Work Text:
One Space To The Left
House definitely needed his own theme song. He leaned back against a pillar in the hospital parking garage, helmet under his elbow, cane propped against his hip, and spun through his iPod dial. Nothing quite captured the moment. He was wearing his best "I'm not stalking you" clothes, and he'd practiced his "Oh, is that you? How funny!" look until it seemed about as natural on his face as "I am a physician; allow me to practice my healing arts on you." When Wilson's car pulled in, driven by the fires of hell--or possibly Amber--House abandoned the search for good tunes and headed over. He'd probably regret parking the bike out here by the end of the day, but for now--how coincidental! his best friend! arriving at work! They could walk in together, talk about that dismal local sports team or possibly the weather. Manly talk.
House grinned and rapped on the passenger window at just short of glass-chipping power. "Morning, Wilson."
The window buzzed down slowly while Wilson stared at him in resignation. "Morning, House," he said, in that way that meant, "I know exactly what you are doing and it will not stop me from kissing my girlfriend right in front of you." Which he promptly proceeded to do.
House wrinkled his nose and looked across the parking lot while Wilson and Amber made cute faces at each other and promised to be together 4EVA!! (or possibly to meet for lunch; House was trying not to listen). In the next row of cars, he saw Foreman climb out of what was certainly not his so-tasteful silver Lexus, smiling like the smug bastard he was, except this time with an extra dash of 'I am so the man'. A moment later, another man climbed out of the passenger side, came around the car, and then caught Foreman around the waist, pulling him close. Foreman's grin got that much more smug, if it was possible, and then he kissed the guy.
House raised his eyebrows. The other man, a few points lighter on the affirmative action scale than Foreman, was dressed professionally, and wearing sadly dorky glasses.
Wilson opened his car door and got out, following House's glance, right on time to see Foreman's mantoy take the car keys and slide in to the driver's seat, reversing the car and leaving the garage.
"Did..." Wilson paused for a second, his face scrunching in confusion. "Was that Foreman kissing a man?"
House swung around. Amber had already started striding across the garage, waving Foreman down and walking in with him. "I don't know. Was that you kissing a Venus flytrap?"
Wilson let a sigh stand in for his more elaborate eyeroll. "So I see we've moved beyond self-sacrifice."
"I told you, I don't self-sacrifice."
"No, I should have realized." Wilson grabbed his briefcase and headed for the hospital doors at House's pace. "The reason you've given us your blessing is that the jokes were too good to pass up."
House shrugged a bit. That was one reason. There was no way in hell Wilson wanted to know any of the others. And House didn't feel like sharing. Wilson stopped just before the doors and looked back as if he'd forgotten something but couldn't remember what. "Seriously," he asked. "Foreman's gay?"
"Foreman's bisexual," House said, pushing the door open. "Unless you think the peds nurse was hiding more than a banana down her pants."
Wilson followed after, still looking lost. "And you...knew this?"
"About her strange love of bananas?" House widened his eyes at the mere thought and gaped at Wilson. He deserved it; he was being far too dense. "No, but now that you mention it, it's kind of freaky."
"About Foreman!"
House shrugged. "Takes one to know one."
Wilson stopped, opened his mouth, thought for a moment, and then lowered his eyebrows at House. "In other words, you just found out, and now you're messing with me because you don't want to admit there was something you didn't know about one of your fellows."
House stabbed the elevator button with his cane. It was another beautiful day of misplaced psycholoanalysis. How he loved his life. "Oops!" he said. "Got me." He glanced sideways at Wilson, catching Wilson's equal-and-opposite glance at him. Just checking. They were still good.
"So," House said, when the elevator came. "The Devils sucked in the third period. You owe me lunch."
*
"Patient presenting with shortness of breath, fever, muscle aches, weight loss--"
Foreman handed out copies of the file to the minions, waving the whiteboard marker as if House had said he could touch it. He held the last folder out to House, but House made no move to take it, instead working on mixing and matching his glares. Today, 'I can kill you with my brain' and 'I know everything about you and it is going to be so cool to share with the class' were winning out. Foreman rolled his eyes and tossed the chart on the table, going to the whiteboard. "And depression," he finished, starting to write the symptoms, holding the marker awkwardly to keep from smearing the ink.
"Sarcoidosis," Taub said, buried in the chart. "Lymph nodes were swollen."
