopped what he was doing, actually put the lemonade back in the fridge to get House a clean glass and serve him first, which was such a Wilson move it made him smile to know some traits were consistent throughout. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” All things said and done, it was good lemonade. He took another sip, made a show out of enjoying it, and then asked, “So how’s it feel to be back home?”
Danny looked like he was about to answer, and then his mouth tightened into a smile - a real one, given the sudden lines around his eyes. “When I said Jim told me about you, I didn’t just mean he told me your name and what you look like.” He kept smiling. “So what do you actually want to ask me?”
Oh, he was good. “You people are so well-networked. How did you keep everyone from finding you?”
“Easy. I went where there wasn’t anyone else in the network.” He leaned onto the counter, resting his elbows on the spotless tile. “If there’s no one like you around for literally hundreds of miles, it’s not hard to keep news to yourself.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“Got tired of hiding.”
“And when you say no one like you, of course you mean…”
“Anyone like me.”
“And you don’t just mean non-goyim.”
“I mean anyone. You, I know wouldn’t think that,” Danny broke eye contact to look out the windows. House stayed quiet and didn’t prompt, not just because he didn’t have any idea what’d come next, “Most people assume that I’m not like the rest of my family, and they’re right, but for the wrong reasons. Because I don’t shift, people think I’m not really like them, that I’m not a real one, or authentic enough or a valid example.” He barked out a laugh. “And yes, that’s part of why I left.” He took a long drink. “It’s amazing what people don’t think of if you don’t tell them.”
“I assume this extends to asking stupid questions.”
He nodded, taking another sip. “I tell someone what I am, and they always ask the same questions. Does it hurt, were you born that way, what does it feel like, what do smells look like.”
“What happened, how much does it hurt.”
“They always think they’ll know what it’s like.”
“You can’t translate these things for them to understand.” He’d had this conversation with Wilson once, just once, almost nine years ago when they’d gotten roaring drunk at House’s insistence, mostly because it was one of the very few ways to get Wilson to open up about anything. If having to disappear for over fourteen years was what it took for his brother, that made Wilson the easy one, and wasn’t that a scary thought.
“Exactly. So you just don’t tell them, and it’s all hunky-dory.” Danny was back to smiling for real again. “So what was your first question?”
“Sorry?”
“To Jim. What’s the first question you asked him once you found out?”
As weird days went, House had a bunch in his life, and that one was definitely in his top eight. Tapping a finger against his lips, “I think it went, right. ‘Do you get the urge to throw up when you hear babies crying?’”
“What?”
“That’s what I asked him. Do you get -”
“No, I heard that, but -” He burst out laughing, leaning his head onto his hand.
“Besides, if he works in a hospital, it’s a bit of an occupational hazard. And I know they’d have to lick his face, but that means every time he nuzzles a baby for a photo op there’s a chance it’s feeding time.” Danny kept laughing. “I didn’t mean it that way, you insensitive jerk.”
“Of course you didn’t.” He grinned. “Babies taste terrible raw.”
By the time everyone came in from the backyard, their conversation had somehow wandered past regional soda brands and drive-in theaters over to pulp novels and their modern film adaptations. Danny opened the door to let everyone come in, saying hi to his dad and going right back to mirroring effects while three of his brother’s kids walked into the changing station on all fours, one at a time, and walked out fully dressed a couple of minutes later. House nodded in all the right places to keep Danny talking. He assumed they waited politely - not that he’d say that, because there wasn’t any way he wouldn’t get thrown out of the house if he admitted he wasn’t so up to snuff as he wanted to be on quadrupedal body language - and didn’t say a thing when Danny bent down to scratch June’s ears before she padded off to her mother.
Dinner was filling, raucous, and even more informative than the photo session thanks to the few cousins who’d shown up, but House didn’t discount his loosening Danny up earlier. Wilson even joined in a few times, and House hated having to wait for it but knew him well enough by now to know that waiting would be the best way to get a few particular pieces of information, like during coffee when he innocently asked about where they’d build their next sukkah, which got him an actual answer as well as a series of anecdotes about their old ones.
“Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Reuben smiled at his dad’s comment, turned to House, “It was the first one we built after we moved up here and we still weren’t used to how cold it got, so Mom let us sleep together. And this was after we’d gotten our own bedrooms, so it was a pretty big deal.”
“I can imagine,” House murmured. Danny was smiling, most likely remembering being sandwiched between his brothers and their warm fur, and Wilson was smiling too, probably about the same thing.
-
This was the first time they’d spent any time together since Wilson dropped House off at his apartment after getting back to Princeton. Ordinarily, Wilson’s avoiding behaviors would bother him, but in this case when he knew the root cause he didn’t need to worry why it was going on and spend effort trying to figure it out. He just needed to wait a little over a week for a major sporting event to come on TV and for Wilson to invite him over.
It was a boring game anyway, showcasing the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero score, and it didn’t take much prodding to move the conversation onto a more interesting subject. Wilson was more than happy to talk about his nephew and nieces, especially the one who was the exact opposite of his brother. “She might get a job as a narcotics officer, or sniffing for bombs, or work with someone who needs a helper animal. She’ll need someone to help her take the tests, of course, but there’s nothing stopping her from trying.”
“Aside from the fact that she can’t speak English, can’t use sign language, doesn’t have fingerprints...”
“Well, she can always run away to Montana and become a sheepdog.” Three weeks ago, House would’ve been the one to make that joke. The fact that Wilson was able to make it, even in private, meant more to House than he’d admit to when he was this sober.
“Be her own trainer,” he tested.
“Win championships.” And Wilson passed, laughing slightly - the sort of laugh he made over something that wasn’t really funny but deserved the chuckle. He finished the rest of his beer, set the bottle down on the coaster, and got up, rolling his head along with his shoulders. House watched him move down the hallway and come back out with a sheet, which he unfolded and flung out over the couch.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s summer. I don’t want to shed on the upholstery.”
Huh. “It’s not a full moon tonight.”
“No, it isn’t.” He looked over at House, making full-on eye contact. “You can leave if you want.”
It took him a moment to process the offer, making him speak fast to make up the time. “No, that’s okay, I’ll stick around for the highlights.” Wilson nodded, smiling, and went back down the hall. House heard a click that was pretty clearly the bedroom door - more sense than the bathroom - and not for the first time, he wondered if there was some sort of prayer Wilson was supposed to say in this situation. Given how many prayers there were for pretty much any series of events, there wasn’t any way this one wouldn’t be covered. Not that he would; Wilson wasn’t observant, and in any case, he knew if he asked Wilson about it he’d get a shrug and a pithy answer about some things being easier to do when you weren’t alone and it wasn’t just you. He’d finished pondering animal metaphors and was writing up a mental note to check the usual Orthodox websites tomorrow when the sound of claws on hardwood floor startled him out of that train of thought.
House knew better than to try to crane his neck to look down the hall and kept his eyes on the TV, and waited until the sound stopped to look in the doorway. He could count the number of times he’d seen Wilson on all four legs and have plenty of fingers left over, but more than the unfamiliarity was the primal reaction to seeing his friend’s eyes in that sort of face - and greater than both of those was knowing it was Wilson, no matter what shape he took.
Kind of a shame Wilson didn’t, but if it wasn’t a full moon tonight and he wasn’t doing this because he had to, maybe Wilson was ready to remember that.
House watched him jump up onto the couch and settle down with his head on his paws, and then reached over, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume down a bit. “This okay?” A low whine, not an angry one, was as close as Wilson could say to yes. He leaned back in the chair, shifted his leg, and took another drink. Maybe someday Wilson would be comfortable enough to share his couch space and let him scratch his ears; no way Wilson would want to turn down that sort of pampering.
