peg22 | Just what I need - another WIP (H/W) Spy Game

Title: Spy Game
Author: Kaye
Slash - H/W eventually, inevitably, infinitely

It's present tense, which is hard and weird for me.
So feel free to concrit the thing.

It started out as a one shot and then . . .

It's about observation and House and Wilson and revenge and floor wax.

Spy Game

by Kaye

I. Research

She watches him. He never sees her. He’s always too busy. With his puzzles. With his minions. With his Wilson. She’s watched long enough now to know the possessive is proper in this case. Just like his cane, his ball, and his little white pills, Wilson belongs to him.

Sometimes when she watches, she wonders if the road runs both ways. Does he belong to Wilson? Would he run out in the pouring rain to fetch Wilson his favorite Kung Pao Beef? Would he tell Wilson that moving in with that oncology nurse is a bad idea? Would he give Wilson a kidney? The liver is out. She’s been around long enough to know that the first thing on Dr. House’s To Do list should be to cross match potential donors. No way is that liver going to make it through the winter.

She already knows Dr. Cameron would be first in line to donate. Even now, when others stand in the way of the bright hot light of his attention, she’d probably do the operation herself. Or fuck Chase into doing it for her. She used to watch them. Cameron and Chase. Actually, it was hard not to. They were everywhere for a while. And then they weren’t.

Cameron watches him, too. From doorways. Over computer monitors. Behind charts. She wonders if they should join forces, pool resources. Take shifts. But Cameron isn’t one to share the duty. Wants him all to herself. Which is why she toils in the E.R. now, instead of sitting elbow to elbow with him as he lays waste to hundreds of tests, thousands of theories. Dozens of lives.

She stops thinking about Cameron and follows him out to his car. He parks close, but manages to walk by Wilson, who sits in his own car with the window cracked, reading a file. House raps his cane on the side of the door and Wilson emerges, body stiff, frown in place. She can’t hear them, but she doesn’t need to. The patter is always the same. Snark, rebuttal, snark, pause, concerned glare, head toss, snark, chuckle. She sometimes fills in the blanks as she watches:

H: Hiding from Debbie in accounting again?

W: Is that what you’re calling yourself these days?

H: Or maybe this is your new apartment – cozy.

W: What do you want, House?

H: Why are you out here?

W: Why do you care?
H: I don’t – I’ve got a bet with Ronnie the janitor.

W: I’m not going to ask.

H: He said you were out here greasing the monkey,

and I told him you don’t even own a monkey.

W: So, what do you win?

H: You get to buy me lunch.

And on and on and on. It’s probably the best foreplay that leads to nowhere she’s ever witnessed. Wilson closes the door and they both turn back toward the hospital, House’s arm draped around Wilson’s shoulder as they maneuver the speed bumps and the curb.

She allows them to walk past her. They don’t notice. They never do. Makes her job easier, but she doesn’t flatter herself or her skills. She could be a naked Heidi Klum kissing a naked Angelina Jolie and they wouldn’t notice. Their focus gets smaller and smaller in direct relation to their proximity to each other.

They stop at the door and she glimpses Dr. Cuddy. She dips behind a bush. Cuddy notices everything. She’s almost been caught a dozen times by her – thank God for the familiar click of her heels, which usually allows her to disappear a split second before the righteous indignation carries those heels into House’s office, or House’s clinic room, or House’s other office. Also known as Wilson’s office.

She watches as Cuddy joins the foreplay, rattling off infractions and offering distractions in the form of her endless supply of work-inappropriate outfits. Criminal, really that she stands here in the bush wearing a ten dollar polyester blend uniform that Cuddy picked out and yet Cuddy manages to make a $400 Stella McCartney blouse look cheap. House and Wilson quickly blow past her into the hospital without a single clue as to what she’s talking about. Cuddy stands for a minute, looking into the sky, and then turns and clicks back into the hospital, peeling off into her office, allowing the men freedom to the elevator.

They shove shoulders as they wait. House nudges Wilson’s leg with his cane and Wilson hands House something from his pocket that House unwraps and sticks in his mouth, leaning over to shove something into Wilson’s lab coat pocket. The elevator door opens and House half limps/half leaps in, and then turns and bars Wilson with his cane. Wilson just stands with his hands in his lab coat and waits. The alarm that tells everyone the elevator door is stuck open begins to sing. A janitor heads down the stairs, everyone pauses to look. Gawk. Finally, House says something and scowls and Wilson nods and they disappear behind the closing door.

She wonders if they’re kissing. Wilson pressing House against the back of the elevator, House fisting Wilson’s lab coat, pulling him closer, the cane and the files forgotten in the great race to stick their tongues down each other’s throats before the door pings open.