"Could be atypical pneumonia," Thirteen countered. "No eye pain or skin symptoms--"
"Skin symptoms only present in twenty percent of sarcoidosis patients..."
House threw himself down in the closest chair. The way the noobs were acting, you'd think they were here to practice medicine. "You know what's more interesting than Taub vomiting a textbook hairball?" he said. "Foreman's boyfriend!"
Team Version 2.0 blinked in tandem. There seemed to be about an equal mix of shock, confusion, and "uh, so what?" in their expressions. Taub even went so far as to pick up the patient's chart again, although Thirteen at least looked like she'd break the second the interrogation started and spill all the good stories about her hot co-ed action. Kutner looked gobsmacked, but since that wasn't a change, it didn't help.
Boring. House could've at least counted on Chase to choke on something, or Cameron to get snitty about gay rights, employee privacy, or compromised patient care. Possibly all three at once. Something, for fuck's sake.
Foreman, on the other hand, was completely failing to hide a smirk. Either the sex was so good that the smug spilled over even when he was pissed off, or he didn't care that House had caught him scamming on someone with a sad lack of breasts. "His name is Nathan," he said, looking like the cat that got blown by the canary. "Now, if we could get back to the patient..."
"Fine," House snapped. He waved his batch of second-stringers onto the ice. "And please, ignore the depression while we gossip about Foreman's sex life," he added, pointing his cane at the whiteboard. "It's obviously not important at all. Otherwise Foreman would have told this guy to whine about his asthma and his case of the flu at home."
Foreman cocked his head to one side and grinned at him. He hadn't had any near-death experiences lately, but he was looking just as sanctimonious as when he'd decided to "change forever".
He was, House decided, narrowing his eyes, enjoying himself. He hadn't been much different about Peds Nurse, except then he had the added incentive of winning House's hard-earned money when it turned out Wilson had kept it in his pants for once. So what the hell was above-and-beyond about Nathan that had Foreman laughing in House's face?
Taub sighed. "Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis," he said. "Would explain the depression."
"And Foreman's bisexual!" House yelled again, since some people were sadly slow to latch on to the important details. Thirteen was looking a little milky around the gills. He didn't know what she was worried about--her bisexuality was old news; he'd already run through all the possible combinations of her with Cuddy, or Wilson, or both, or...hm, Amber. Hadn't tried that one yet. Maybe he could save it up.
"I knew," Kutner offered blandly. "And what if it is just a depressed guy with asthma and the flu?"
Foreman twisted around to stare at him, his arrogance cracking for the first time. "What?"
"Dude," Kutner said. "You're not exactly subtle, you know? But, way to go. He was looking pretty happy when he picked you up last night. Plus, flu, asthma, and depression are all common. He could have all three."
"You just stand out there and watch the parking lot, don't you?" Taub said.
"It's interesting," Kutner defended himself, looking up from the chart as if he couldn't believe they didn't all own a pair of binoculars and a CCTV set up. "And House does it too."
House rested his elbow on the table, his cheek on his fist, and stared at his new puppy. When the last one had gotten older and not-so-cute and into surgery, he'd thought a new floppy-haired little rug-messer would be the answer. He'd forgotten he'd have to invest in obedience school all over again.
"What?" Kutner said, backpedaling and digging himself in deeper both at once, with the coordination of a circus monkey. "Statistically speaking--"
Foreman rolled his eyes and tapped the marker on the whiteboard, trying to get their attention back. He might as well try to catch up on House's paperwork. Although, come to think of it, he'd been managing that, too. "The depression--" he started.
"Get a CB panel, X-ray his lungs, tell Wilson to feel up his lymph nodes," House interrupted, and, when they hesitated--the gossip fiends, clearly desperate to hear more about Nathan--he rolled his eyes and said, "Go."
There was a shuffle of charts and medical journals. Thirteen was gone like a shot, before House could get in a dig about how nice it would be if she could support Foreman through this difficult time of transition, what with them both getting freaky on both sides of the fence, and hey, could he watch? Kutner and Taub followed, already bickering about the probability of flu versus pneumonia.
Foreman dropped the marker in the tray under the whiteboard. "Could be hypersensitivity pneumonitis," he said.
House nodded. It made sense. At least one of his minions hadn't left him for 'Arizona' and the dubious pleasures of heteronormativity. "Running the allergen test already?"