“You know,” he started, and waited for Wilson to look over at him - and he was almost drunk enough to admit the comfort that came from Wilson’s eyes being the same color no matter what shape he was in - “You know, I knew you weren’t a normal person since the day we met.” A soft whistle, ears perking straight up, to ask him to go on. “Right after I paid your bail, I bought that candy bar and offered you some, but you didn’t take any.” He smiled. “There’s just something wrong about a person who doesn’t like chocolate.”
Not quite huffing or puffing, more of a low panting, that was still clearly laughing; House joined in after a moment, and he turned the volume back up as they settled in for the rest of the game.
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: None
Rating: G
Notes: Written for wtf27, prompt #9, supernatural (creatures). Thanks to mer_duff and perspi for beta-reading.
House knew this was a conversation Wilson had plenty of times, enough to get it down pat, and he’d listened in on it frequently enough to know the script on the other end of the line. He also knew that if most people walked in while Wilson was still on act one, he’d go to an emergency intermission and push them back into the hall, not give them a wave to come in and sit down.
“The twenty-seventh, yes.” A pause. “Yes, that’s correct.” House turned to watch a small brown bird land on the balcony’s partition. “May I ask why not?” It was a house sparrow, by the look of it, which was worth a spark of amusement. “I understand, and I’ll be paying for the hotel deposit myself.” It began grooming itself from the oil glands right over its tail. “Well, I’d prefer to travel the day prior to the original booking.” Stopping to reassess its surroundings, it moved to its wings, a counterpoint to Wilson’s paper-shuffling. “I recognize that I am making an odd request, but I don’t see how it’s so strange you can’t change -” It must’ve heard something, because it took off. “Thank you. I appreciate you doing this.” Back to Wilson, House watched him flip through his desk planner and scribble in something new. “Yes. Yes. Thank you. Have a good afternoon.”
Wilson’s encore huff wasn’t meant for the travel agent, or anyone in particular, but it was part of the script just the same. House had only heard Wilson come out and say why it was he needed to leave a day early once, his ultimate trump to get hapless travel agents understand why it wasn’t him being fussy.
“This the Atlanta conference?”
He didn’t look at House. “You’d think six months would be far enough in advance to change a plane flight without a hassle.”
“Oh, you know people. We don’t like anyone messing with our schedules.”
“Can’t be helped.”
“Anyway, am I still invited this weekend?”
“My parents are very forgiving. Yes, you can still come.”
“Excellent. Anyway, thirty-five year old female -”
“I’m assuming you’ve already done the STD tests.”
“Pregnancy is technically an STD, so yes.” A flicker of amusement was better than nothing, and it let House know Wilson was actually paying attention; ten minutes of debate later, he was racing to the lab, ready to shout for an all-clear.
-
Every time he went to Wilson’s parents’ house, he forgot how long the drive was - the mind had ways of suppressing that sort of thing, to make the world seem better. Traffic was with them, cutting the trip down to just over an hour and a half, not counting the stop just before the outskirts of Teaneck for him to get out and stretch his leg and talk about Wilson’s parents’ sense of humor and naming abilities.
The gravel crunched under his shoes. “Housecooling? Seriously?”
“Well, if they’re moving out, it’s not warming the place up.”
“The logic is sound, the wit less so.” Onto the grass to pivot, spin around, and catch Wilson’s eye as he leaned against the car.
“Be glad for them. They were terrified to leave.”
“Is Danny going with them?”
He didn’t break eye contact and managed to hold himself still. “Yes, Danny’s going with them.”
“Good.” House went back to pacing. “Keep him on a short leash, maybe he won’t run off this time.”
“Please promise me you won’t say that to my parents.”
“I’ll promise whatever you want as long as you’re willing to believe me.”
Once they got there, Wilson’s mother opened the door, greeting both of them with hugs and a kiss to Wilson’s cheek, ushering them inside, explaining the kids were running around out back and how the property values had gone up so nicely and asking if they wanted something to drink. House smiled and nodded enough to look like he was paying attention, keeping his eyes open for - that. Right there. Over ten years gone and now back in his childhood kitchen, barefoot, pouring himself a glass of lemonade.
