Title: Double Down
Authors: amazonqueenkate and subluxate
Fandom: House, M.D.
Characters: Dr. Gregory House, Dr. James Wilson
Community: slash_me_twice
Prompt: 100. Game
Word Count: 3,770
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: Have we seen Wilson in less than long pants and a long-sleeved shirt? No. Would we have if either of us had a stake in the show? Definitely.
Authors' Notes: We were bored. Even so, I think it turned out well. Thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta



James Wilson was bored.

He wasn't often bored, and when he was, he rarely admitted it. He usually had patients to see, charts to update, pharmaceutical companies to wine and dine him. But today, patient intake was slow, his charts were actually (fairly) caught up, and there were no phone messages from Glaxo-Smith Kline waiting for him. Great.

So he did the only thing he could think of, actually being admittedly bored:

He went over to House's office.

Which was probably a mistake, since House was terminally bored. The man was an overgrown ADHD eight-year-old, and while that energy was usually channeled into semi-useful (or at least non-disruptive) forms of entertainment, knowing Wilson shared his boredom would probably get them into some activity that was Not Workplace Appropriate, like sticking plungers to the ceiling of the men's room.

(It had been once, all House's idea, and Wilson only helped because House couldn't get them to stay. The janitorial staff made their displeasure known well enough that it wouldn't happen again.)

Still, being amused—plungers aside—was better than being bored in his office, so he wandered through House's office door. House was fiddling with his GameBoy—or was it a PSP? He couldn't tell—and the ducklings were conspicuously absent.

"Did you finally run them out?" he questioned as he sunk into a chair.

House barely spared him a glance before returning to his whatever-it-was. "Foreman's in Neurology, Chase disappeared a couple of hours ago, and Cameron's either in the clinic or hunting down charts I'm supposed to do something with. Why're you here? Aren't there dying women begging you to hold their hands somewhere?"

"Fresh out of dying women, sadly. You have a patient?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "I don't remember mentioning anything about tests or hand-holding for my department."

"So Foreman's in neurology for fun? I suppose that doesn't surprise me." Wilson leaned back in his chair.

"Something about being here to actually work. I stopped listening halfway through the first, 'Woe is me, my boss is lazy,' whine." House looked up at him, apparently giving up on the game. "Why doesn't your department bitch at you when you're not working?"

"Most of the time, they barely notice. Probably because we have just a few more patients than you." He shrugged.

"So why are you here, instead of with some of those patients?"

"I suppose you wouldn't believe that I yearned to see your smiling face."

"You want smiles, you flirt with the nurses." Now House was eyeing him curiously.

Probably wondering his real intentions. Wilson shrugged and feigned disinterest. "Finally ran out of nurses."

"There's always the orderlies. And if you ever want a woman who actually earns money, I hear we've got a few as doctors. Crazy rumor."

"Oh, but I'd lose out on that dependence factor. That's what I live for." He glanced around the office again. "What are you doing?" he asked casually.

"I was playing a game." House lifted his legs onto his desk. "You've apparently forgotten the roles here. See, you stay in your office and wait for me to come pester you when I'm…" His eyes lit up, and he grinned. It made him look absolutely demonic. "You're bored."

Wilson blinked, mostly because House's sudden eagerness surprised him. "What makes you think that?"

"Because you're not just here talking. You're pestering me like a kid, asking what I'm doing."

"I'm sorry. Let me leave, come back in, and not ask you what you're doing."

"Are you not bored? Because there's the remote possibility that I'm wrong."

"Does it matter if I'm bored or not?" Wilson retorted.

"Obviously. What kind of friend would I be if I failed to entertain you when you were bored?" He looked smug, probably because he thought he was right.

"What kind of friend are you? That may take a few hours to answer. Where should I begin?"

"No, what kind would I be. Big difference. So you want to be entertained. Sadly, my porn collection is at home. Cuddy's banned it from the hospital."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "What a shame. No 'Big Blonde Beach Bimbos from Betaljuice' for us today."