"Yeah." Foreman took a seat at the table, picking up the Times and shuffling to the business section, as if he was going to read it for the articles. Like flicking on the boring switch.
It wasn't going to work today. House watched him as obnoxiously as he knew how, blowing raspberries and flicking his lower lip thoughtfully. Foreman's fingers gripping the newspaper tightened. Finally, House was getting somewhere.
"So, bought the ring yet?" he asked. "Planning a commitment ceremony under the Vermont foliage?"
The newspaper folded down. Foreman stared at him flatly. "Amazingly, it's not your business," he said, but still with a very distinct lack of get the hell out of my personal life. He should have been thirty-seven flavours of pissed off by now.
House considered that, wondering how much prodding it would take to rile him up to appropriate Foreman-annoyance levels. "You've been dating women since you moved here," he said, working through the signs and symptoms.
This time, Foreman chuckled without bothering to lower the paper. "You sure about that? You didn't even know I was dating Wendy."
The ceiling had a waterstain the shape of New Zealand in one corner. Wilson was welshing on their playoff lunch bet and meeting Amber instead. House had loved two-thirds of his toys so well that they'd gone off and become REAL, and the new toys were clunky things, batteries-not-included. Foreman's boyfriend was a dork in glasses and a suit.
Life sucked.
"He's a lawyer," House guessed. "The happy white-collar couple. How domestic. Why now?"
"Did you want me to break out the sodium pentathol?" Foreman asked, dropping the paper. "I happened to meet him--"
House snorted again. Foreman didn't do anything unpremeditated, he wasn't the type to trawl the produce aisle looking helpless, and he wasn't being sued. Eligible gay lawyers didn't drop out of the sky. Time to run Foreman's name through the dating sites again; apparently he'd been ignoring House's winks.
For now: "Interesting how open you're being."
"Because defensive worked so well for Wilson," Foreman said. "I thought I'd try something different."
House scoffed. Wilson had lied about Amber for a month. And he was still with her. And they were still pretending that a sad divorcé and a cut-throat bitch could be adorable together. "No, you didn't," he said. "Your relationship with him is exactly the same as your last one. Which--didn't that one crash and burn?"
"Fine, House. You know me. Congratulations." Foreman folded the newspaper and stood up, heading for the door. He looked ridiculously confident. As if he was in control of this whole situation and had merely chosen to come out at work. Obviously some sensitivity was called for. House wondered if he could rig Foreman's locker to play It's Raining Men when he opened it.
House twisted around in his chair to watch him go. "You're dating, and telling your colleagues without getting your feather boa in a twist. What changed?"
Foreman paused at the door and grinned back at him. "Nothing at all," he said, lying, enjoying his lie, and knowing House knew it was a lie.
House definitely didn't spend the rest of the morning sulking.
*
"You can't stalk your co-workers, House." Cuddy pushed a stack of budget folders to one side. Thanks to Foreman, the Diagnostic Department's was not only among them, but also up-to-date and purged of any of House's more ingenious write-offs. God, he couldn't believe it had come to this. He was being managed. By someone dating a man named Nathan. Cuddy shook her head and sadly did not lean over her desk to lecture him; those lectures, in that blouse, had come back to haunt him more than once at exactly the right time. "They're allowed to have lives."
House thumped his sneakers up on Cuddy's coffee table and considered the ups and downs of responding with the impenetrable logic of "No they're not!"
Whether he said it out loud or not, Cuddy seemed to sense it.
"Oh, my God," she said. "You're two years old! Foreman is not a pretty toy that another kid in the sandbox wants to play with!"
That was completely unfair. Nathan could have him. House wasn't interested. Exactly. "I don't want to--"
"You should have asked him out before this," Cuddy said, eyes sparkling. House instantly regretted teaching a serious young Michigan med student how to live a little. She was even eviler when she was having fun at his expense. "You know, he picks up the tab, and he always dresses well."
"How many dates have you had with him?" House burst out, before he could stop himself.
"You're jealous!" Cuddy crowed. "And the answer is one, when I asked him back to curb your insanity." She paused to consider. "I should fire him, if he thinks this is the way to go about it. Except that getting your paperwork filed is worth it."
House sniffed. He'd worked long and hard on that backlog. Foreman just didn't understand his vision--a vision of a disheveled, angry, aggressive Cuddy. Maybe it was time to start ordering MRIs for all his clinic patients.