“You must be Danny.” Barely ten minutes younger than Wilson, and less than a half-hour behind Reuben, he looked years older than both of them. Which made sense, and probably didn’t sit too well when he had to sit across from them at the Sabbath dinners. The basic features were the same, clearly fraternal faces down to the eyebrows and nose, but off-model enough that nobody who didn’t know better would think they were littermates.
He set the glass down. “And you must be House.” Just a bit of a round twang, well-grafted onto the flatter New Jersey sounds - South Carolina, maybe, or Georgia, even down to Florida, all places where a migrant worker could blend in no matter where he’d come from. “Jim told me about you.”
House cocked his head. Not many people didn’t automatically offer a hand. Smart kid.
-
Dinnertime wasn’t for another couple of hours, and all the kids were running around out back with their grandpa and dad with everyone else inside, which meant it didn’t take much work for House to get himself right where he wanted to be: on the couch next to Wilson’s mother Deborah and Reuben’s wife Laurel while ‘Deb’ flipped through a photo album. Both women smiled at House’s genuine interest in the conversation, with Laurel laughing at the sight of her husband in his little baseball jersey while her mother-in-law told stories about the temple’s league. House kept his cheeks up and waited.
Wilson’s mother opened up a new album and sighed. As happy as he was to finally get to what he’d waited for, House barely managed to stop himself from a double-take. “Romulus, Remus, and Spot?”
She laughed. “That’s Reuben and Daniel, and James on the end. Just have a decent-sized litter and get it over with, I always say.”
“Huh.”
“Oh, I know,” Laurel remarked, leaning in, “it’s so much easier, they all wean at the same time, and you only go through it once.”
House looked back at the picture and then to Laurel. “So does that mean you go on all fours to nurse?”
She shrugged, smiled. “When they’re that little, yeah. A lot of the books say to wake all of them up when one’s hungry to feed them at the same time.” The picture was pencil-dated on the margin at four days after the mutual birthday, and House could see women around the world wishing for some extra sets of nipples to make feeding times go a bit faster.
Keeping his face looking open and nodding in just the right places, storing all the data away for later, his smiles were genuine even if the women wouldn’t appreciate the cause, it suddenly became less fun when Reuben joined them. Not that it wasn’t good to get further bribe material from a primary source, but more that it meant Wilson would either be out back with his dad or commiserating with his other brother. The one House didn’t know, and hadn’t had a good chance to talk to yet, and with this set of circumstances even finding out Wilson hadn’t walked on two legs for most of his early childhood unless he’d had to - and he could imagine a four-year-old Wilson resenting new moons just as easily as he knew the present-day Wilson resented full ones - if he wanted a chance to meet Danny it’d be now or next Passover, and he wasn’t willing to wait another ten months.
Finding the backyard full of children in various shapes and sizes playing with their grandfather but not any uncles meant he’d have to search the house without heading back into the den, plus hope Wilson’s own roaming patterns didn’t revert to ones he didn’t have data on. That, or take other items into consideration and use those along with the strategy that he used for most of his cases: wait until something changed. It didn’t take long for the idealized object to walk into the kitchen with an empty glass in hand, still barefoot. Some people walked by radiation chambers with chocolate bars in their pockets, and other people waited for someone else to run out of lemonade.
“Hi there.”
When in doubt, go for broke. “Pour me a glass, will you?”
“Uh, sure.” Danny stopped what he was doing, actually put the lemonade back in the fridge to get House a clean glass and serve him first, which was such a Wilson move it made him smile to know some traits were consistent throughout. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” All things said and done, it was good lemonade. He took another sip, made a show out of enjoying it, and then asked, “So how’s it feel to be back home?”
Danny looked like he was about to answer, and then his mouth tightened into a smile - a real one, given the sudden lines around his eyes. “When I said Jim told me about you, I didn’t just mean he told me your name and what you look like.” He kept smiling. “So what do you actually want to ask me?”