"Nope, and the resident sex appeal is missing—both halves." House shrugged. "Which leaves…what I can find around here." He pulled open a desk drawer.

"Rooting around in your drawers for entertainment? Lovely. Maybe there's an old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition in there." Wilson smirked.

House tossed something at him. Reflexively, he caught what turned out to be a deck of cards. "Poker," House suggested.

He blinked, surprised that House would come up with something so…well, so mundane. Still, it was better than being mocked for his boredom. He opened the box and slid the cards up. "What kind?" he questioned as he pulled his chair closer to the desk and started shuffling. "Texas Hold 'Em?"

"Wager being clothing." He said it as though suggesting strip poker in a glass office was perfectly normal.

"Clothing? As in strip poker. You do realize that these walls can be seen through, don't you?"

"I have blinds," House pointed out.

"Right." Wilson shuffled the cards again and considered this. Strip poker in House's office was strange, but again, he was bored. "Loser also buys dinner tonight," he stated, standing up.

House's grin was positively sharklike. "Expensive dinner makes a good change from takeout."

"You're smug," he noted as he handed House the cards and moved to close the blinds.

"You're playing strip poker with a man who was laid up with a deck of cards for a couple of months," House pointed out.

"Doesn't mean you're better at poker than I am."

"You're clearly blocking out the beating your wallet took." As Wilson closed the blinds, plastic clicking together, House shuffled the cards.

"How do you know I haven't been practicing?" Okay, it was a ridiculous claim, but Wilson smirked as he returned to his chair anyway. "Online poker is popular these days."

"Online is for porn, not gambling." He used the same tone as he probably would to tell a child that storks did not, in fact, bring children.

"I'm sure there's a little corner of the internet not reserved for porn, thanks." He flopped back into his chair.

House mimicked Cameron's patented kicked-puppy look as he dealt the cards. "There are porn-free parts of the Internet?"

"Shocking, I know."

House hadn't been bullshitting as much as Wilson hoped. At Foreman's interruption, he was sans shoes, belt, and tie, and Foreman had rolled his eyes before halfheartedly trying to sell House on a case. Without looking up from his cards, House had told Foreman his probable diagnosis and that he should give the other children a chance to find a case—which earned him a dark glare that bounced off the plastic backing of his cards. That hand lost Wilson a sock.

By the time Cuddy pushed through the blinds, leaving them clattering in her wake, House had lost his shirts (all three, which had to be some kind of cheating), which made Wilson proud, but Wilson himself was down to his boxers, which probably made House far prouder.

"House," she began, apparently not noting the skin both had exposed, "it's—"

Aha. She'd noticed. And…she was staring.

Maybe they should remember that House's door had a lock next time.

Wilson did the first logical thing that came to mind, which involved grabbing his lab coat and employing it as a lap blanket. Okay, maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to do, but that was something to be worried about when their boss wasn't in the room.

"I can explain," he began.

"Yes, I'd love to hear why you're in your boxers in House's office. Oh, wait. It's House's office." Cuddy rolled her eyes.

"Observant, isn't she?" House, the bastard, had barely glanced up from his cards.

"Yes, House. It was awfully hard to miss the fact that I'm down to my shorts."

"You can't blame your boredom on me. The shorts part, I'll take credit for."

"You," Cuddy interrupted, "are supposed to be in the clinic rather than stealing Wilson's clothing. Save that for your bedroom."

House glanced up from his cards, just a flicker of his eyes before he returned to studying them. "The better option would be stealing yours in my bedroom."

Wilson snorted. "That's likely."

"It's not an unknown thing," House countered.

"I more meant you winning in cards against her," he retorted evenly.

"Also not unknown," House told his hand, frowning. Maybe Wilson stood a chance of not losing his shorts, after all.

Cuddy, who had apparently not left, cleared her throat. "My clinic," she informed them, "is understaffed."

"No, you've just got too many hypochondriacs." House tossed down three cards. "Three, dealer."