"He wanted me to know," he said. Foreman knew better than to dangle bait like that unless he expected House to follow up. The problem was, House didn't know why.
"Yes, House." Cuddy came around the desk, sat next to him on the couch, and patted his knee. "Foreman's dating a man because of you. It's all a ploy to get your attention. Because God knows no one can do anything that doesn't revolve around you."
House frowned. The only moment Foreman had been surprised or even upset was when Kutner had known about Nathan. He hadn't yelled or gotten that tense, wide-eyed murderous-rage look that worked so well for him. He'd volunteered information, enough that House could track down his boyfriend for vetting purposes.
If House was the type to do something insensitive and invasive like that, of course.
Although he did have a law directory left over from when Stacy had worked at the hospital, come to think of it.
"And why aren't Chase and Cameron getting this kind of scrutiny?" Cuddy asked, completely missing the part where he was ranting about Foreman today. "Don't tell me they've broken free of your orbit."
"They're being boring," House complained. "They aren't moving in with maneaters, or impregnating themselves with strangers' DNA, or dating men named Nathan."
Cuddy sucked at hiding her smile when she was laughing at him. It was distracting. She was beautiful when she let herself laugh. House promised himself a good rant about her the very first day she started to glow without consulting him first. "Would it bother you if Chase was dating a man named Nathan?" she asked.
"No," House said, pouting. "That would actually make sense."
*
"Dr. Foreman!" House said, pulling back a cafeteria chair and dropping himself into it heavily, projecting his voice to reach the half-dozen nurses within eavesdropping range. "Not necking with your boyfriend during lunch?"
Foreman sat back from his bowl of soup and his issue of JNNP and raised his eyebrows. "You do get the point of being out, don't you, House? You're not embarrassing me by spreading it around."
House glanced at his audience. Not a single one of them was staring in shock. He'd be generous and attribute it to most of them being clinic nurses and therefore sadly immune to his charms, rather than to their thoughts on Foreman's sexual adventures. "Why didn't I get an invitation to the coming-out party?" he asked. Or perhaps whined. There were subtleties involved.
"I didn't think you'd come," Foreman shot back easily. "We weren't playing spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven."
"Seven?" House offered up his best leer. "I was hoping you could last way longer than that."
"You know, this is great," Foreman said, with a huffy little laugh. "I was getting bored with the black jokes. Now I get the sexual harassment, too."
House grabbed a tomato out of Foreman's salad and popped it into his mouth. "Jealous of Cameron?" he asked, chewing ostentatiously.
Foreman looked more bothered by his table manners than his questions. "Hardly."
"Hm, but you wish your mouth was as pretty as Chase's."
Foreman grinned. "I'm fine with how pretty Chase's mouth is."
House raised an eyebrow. Foreman was putting him on. Sleeping with men didn't count as a personality adjustment. What mattered was how he did it, what it meant. The games were the difference, not the boyfriend.
"You're doing this now for a reason," he said, watching for any hint in Foreman's expression that he was right. "You want to change. You think this will make up for the fact that your career is tanking. It won't. Here's a hint: even lawyers don't like it when their doctor boyfriends think about nothing but work."
"Thanks for the benefit of your experience," Foreman said.
House scowled. Foreman was supposed to be the irritable one. House would blame Wilson for giving lessons in amused condescension, if Wilson weren't so wrapped up in the kraken he called a girlfriend. "You haven't changed," he insisted. There was just no way. Nathan would go the way of Wendy, and all the girlfriends and boyfriends and Shetland ponies and whatever else had gone before.
Foreman pushed the salad across the table to him. Limp lettuce, way under-dressed, with all the good vegetables gone. Pity-salad. "I'm happy, House. And that's all you need to know."
*
Thirteen marched into House's office, trailing Taub and Kutner behind her. She planted herself in front of his desk, crossed her arms sharply, and waited for him to look up from the elastic band he was snapping over his fingers. "It's extrinsic allergic alveolitis!" she said.
"Hypersensitive pneumonitis?" House said. "Who knew?" He glanced through the door to where Foreman was working on the computer. Probably finishing more paperwork. At least there were some things in this world he could count on. "That would explain the prednisone I told Foreman to dose him with."
"You already knew, and you had us running tests anyway." Thirteen looked suitably betrayed. "We almost told him he was dying of lymphoma."