Oh, he was good. “You people are so well-networked. How did you keep everyone from finding you?”
“Easy. I went where there wasn’t anyone else in the network.” He leaned onto the counter, resting his elbows on the spotless tile. “If there’s no one like you around for literally hundreds of miles, it’s not hard to keep news to yourself.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“Got tired of hiding.”
“And when you say no one like you, of course you mean…”
“Anyone like me.”
“And you don’t just mean non-goyim.”
“I mean anyone. You, I know wouldn’t think that,” Danny broke eye contact to look out the windows. House stayed quiet and didn’t prompt, not just because he didn’t have any idea what’d come next, “Most people assume that I’m not like the rest of my family, and they’re right, but for the wrong reasons. Because I don’t shift, people think I’m not really like them, that I’m not a real one, or authentic enough or a valid example.” He barked out a laugh. “And yes, that’s part of why I left.” He took a long drink. “It’s amazing what people don’t think of if you don’t tell them.”
“I assume this extends to asking stupid questions.”
He nodded, taking another sip. “I tell someone what I am, and they always ask the same questions. Does it hurt, were you born that way, what does it feel like, what do smells look like.”
“What happened, how much does it hurt.”
“They always think they’ll know what it’s like.”
“You can’t translate these things for them to understand.” He’d had this conversation with Wilson once, just once, almost nine years ago when they’d gotten roaring drunk at House’s insistence, mostly because it was one of the very few ways to get Wilson to open up about anything. If having to disappear for over fourteen years was what it took for his brother, that made Wilson the easy one, and wasn’t that a scary thought.
“Exactly. So you just don’t tell them, and it’s all hunky-dory.” Danny was back to smiling for real again. “So what was your first question?”
“Sorry?”
“To Jim. What’s the first question you asked him once you found out?”
As weird days went, House had a bunch in his life, and that one was definitely in his top eight. Tapping a finger against his lips, “I think it went, right. ‘Do you get the urge to throw up when you hear babies crying?’”
“What?”
“That’s what I asked him. Do you get -”
“No, I heard that, but -” He burst out laughing, leaning his head onto his hand.
“Besides, if he works in a hospital, it’s a bit of an occupational hazard. And I know they’d have to lick his face, but that means every time he nuzzles a baby for a photo op there’s a chance it’s feeding time.” Danny kept laughing. “I didn’t mean it that way, you insensitive jerk.”
“Of course you didn’t.” He grinned. “Babies taste terrible raw.”
By the time everyone came in from the backyard, their conversation had somehow wandered past regional soda brands and drive-in theaters over to pulp novels and their modern film adaptations. Danny opened the door to let everyone come in, saying hi to his dad and going right back to mirroring effects while three of his brother’s kids walked into the changing station on all fours, one at a time, and walked out fully dressed a couple of minutes later. House nodded in all the right places to keep Danny talking. He assumed they waited politely - not that he’d say that, because there wasn’t any way he wouldn’t get thrown out of the house if he admitted he wasn’t so up to snuff as he wanted to be on quadrupedal body language - and didn’t say a thing when Danny bent down to scratch June’s ears before she padded off to her mother.
Dinner was filling, raucous, and even more informative than the photo session thanks to the few cousins who’d shown up, but House didn’t discount his loosening Danny up earlier. Wilson even joined in a few times, and House hated having to wait for it but knew him well enough by now to know that waiting would be the best way to get a few particular pieces of information, like during coffee when he innocently asked about where they’d build their next sukkah, which got him an actual answer as well as a series of anecdotes about their old ones.
“Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Reuben smiled at his dad’s comment, turned to House, “It was the first one we built after we moved up here and we still weren’t used to how cold it got, so Mom let us sleep together. And this was after we’d gotten our own bedrooms, so it was a pretty big deal.”
“I can imagine,” House murmured. Danny was smiling, most likely remembering being sandwiched between his brothers and their warm fur, and Wilson was smiling too, probably about the same thing.