Wilson dealt him three. "Or doctors who don't show up," he noted as he took one for himself, "but it couldn't be that."

"If you were so bored, you could've been down there." House glared at his cards. "At least then you'd have pants."

"I never said I was bored."

"Which," Cuddy interjected, "is why you're sitting there in your boxers. One of you two should have thought of locking the door."

Wilson frowned. They really should have. "There wasn’t a lot of planning involved, in case you couldn't tell," he informed her, and not without shooting House a look.

House shuffled his cards around, which, judging by his expression, didn't make much of a difference. "You don't want him wandering around the hospital, bored, Cuddy. He's a danger to the nurses."

"Ah, yes. I should model after you, be dangerous to humanity."

"Which is why I'm cleverly limiting my exposure."

"About that," Cuddy interjected. "You're supposed to actually be around patients right now."

Wilson glanced at his cards and tried not to frown. Unless House's hand had shifted from abysmal to fantastic in the last thirty seconds, he stood a chance to win, but… "She has a point."

"So did I about the nurses, but she didn't jump on my side." House folded his cards together, apparently giving up on trying to make them decent.

"I don't think you did. Clinic." Her patience with House was occasionally impressive. This was not one of those times. She looked genuinely annoyed. Wilson wondered if it was because of the clinic, the cracks about her losing clothes, or the collective nakedness of her employees.

He decided not to ask. "Guess it's a draw," he commented, tossing his cards onto the desk.

"Did I say I folded?" House demanded. Either his cards were better than he'd been acting, or he was trying to piss Cuddy off. Could be both, Wilson decided.

"No, but generally, the physical action implies the folding."

"If you folded," House began, and there was no way that sentence could end well. Not with Cuddy in the room, anyway.

"I didn't. I set down my cards because you folded."

"I didn't fold. My cards are not on the deck. Yours are."

Wilson narrowed his eyes. "They're just on the desk."

Cuddy tapped her foot, glaring over at House. It was amazing how impervious he could be, but then, he'd had years of practice.

"Close enough."

"I'll pick them back up." He wasn't sure why he was fighting this; he blamed male pride. He snatched the cards back up. "There? Happy?"

Cuddy threw her hands up in the air. "What's so important that's riding on this game?"

"Dinner," House replied promptly. "Also, sex."

She stared at him. And Wilson, despite himself, also stared. "I don't remember that being on the table," he declared after all other words failed him.

"Did I say anything about sex on the table? It'd be awkward." House nodded to Wilson's cards. "Show 'em."

"You first."

"That's juvenile."

A strangled choking sound came from Cuddy's direction.

"What she said," Wilson returned, not budging.

"You're supposed to be the grownup." House made no move to put down his cards.

"I'm trying something new today." He smirked. "Afraid to lose?"

"I've still got clothes after my jeans."

"And even if he didn't, I've seen him in less," Cuddy added.

House smirked. "Told you."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "Fine," he declared, and tossed his cards onto the desk—face up this time. "Two pair—jacks and fours. You?"

House flipped over his cards and spread them out to reveal three sixes, his smirk broadening. "Dinner's on you. Nothing else is, though."

Wilson glanced at him, and then up at Cuddy. "I am not taking off my boxers, House."

House feigned shock. "You mean there's a woman in this hospital who hasn't seen everything?"

"Yes," Cuddy said dryly. "He does."

"There's a few more than one." The looks he got from both directions implied he was officially considered a liar. He rolled his eyes. "Fine. Dinner, tonight, on me. As arranged."

"There is the little matter of settling up the other half of your debt," House pointed out.

"I will. Later." Now Cuddy's look turned speculative. "Or as soon as Cuddy leaves." He tried to make it as unsuspicious as possible, but he doubted that would work.

"Which won't be until I have another doctor in my clinic."

"I guarantee you either Chase or Cameron is trying to suck up by now. Call down. Better yet, go check." House…was apparently not intending to help in the "not suspicious" category.