House smiled innocently. "But you didn't, right?"
"No, but--"
"Then he'll be fine." He waved off her accusations. It was good to have a few easy cases for the babyfellows to cut their teeth on. It was boring medicine, but at least it gave him a chance to see how they ticked, and as long as Foreman was riding herd on them, he didn't much care. "What's the cause?"
"Mycobacterium avium complex," Taub said, dropping the printout on the desk in front of House.
"Man, this is why I hate hot tubs," Kutner said, shaking his head sadly. "You think they're relaxing and then they give you a chronic pulmonary condition."
"Did anyone notice the clubbing of his fingers?" Foreman asked, appearing at the conference room doorway, and folding his arms--how else?--smugly.
"Of course," Taub snapped, and then, more subdued, "After we found the allergen test results in the chart."
"Sometimes it helps to actually look at the patient," Foreman said. "Don't trust everything House tells you."
House doubted Foreman had noticed the clubbing; if the patient had come in with an acute flare-up, then most likely he'd gotten this case from the ER, and therefore from Cameron. "They figured it out from your charting," he said, smirking. "At least they can do that much. You could have kept them guessing for a week if you'd really been trying."
"I don't play guessing games," Foreman said, with a significant stare.
House rolled his eyes. "Go give him the news," he told Thirteen. "It's not the big C, and he never gets to play Hugh Hefner in the Grotto again." He pitched the chart at Kutner, and let them scatter.
Foreman turned to head back into the conference room.
"You're wrong about one thing," House said, before he could leave. When Foreman glanced back, trying a little too hard to seem disinterested, he added, "You wanted me to know."
Foreman shrugged. "There wasn't much point in hiding it."
House shook his head. "You never wanted me to know before. Drug rep. Peds nurse. Judy from Trenton."
Foreman spun around at that last one. "What?"
Damn, he should've waited for Foreman to be drinking something before he dropped that bomb. The spit-take would have been worth it. "You should learn to erase your emails," House said, holding back a laugh. "And to avoid your high school reunions. Those never go well. By the way, Judy says hi."
"House--"
"But now you're flaunting it." House lifted his leg up to the desk and leaned back in his chair. He glanced out the window, snapping the elastic against his wrist. Foreman was happy. With his job, and now with his love life. And that, really, was the problem.
Foreman rolled his eyes and resigned himself to the conversation, moving across the office to lean back against House's TV set. "I told you I wanted to change."
"Nobody wants to change," House said. "You don't want to change. You could have gotten a job if you'd moved anywhere else. Back to Los Angeles. Instead you came crawling back to Cuddy--"
Finally, Foreman was starting to tense up the way he should, getting indignant and pissy. "I was blackballed!"
House was on the right track, now. "You were slapped down. You could have moved past it."
Foreman stared at the ceiling in frustration. "If you weren't sabotaging my interviews."
That had been minor, and also, months ago. House had forgotten it already. Anyway, it had been a gesture of affection; he'd wanted Foreman to stay. "Thought I could help you spread your wings," House said. Either that or clip them. Whichever.
"My personal life has nothing to do with my career," Foreman said. "Who I'm dating doesn't affect my work."
House rolled his eyes. "Yes, we all know how you like to compartmentalize."
"I'm with someone new. It's--"
"Emotional foreplay." House frowned lightly. Foreman wasn't defending his boyfriend. Should've known the way to get to Foreman was through his job prospects rather than his fuckbuddy. "You're not attached. You could ditch him tomorrow and not care."
Foreman gave an exasperated sigh. "Trust me, House. I'm trying something new."
Maybe he was. There had to be a reason. It wasn't about the job, it wasn't about being out, and it definitely wasn't about Nathan. "You're using him," he said. "Showing off. Looking for a reaction."
Foreman shook his head, smirking again. "The only one I see frothing at the mouth is you, House."
House grinned. "You wanted to see what I'd do," he said. "You were interested in what I thought."
Foreman stood up, spreading his hands defensively. "Sorry, House. Much as I'm enjoying you hitting on me--"
"You are, aren't you." That was flattering, even if neither of them was being serious.
Foreman paused at the door, chuckling. He glanced back once, eyebrow raised ironically. "--I'm not looking for anything from you."
House sat back and watched him go. Foreman hadn't changed at all.
"Liar," House said, and grinned.
end