“I can observe me,” he points out. “I’ll be a doctor too.”

Wilson just says, “Fasten your seatbelt, buddy.”

On the drive to the hospital, he coils Lion’s tail around his fingers over and over, and doesn’t talk much.

Wilson breaks the silence by saying, “It’ll be okay.”

“I know.” All the research, after all, shows that the Device is harmless and safe. Even if it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt.

He rubs his thigh. It hasn’t hurt much all week, but that’s the morphine. He traces the outline of the morphine pump under his shirt.

“It’s fun being a grown-up,” Wilson adds. “You can get on the internet and buy candy with your credit card, and have it delivered to the house.”

He brightens. “Yeah. And I can get that spider thing you won’t let me have.”

Wilson shudders. “As long as you don’t play with it at home,” he concedes.

Playing with it at work will be, if anything, even more fun. Wilson, after all, already knows it’s a fake. And it’s a very realistic spider.

Now he has something to look forward to.

#

Nwebuze’s team had the good sense to schedule House’s procedure for first thing in the morning, this time. And this time, House doesn’t try to shake off Wilson’s company as they walk down to the research wing.

“As soon as I’m done, we can have pancakes,” House says.

“That’s right,” Wilson confirms.

“I hope you brought lots.”

Wilson smiles. “I did.”

House allows Wilson to hug him before Rachel Dupler, one of Nwebuze’s fellows, escorts him back to the lab. “Love you,” Wilson says.

House smiles faintly and pats Wilson’s belly. “You too. See you soon.”

Wilson makes no pretense of working while he waits, this time. He snags some magazines from a nearby waiting room, but leafs through them without reading, or even really seeing, the pages.

Finally, after more than an hour, Dr. Dupler comes back out. “He’s asking for you.”

Wilson wonders if House really wants him, or the pancakes. He takes the container with him, just in case.

Even though he was expecting it, the sight of the adult House comes as a shock. He’s come through the process clean shaven, but his face is lined and weary. Like always.

He’s pulling on his jeans, with Lion and Rubber Duck watching from the gurney. “Hey,” he grunts, doing to up the buttons of his fly and reaching for a shirt.

“Hey,” Wilson answers. “How is it?”

“’kay,” he says, disappearing under the shirt for a moment. “Hurts. They took out the morphine pump.”

They’d expected there would still be some pain, Wilson reminds himself. “How bad is it?”

House shrugs.

“Do they want to do an MRI?”

“Already did.” He sits on the gurney to put on his shoes. “Let’s go eat.” He picks up his cane and gives Wilson the toys to carry.

Wilson surreptitiously observes House’s gait as they head for the elevator that will take them to their offices. He does seem to be moving a little more easily--still favoring his right leg, but not as much as he normally does.

When they get into the elevator, House looks at the ceiling and says, “Hurts less, maybe.”

“Good.” He’d like to hear more about how House is doing emotionally, but he knows better than to expect House to say anything on the subject. Wilson will have to watch him for signs of how the transformation is affecting him.

House’s team are all in the office when they get there. Wilson puts the pancakes in the microwave, and House sits at the head of the table.

“You look good,” Cameron ventures.

“Don’t you have work to do?”

“Not really,” she answers. “We’re looking for a case for Wednesday.” They’re scheduled to come back to work on Wednesday.

House looks down at the bare expanse of table, but doesn’t say anything.

“We’re about to go look, is what she means,” Chase says.

House nods. Wilson wonders if he’s gotten nicer, or if he’s just still working on settling back into his brain.

He attacks the pancakes as soon as Wilson puts them in front of him. When he’s finished, he chases them with a single Vicodin and then looks up at Wilson. “Is that all you brought?”

Wilson has to admit that it was.

“I guess that’s okay,” House says. “For now. Get to work, kiddies. Daddy’s going to go lay down in Mommy’s office.”

#

Still groggy from the orange liquid they had him drink before his reversal, House naps in Wilson’s office for most of the morning, until Nwebuze’s Dr. Dupler does a quick exam and clears him to leave the hospital.