"Or," Wilson suggested, "you could go to the clinic and we'll finish the game later."

"Then she'll have too many doctors for the number of exam rooms."

Cuddy threw up her hands. "Fine. But you take all this week's hours of whoever's covering for you."

Wilson smirked slightly and didn't say anything.

"The hours will be covered," House agreed.

Which probably didn't bode well for the ducklings or himself, Wilson realized, but he decided against pointing this out to Cuddy.

Cuddy looked at House suspiciously for a moment. He, in turn, focused on her chest and opened his mouth, which was apparently somehow enough to convince her of his sincerity about the clinic hours, since she turned on her very expensive heel (Julie had had a pair like that, and they'd cost a fortune) and left the office, pointedly using her key to turn the lock into place.

Once the telltale click had faded away, Wilson shot House a look. "I'm not taking them off."

"Then my comment about sex stands." He shrugged. "Either way, you lost the game."

"Cuddy was distracting me," Wilson argued in return. Of course, it was weak, but it was something.

"By...standing over you? How'd you get through med school with that kind of concentration?"

"I was fully-clothed at the time."

"The whole possible risk of life thing probably made you concentrate, too. You still lost." House smirked at him again.

"I did." He rose to his feet, grabbing his pants off the next chair. "So, how long should I expect you to be smug? The normal forty-eight hours?"

"Depends."

That didn't sound good. "On?"

"How good dinner is. Also, how well you make up for welshing out of the last part of losing."

Wilson smirked slightly. "I think I can perform to those lofty standards."

House smirked back. "Hope so. If you can't, Chase is next on my victims list."

"Does Chase even know how to play poker?"

The smirk broadened. "Does it matter?"

Wilson rolled his eyes. "No," he replied, "probably not."

House reached down toward his shirts. "Easier to win that way, anyway. Though Chase'd probably strip if I told him to."

"Ah, to have that kind of unchallenged power." Wilson fastened his pants and started on his shirt.

"Oh, yeah, I use it on Chase. You've got the entire nursing staff plus some ready to drop their scrubs if you say the word."

"Yes, but not through fear. You should try it sometime."

"There's always Cameron." Wilson couldn't see House's expression, since he was pulling on his T-shirt, but it couldn't be good.

"I meant being nice," he clarified, working on his buttons. "Not having sex."

"Oh, being nice. Actually, you may be a bigger bastard than me."

He smirked slightly. "Only because I learned from the master."

"At least I'm up front about it." House glanced downward, probably at his shoes.

"Yes, well, you know me. Nefarious intent in all things." Wilson balanced and pulled his socks back on.

"Very useful," House agreed. "They've got to consider one of us the nice, responsible, mature one."

"And it might as well be the one who looks the part."

"Though if you're ever discovered, they'll burn you in effigy." House didn't sound too troubled by that.

"I'll keep that in mind." Wilson slipped on his shoes and plucked his coat up off the chair. "You should probably go worry about those clinic hours," he noted.

House blinked at him innocently. "What clinic hours?"

Wilson rolled his eyes. "Right."

"Like I actually agreed to do them myself."

"Always the loophole." He considered this for a moment. "Are you certain I'm the bigger bastard?"

"Nope. Just pretty sure. Good enough for me, though."

"As with all things." Wilson tugged on his lab coat and straightened it. "See you for dinner?"

"You have any appointments this afternoon?" There was a gleam in House's eyes that didn't bode well.

"Not that I can think of," he admitted, though only because he knew House would call him on lying.

"Think we can escape without her noticing?"

"You could. I'm not so sure about myself."

House snorted. "You're clothed. No one's going to be trailing after to draw attention to you."

"No, but I have this group of doctors I oversee. It's called a department—maybe you've heard of them? They notice when I disappear."

"Huh. Mine's usually grateful. Besides, if they can't survive one afternoon without you, you've got bigger problems."

He sighed. "House, I can't just play hooky."

