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He doesn’t get to have any breakfast the next morning, but when they leave for the hospital, Wilson packs along a container of pancakes and a little jar full of syrup. He packs his lion, rubber duck, and a bottle of Vicodin. He supposes that once he’s old again he won’t want Lion and Duck, but right now he does.
“We can come home to have breakfast,” House points out as they get into the car. “After.”
“They want you to stick around for a few hours, for observation,” Wilson reminds him.
House's last PLOT-ified night.
Apart from the grocery store trip, they spend most of the day quietly at home. House plays with his marble run and race car track, and then enlists Wilson in a gamed of Dinosaur Soccer, using a marble for the ball. Wilson plays the herbivores. He’s fairly sure that House’s favorite part of the game is the riot that ensues after the carnivore team wins.
The game seems to wear House out, and when Chase arrives for dinner, he’s laying on the rug coloring. “Here,” he says, handing Chase some paper and a crayon. “Draw dinosaurs.”
By the time Chase knocks on the door to Cameron’s apartment, it’s after ten. He hopes he isn’t keeping her from anything important.
She answers the door holding a string with Benedict’s Nylabone dangling from the end. She’s dressed in workout clothes--yoga pants and a short-sleeved top--but they don’t look like she’s worked out in them. The puppy cavorts at her side, nipping and pawing at his toy. “Hi, Chase,” she sighs. “Did you have a good time?”
A/N: So, a day late! I ended up going to be early last night instead of writing. And the old-school Potteric is on my laptop, which I don't want to even turn on right now because it's 95 degrees out and the laptop throws off a lot of heat. But I'll post 'em soon! In the meantime, here's the latest P.L.O.T.
House is having trouble keeping Wilson in sight. The path is crowded, and he’s hurrying along like he’s late for something. He tries calling out to him, but he guesses Wilson doesn’t hear, because he doesn’t stop or even look around.
When House finally catches up to him, Wilson is talking to some lady with a kid. That’s just like Wilson, to be flirting with some stranger when House is looking for him. He must’ve ditched Chase, too.
House slugs him in the kidneys. “Thought you’d lose me that easily?” he demands.
A/N: You guys almost didn't get this chapter today--when I was almost finished, my laptop decided to shut itself down. (Hopefully a one-time occurence--if I have to send it in for repair again, when I've only had it back a month, I'm going to be pissed.) And I'm terrible about saving my work as I go along, so I could have lost the whole chapter. But, hooray for auto-save! I ended up only losing a couple of sentences.
Also, if you haven't yet, check out The House Quilt Project. Everybody's doing it!
*********
It was only with some effort, and frequent reminders that he wouldn’t have much fun at Six Flags if he was tired, that Wilson had gotten House to settle down and go to sleep after Chase left the night before their trip. He isn’t particularly surprised when House wakes him insanely early the next morning--if going to the park to feed the ducks warrants a seven AM wake-up call, naturally Six Flags calls for an even earlier one.
“They won’t even be open for another couple of hours,” Wilson reminds him, stumbling out of bed and stripping off the sheets. “If we left now we’d just have to wait.”
House stays in the bathroom with his duck while Wilson calls the park people. It isn’t fair. He bets the duck will be happier being his pet than living in the park. Steve was a wild animal before, and he’s a perfectly good pet. And he could take Duck on walks to the park to visit the other ducks.
Now Duck is pecking at his reflection on the faucet, peering at it first with one beady little eye and then the other. House puts his fingers in the water at the opposite end of the tub, and Duck swims over to investigate.
#
“Ducks today,” House announces, poking him in the ribs.
Wilson rubs at his eyes. “What time is it?” It doesn’t really matter--now that he’s awake, he’s going to have to get up and change the bed.
“Seven,” House says proudly. “I let you sleep in.”
A short P.L.O.T. update, for your reading enjoyment.
Fortunately, House seems to have forgotten that he’s angry with Wilson. Maybe it was his altercation with Foreman, or just the passage of time, but he’s restored to sunny good cheer.
While Wilson fixes up Foreman’s hand, House fills him in on everything he did with Chase. “We worked on the map--you’ll have to look at it. I put in a zoo. There are no elephants, though, so it would be safe for you to go there and look at the animals. Then we played hangman, and I won every time, except when Foreman cheated. Did you know that Chase isn’t good at hangman? Maybe it’s because they spell funny in Australia.”
Wilson is making lunch for House--grilled cheese sandwiches and cream of tomato soup--when the phone rings.
“Hi, Doctor Wilson, I’m sorry to bother you at home.” It’s Dr. Gilbert, from his department.
“Who is it?” House asks.
“Work,” Wilson tells him. “Keep an eye on the sandwiches, okay?” He takes the phone into the other room. “It’s no trouble. What’s going on?” He’s surprised they’d made it this long without calling him at home--before now, he hadn’t been away from work for more than a few days at a time since becoming department head.
If you want to re-read the last two chapters, go here.
To start from the beginning, go here.
For a breif reminder of what has happened previously, read this paragraph. House has gone though the Potent Localized Ontogenetic Transformation device, which returned him to a biological age of six, as an experimental treatment for his chronic leg pain. He's had various adventures, mostly recently at the circus, where after an evening of fun, Wilson went into anaphylactic shock during an elephant ride. He spent the night in the hospital and had a scratch test to determine that he is allergic to elephants.