Stepping into their apartment feels like coming home after a long time away. Everything is familiar and strange at the same time, and he has the vague sense that he shouldn’t be completely sure where he last left anything.

Toys are scattered all of the floor--dinosaurs, Lincoln Logs, pieces of his race car track. He’d never have gotten away with leaving a mess like that when he was really six.

Wilson comes up behind him and puts his arm around him. House doesn’t shake him off.

However, after a minute he does turn around and grab Wilson’s crotch.

Wilson’s dick is showing definite signs of interest, but his mouth babbles, “House--you were just--you just had your reversal this morning. Don’t you think…it’s a little soon.”

House laughs at him. How very…Wilson. He’d spent the last two weeks playing Mr. Mom--it really isn’t a surprise that he isn’t up for sex yet.

Mentally, at least.

#

By the time they go to bed that night, House seems mostly to have returned to normal. He’d spent the day catching up on the backlog of Tivo’d programs he hadn’t been interested in watching as a child, and frequently expressed both boredom and a reluctance to go back to work on Wednesday. But Wilson had only seen him take four Vicodin all day, including the one with his breakfast and one as they get ready for bed.

As soon as they’re under the covers, House teaches for him. Wilson wonders for a second if House is going to try to initiate sex again--he thinks they ought to wait at least a day--but He just drapes his arm across Wilson and rests his head heavily on his chest. He sighs deeply, like a dog settling down for a nap. “You were a good Dad,” he tells Wilson’s t-shirt.

Wilson cards his fingers through House’s hair. “Thanks. You were a good kid. It was fun.”

“’m sorry you can’t have real kids.”

Wilson’s surprised, both to hear House apologizing for anything, and that he knows having kids is something Wilson wants. He’s tried to keep it under wraps, because there are a lot of reasons they can’t adopt. All of them have to do with House, and none of them are things he can help, so there isn’t really anything to discuss. “It’s okay,” he says.

“Yeah.” House shifts his position slightly. “Probably just as well. I’d just mess the kid up.”

Wilson knows better than to respond with a flat denial--House wouldn’t believe him. “Everybody messes up their kids. It’s practically a law of nature. I don’t think you’d be any worse than average, if you made an effort.”

“Well, I could play with them,” House allows. “But you’d have to do all the making sure they learn to count and have food and don’t leave the house naked.”

“Between us, we’d have all the bases covered,” Wilson agrees.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, accurately. After a pause long enough that Wilson thinks he’s gone to sleep, he adds, “We have Chase.”

“Chase is all grown up now,” Wilson reminds him. It had been hard not to think of Chase as another kid while he was playing with six-year-old House, but he is, in reality, a grown man.

But House just says, “Even grown people need parents,” and then he does fall asleep.

Epilogue

“She’s coming--get down!” House orders.

Chase ducks. They’re both in House’s inner office, crouched behind a low bookcase, where they can see into the conference room but not be seen.

House’s latest toy, a giant radio-controlled tarantula, sits in the middle of the flood, right in the path Cameron is likely to take when she comes in. When she returns from a Clinic shift, she nearly always heads straight for the coffee pot.

Sure enough, when the door opens and Cameron comes in, she makes for the coffee pot.

Seeing the enormous spider, she stops short and gasps. Next to Chase, House chortles.

Then Cameron purses her lips and shakes her head. She must’ve guessed that the spider is a fake…and her glare at the inner-office door suggests that she knows who is responsible.

House aims the controller’s antenna at the spider and manipulates the controls. The spider rears up on its back six legs, waving the front pair menacingly.

Cameron screams, shrill and piercing. She backs away, and Chase thinks she’s going to run for her life--but it turns out she’s made of sterner stuff. She reaches behind herself to grab a heavy textbook from the shelf and flings it, with surprising accuracy, at the spider.

“Damn!” House jabs fiercely at the controls, but his spider is dead. “God damn it,” he howls, outraged. “I didn’t even get to try it on Cuddy yet!”