Yvi

"Down to brass tax."

Lulz. Eggcorns FTW.

Quick drabble before I head to work. This one is for karaokegal, who asked for:



It isn’t easy, putting things away and keeping them in order while the boss is in Baltimore. It’s actually hard as hell, running a department and being accountable for everything while not actually being an eccentric genius; he knows House wants him to say so, but Foreman isn’t having that. Instead, he has Wilson.

He comes with the territory. People tend to forget that Wilson is a genius in his own right. Everyone’s overshadowed and upstaged by House. Some people just like it that way.

Wilson would prefer it if two people weren’t being stupid at the same time, and he isn’t shy about saying so. Since he can only keep tabs on House for so long—something’s gone wrong at the airport, no departures proceeding due to inclement weather, and at first House isn’t picking up the phone—Foreman’s the lucky one who ends up with his every decision supervised and hen-pecked. Right up until House boards his flight, the team confirms his diagnosis of cerebral malaria, and everything falls back to the status quo.

When Wilson congratulates him for holding together, it’s on the tip of Foreman’s tongue to retort that he wishes he could say the same. Not everyone falls apart while House is off the grid. It also happens that there are some things not even House can track, and maybe that’s part of why he doesn’t answer Wilson with words at all. Job well done, time for stealing moments of sleep and misbehavior while he can.

The next day, there’s a familiar stream of vitriol coming from the conference room. There’s Cameron and Chase looking a little stricken, as if maybe they expected their noble leader to return a changed man. There’s Stacy, packing her belongings; and there's Wilson, lips tight and steps firm. Foreman thinks of the pattern of his duvet, caught up in fingers curled into white hooks of tension and teeth desperate to close on anything, and he sips his coffee with a very small smile.



I'm also *coughcough* killing two birds with one stone and using this as my Come As You're Not submission since it actually is something I wouldn't normally write. So smooth. That's me.