-
This was the first time they’d spent any time together since Wilson dropped House off at his apartment after getting back to Princeton. Ordinarily, Wilson’s avoiding behaviors would bother him, but in this case when he knew the root cause he didn’t need to worry why it was going on and spend effort trying to figure it out. He just needed to wait a little over a week for a major sporting event to come on TV and for Wilson to invite him over.
It was a boring game anyway, showcasing the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero score, and it didn’t take much prodding to move the conversation onto a more interesting subject. Wilson was more than happy to talk about his nephew and nieces, especially the one who was the exact opposite of his brother. “She might get a job as a narcotics officer, or sniffing for bombs, or work with someone who needs a helper animal. She’ll need someone to help her take the tests, of course, but there’s nothing stopping her from trying.”
“Aside from the fact that she can’t speak English, can’t use sign language, doesn’t have fingerprints...”
“Well, she can always run away to Montana and become a sheepdog.” Three weeks ago, House would’ve been the one to make that joke. The fact that Wilson was able to make it, even in private, meant more to House than he’d admit to when he was this sober.
“Be her own trainer,” he tested.
“Win championships.” And Wilson passed, laughing slightly - the sort of laugh he made over something that wasn’t really funny but deserved the chuckle. He finished the rest of his beer, set the bottle down on the coaster, and got up, rolling his head along with his shoulders. House watched him move down the hallway and come back out with a sheet, which he unfolded and flung out over the couch.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s summer. I don’t want to shed on the upholstery.”
Huh. “It’s not a full moon tonight.”
“No, it isn’t.” He looked over at House, making full-on eye contact. “You can leave if you want.”
It took him a moment to process the offer, making him speak fast to make up the time. “No, that’s okay, I’ll stick around for the highlights.” Wilson nodded, smiling, and went back down the hall. House heard a click that was pretty clearly the bedroom door - more sense than the bathroom - and not for the first time, he wondered if there was some sort of prayer Wilson was supposed to say in this situation. Given how many prayers there were for pretty much any series of events, there wasn’t any way this one wouldn’t be covered. Not that he would; Wilson wasn’t observant, and in any case, he knew if he asked Wilson about it he’d get a shrug and a pithy answer about some things being easier to do when you weren’t alone and it wasn’t just you. He’d finished pondering animal metaphors and was writing up a mental note to check the usual Orthodox websites tomorrow when the sound of claws on hardwood floor startled him out of that train of thought.
House knew better than to try to crane his neck to look down the hall and kept his eyes on the TV, and waited until the sound stopped to look in the doorway. He could count the number of times he’d seen Wilson on all four legs and have plenty of fingers left over, but more than the unfamiliarity was the primal reaction to seeing his friend’s eyes in that sort of face - and greater than both of those was knowing it was Wilson, no matter what shape he took.
Kind of a shame Wilson didn’t, but if it wasn’t a full moon tonight and he wasn’t doing this because he had to, maybe Wilson was ready to remember that.
House watched him jump up onto the couch and settle down with his head on his paws, and then reached over, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume down a bit. “This okay?” A low whine, not an angry one, was as close as Wilson could say to yes. He leaned back in the chair, shifted his leg, and took another drink. Maybe someday Wilson would be comfortable enough to share his couch space and let him scratch his ears; no way Wilson would want to turn down that sort of pampering.
“You know,” he started, and waited for Wilson to look over at him - and he was almost drunk enough to admit the comfort that came from Wilson’s eyes being the same color no matter what shape he was in - “You know, I knew you weren’t a normal person since the day we met.” A soft whistle, ears perking straight up, to ask him to go on. “Right after I paid your bail, I bought that candy bar and offered you some, but you didn’t take any.” He smiled. “There’s just something wrong about a person who doesn’t like chocolate.”
Not quite huffing or puffing, more of a low panting, that was still clearly laughing; House joined in after a moment, and he turned the volume back up as they settled in for the rest of the game.