Gosh, when I write it out like that, it all seems so...silly.
Anyway, for the latest chapter, chapter 20,
More P.L.O.T.! I haven't gotten back into the "Pencils" groove, but expect to see an update of that in the next day or two!
After striking out in the janitor’s closet, Wilson roams the hallways at random, hoping he’ll spot House. His feet are cold and he’s tired, and after a while he gives up and heads back to his room. It’s possible, he tells himself, that someone found House and now they’re trying to find him.
He’s not very optimistic about that, though, so he’s still surprised when he gets back and there’s House, curled up in the middle of the bed. “Hey, buddy, what’s--”
He doesn’t get to finish the question, because House leaps off the bed and throws himself at him. Wilson staggers back several steps from the impact. “I thought you were dead!” House says into his chest.
He wakes up with a nurse leaning over him. “Dr. Wilson? Do you remember where you are?”
“The hospital,” he says irritatedly, “I fell off an elephant.” The nurse shines a light in his eyes; he tries to bat it away. “Where’s House?” he asks, looking around the room.
“I’m sorry?” She’s a night nurse; she probably doesn’t know House.
“Kid who was with me. Dark hair, blue eyes, green shirt, crutch?”
“Ah…maybe your wife took him to the cafeteria?”
The Diagnostics office is dark and empty when Chase returns from the circus, toting sample containers of the elephant’s skin scrapings, saliva, and bedding, and a rapidly-cooling funnel cake. Naturally, there are no clues as to where House is, or Wilson, either. He has to ask what seems like everyone in the hospital before he finds out that Wilson has been admitted and assigned to a private room on the fourth floor. He heats the funnel cake in the microwave in the third-floor lounge before taking the elevator up—the powdered sugar melts, and the funnel cake takes on a limp, soggy appearance.
Cuddy decides to stop by her office after her Monday evening search committee meeting—which turned out to be fortunate. She’s just turning on her computer—there are some numbers she promised to compile before the next meeting, and she might as well do it now, before she has a chance to forget—when the phone rings.
“Cuddy,” she answers.
“Dr. Cuddy, this is the ER admit desk.”
“All right,” she says. What’s happened down there now?
“We just had a call from an EMT unit. They said they’re on their way in with your husband and son.”
A/N: A short PLOT update. Warning: Cliffhanger! Y'all are going to hate me for this....
A/N2: If anyone wants to meet up in Philadelphia to look at fetuses in jars, I'm game.
****
He’d been dubious when Wilson suggested they go to the circus—he’s not a fan of clowns and never has been—but he has to admit it’s been fun so far. He alternates bites of corndog with bites of cotton candy and says, “We ought to go to the Mutter Museum in Philly.”
“To see the fetuses in jars?” Wilson asks with a sigh.
“Uh-huh. And the antique surgical equipment.”
“You’re one morbid little kid,” Wilson says.
“Part of my charm,” House answers happily.
“I want some cotton candy, and a sno-cone, and some popcorn, and then I want to see the Snake Lady and the Real Mermaid and I wanna ride the elephant,” House says, all in one breath.
“Okay, okay,” Wilson says, laughing. “Can I park the car first?”
“As long as you hurry,” House concedes.
***
When Wilson struggles through the door, weighed down with bags of shopping, he’s greeted by an empty house. His first thought is a panicked conviction that House’s parents have come back and whisked him away. But there are no signs of a struggle, and if House’s parents had tried to take him anywhere, he definitely would have struggled. Telling himself there is a perfectly innocent explanation for Chase and House’s disappearance, Wilson totes the groceries into the kitchen.
( Read more... )
A/N: Finally, an update! (Still no news on the job. Keep chanting, Poeia!)
“Thanks for coming over, Chase,” Wilson says. “House doesn’t want to go to the store with me, and--”
“I don’t need a babysitter!” House calls from the sofa. “Wilson invited you over so I don’t get bored!”
“Okay,” Chase answers, trying not to smile. “I brought Benedict, so he doesn’t get bored either.” When Benedict gets bored, he destroys the apartment. He suspects Wilson has a similar concern.
( Read more... )
House freezes, like a mouse in front of snake, when his father sees him. It’s not until his mother says his name that the spell is broken, and he turns and hurries back to his room, and slams the door behind him.
He shouldn’t have gone out there, but he couldn’t hear what Wilson and his parents were saying from the bedroom. And--he doesn’t want to admit it, but—he wanted to see his mom.
( Read more... )
The promised chapter! Bit of a cliffhanger; expect another update tomorrow or the next day.
Wilson’s doing the usual morning laundry and House is watching cartoons when the phone rings. He picks it up. “This is Wilson.”
“Hello, James.” It’s House’s mother. Damn. She calls once a month or so for House updates, but he’d hoped she wouldn’t call this week. House was adamant that he didn’t want his parents to know about his regression—at all, if possible, but absolutely not until he was back to normal. Now he’s going to have to come up with a reasonable account of House’s recent activities—and, as House has often observed, he’s not a very accomplished liar.
“Hi, Blythe,” he says. House looks up at him in alarm, then dives under one of the blankets that’s still heaped on the couch. Wilson turns down the TV and moves into the kitchen. “What’s new with you?” he asks, stalling.
( Read more... )