"Technically, you can," House pointed out. "You just don't want to."

"My department might need me, what with actually having patients and all."

"There are these handy inventions known as cell phones. Actually, I think you have one."

He arched his eyebrows. "Your cell phone teleports you back here, so you can treat patients? Impressive."

"Be really impressive if it could," House said. "Avoid the whole car thing."

"Yeah, and then, no worries that someone might die while you're driving into work."

"And they call me egotistical," House muttered.

Wilson narrowed his eyes. "I need to be here."

"Yeah, Wonderboy and all that." House picked up his game, apparently deciding socks and shoes were completely optional.

He smiled slightly. "Tonight," he repeated, preempting any whining that was yet to come.

"If you think the masses can survive without you."

"I'll try to get done early."

"Technically, you are done."

"Technically, we're both done at five."

"Then you can't get done early."

Wilson sighed. "You won't believe me if I tell you do I have work to do, will you?"

"Considering you came in because you had nothing to do? Of course I'd believe it." He rolled his eyes.

He considered this for a moment, watching House, and—as much as he hated to admit it, even to himself—the man had a point. "I need to at least stop back in my office."

House didn't glance up, but he did smirk at his game. "For appearance's sake, of course."

"For work's sake," Wilson defended, albeit poorly.

"Yes, in case a patient has materialized." He sounded amused.

"You're enjoying this too much."

"And you think your department can't survive without you. Who's got the bigger issue?"

"I don't think they can't survive without me. I just worry something could come up."

"That they couldn't handle without you, despite that your department has some decent doctors." Was that actually praise from on high?

He smirked. "You think the same about your doctors."

"Mine are here to learn. Yours are supposed to be done with being trained."

"Yours are pretty good, too."

"Yet none of them are board-certified in infectious diseases. Theoretically, yours are oncologists. Unless you royally screwed up somewhere in the hiring process."

Wilson rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry for being concerned about my department. Should we continue arguing about it, when I thought you wanted to leave?”

"And I thought you wanted to stop in your office. Kinda hard if you never leave my office."

"Fine. I'll be back shortly."

House nodded to his game, still not looking up. "Unless you did have a magical patient appearance."

"I'll let you know if I did." He started for the door, unlocked, and then paused, glancing back at House and his video game. "We could have a rematch," he tossed over his shoulder. "Double or nothing."

"You do realize," House told his console, "that would mean no sex."

"Not if the stakes were right."

House glanced up at him. "At the least, it'd mean you don't owe me dinner."

"At the most," Wilson supplied, smirking, "it could mean a lot of other interesting prizes."

And that was apparently enough to get his interest. "But without the whole fishbowl element."

"Which is an improvement, don't you think?"

"Considering you felt the need to hide your boxers from Cuddy, it probably is."

"Modesty is not a crime."

"Just illogical when she's a doctor and every other woman in the hospital has seen the goods."

He smirked. "I wanted to leave something to her imagination," he replied simply.

House reached for the ball and lobbed it at him. "We're never getting out of here if you don't check your office."

He caught it deftly and lobbed it back. "Consider me gone," he replied, and stepped out of the office.

House would be pleased to know no patients had materialized in his office, though a message slip had made its way in. Wilson groaned to himself—he didn't want to talk to Christine, not about whatever her current issue was—and tucked it into his pocket. He went back to House's office and opened the door, somehow unsurprised to see that House had put on his shoes and socks in anticipation for his return. "You know," he noted, "I don't usually play hooky."

"No, you usually stay late. Makes up for leaving early once." House stood and slung his bag over his shoulder.

"Better than sitting here and being bored."

"So you were bored." He looked triumphant.

Wilson frowned. Foiled. "I admit to nothing."

"Too late for that."

He couldn't deny that one. "C'mon," he said. "Let's get out of here."

House nodded. "So," he asked, smirking, "what're the benefits if we do play again?"

Tags: cowrite, greg house, greg house/james wilson, house md, james wilson, slash me twice: greg house/james wilson