She shakes her head and walks briskly into the hospital. She has work to do. Those floors don’t shine themselves.

*****

“Excuse me.”

The voice startles her out of a daydream in which she wasn’t stuck in the most boring job she’d ever had to endure, and she drops her broom.

Wilson leans down to pick it up. The man is nothing if not fastidiously polite.

“Yes, Doctor?” She hopes he doesn’t notice her hands are shaking. Rule number one is never interact. She should have been paying better attention.

“I just wanted to let someone know I’m out of my office for the day.”

She looks at him, trying to figure out what he’s talking about.

“For the new carpet?” He even smiles politely.

Oh. Yeah. The new carpet.

“Thanks, Doctor, I’ll be sure to let Reggie know.”

He smiles and shifts his briefcase from one hand to the other and then turns to go. She continues her never ending quest to get every streak and smudge off the floor, and as he walks by House’s door, he pauses, but doesn’t stop. She stops polishing and disappears around the corner because she knows the routine. Right on schedule, House’s door flies open.

“Wilson!” House holds the door open with his cane.

Wilson has just disappeared around the corner, but she counts to two, and he reappears.

“What?” Looking harried. An act.

“Where you going? Heavy date?”

Wilson walks closer to House. “Can you not yell?”

“Can you not act like my mother every moment?”

Wilson rolls his eyes and says something she can’t hear. House leans in closer and says something that makes Wilson’s head dip and when he looks back up, he is smiling. House goes back into his office and Wilson continues down the hallway.

She takes a chance and polishes closer to the glass walls of the office. She should have researched this hospital better before she took this job. Glass walls are problematic to say the least. Easy to see in, but easier to see out. Nowhere to hide when Dr. House is bursting through his door, and hobbling over.

“Hey, you, janitor girl.”

She tries not to take him down with one punch and mumbles, “Yes, Doctor?”

“What did Dr. Wilson say to you?”

“Uh, he said he’d be gone the rest of the day . . .”

“Where’s he going?” House takes a closer step, frowns at her.

She’s sure it’s supposed to be intimidating, but it’s all she can do to keep from laughing. Maybe he should learn to ask his boyfriend where he’s going himself . . .

“Whose boyfriend?”

Oh hell damn shit fuck. All this cleaning fluid has finally gotten to her and she takes a step back.

“I have to go, Doctor.” Smooth. “You need your trash emptied or something?”

House looks wary, but then looks above her and shouts, “Foreman, where have you been?” and she is quickly forgotten.

For the rest of the afternoon, she ponders how this job is fast becoming the job she was pretending to do in order to do the job she was supposed to be doing. As in, she was becoming quite proficient at the janitorial and not so great at the . . . the other job.

She takes an hour and follows Dr. Chase around the hospital. Entertaining, distracting. Chase winds his way through the E.R., into the Clinic, Cuddy’s office, the cafeteria, and then meets Foreman on the roof for a secret smoke. She leaves them to it and walks back down to the lobby and hears a low whistle coming from the big potted trees across from the Clinic.

She tries not to laugh out loud. Or cry. Six years Special Ops, two years embedded with the Armenian Liberation Front and now she was being heralded by a beat cop with bad shoes and a badder chip on his shoulder. For the tenth time that day, she questions her judgment in taking this little job, as Detective Tritter steps out from behind the plant.

Stupid man. She quickly sweeps the lobby – in the good way – and walks just past him.

“You’re jeopardizing my ability to do my job.” She hisses the words and bends down to pick up a leaf.

“You haven’t called me in three days. I was worried.” Tritter sticks a toothpick in his mouth.

Oh great, now he’s stupid and Kojak. Perfect. She wonders if she can give back half the fee and just walk out the door now.

“I haven’t called you because there’s nothing to call you about.”

“Surely, House has . . .”

“No he hasn’t . . .”

They both stop talking as a familiar voice interrupts.

“Hey, asshole. Get the hell out of my hospital.” House is limping towards them, his finger pointed, his face red.

Great. She scurries around the plant and begins straightening some kid magazines on a table. Could this day get any worse?

She hears the familiar click of Cuddy’s heels and merges further into the waiting area.

“House, stop it.”

“Get him out of here, Cuddy.”

From her position between a small toddler slide and a man in a full leg cast, she misses what happens next. But then people start running and radios start squawking and Wilson blows by her, tie flying behind him and she sees Tritter’s shoes suddenly pointed skyward and then above it all she hears a cackle that could only come from a certain maniacal genius doctor who probably just cold cocked her best paying client. Yes, this day could get worse. Way worse.

TBC . . .