Take a Picture; (another) Churchverse fic
Title: Take a Picture
Author: simple__man
Pairing: House/Wilson
Word Count: 3430
Rating: G, and yet,
Warning: kid!fic, OC, and mild cursings
Summary: Simple thing really, natural even, to take pictures of one's offspring for future reference. Annoys the hell out of one's juniors (and keepers) as well, and hell, what's that if not a bonus?
A/N: This fic belongs to the Church-verse. If you're unfamiliar with it, you're welcome to check out previous installments at my fic journal simple__stuff. Long story short, Cuddy has a kid, House provides half the necessary components of same, Cuddy freaks out, and House and Wilson raise the kid together. Special thanks to George Lopez's album "Team Leader" which had the bit on disposable cameras. Blame him for this. He has more money.
It started out innocently enough--most of House's obsessions did.
Who knows exactly how the obsession started, although House could probably track it back to the exact instant, if we let him. We know it was the boy's second birthday, and we know that it only happened because House was, as usual, running late.
That morning, Wilson had said, "Bring the cameras, I've got everything else," but he'd said it while standing around completely without clothes on, and did he honestly think House was concentrating on whatever he was blathering about?
Besides, that exchange had occurred at six o'clock in the a.m., and it was now eight o'clock in the p.m, and in between these times House's mind had been somewhat occupied. Patient dying, as per usual, but every case was as tricky or trickier than the last and he'd been just a little caught up.
Never mind that Wilson somehow ran his entire department, saw his own patients, consulted on any number of cases, did his clinic duty, attended board and transplant meetings, and, oh yeah, made sure everything was ready for the little rat's natal day celebration. Jimmy had always been an overachiever. Besides, it didn't take much to diagnose cancer, right? Everything fairly straightforward. Not like his cases. Not at all.
As House was trying to convince himself that he had a leg to stand on (so to speak), he was also speeding to the nearest drugstore. Wilson was many things, most of them very good things, but one thing he most assuredly was not, was forgiving where it came to fuck-ups that involved the child. House had learned this the hard way, which is actually a very funny story, but for another time.
Ordinarily, Wilson's over-protectiveness where it came to the boy was a much-appreciated fact of life, given that the kid would probably be dead already if he'd had only House and Cuddy to count on to keep him happy and well-fed and, y'know, alive.
Of course, Cuddy had more than likely brought the cake and ice cream just as instructed, and was, even now, being lovingly accepted into the bosom of his family. Bitch.
It wasn't his fault, anyway. As usual, everything could be traced back to Wilson.
Upon the brat's birth, Wilson had purchased one of those spiffy, overpriced cameras that always managed to somehow get itself left behind. If it did happen to make the trip, then someone would invariably leave the lens cap on at the most desired moment (i.e., just as the spawn was divesting itself of all its garments, or Grandpa House was acting particularly goofy, or Jimmy was caught looking entirely too edible).
Barring that, it would run out of film, be sat upon, burrow under the child's toys, or find some other way to wriggle out of doing the work for which it was designed. Thus Cuddy always lovingly referred to it as "House", and House always lovingly kicked it under the nearest piece of furniture.
The video camera also suffered from the same disease as its coworker--never being where it was wanted when it was wanted. Besides, the damned child was always doing something insufferably cute just when the twice-damned camera had been left off the charger. Even if he had remembered to grab the camera(s), they probably would have found some way to screw things up for him.
Wilson was dead serious about birthdays, and there was only one punishment that fit the crime of screwing up one of said. He was already on short rations for daring to suggest that Mrs. Wilson's seventy-sixth was not reason enough for him to leave the peace and relative comfort of his domicile. Should he be found guilty of contempt of birthday once again, so soon after, then a sentence of absolutely no sex at all for the foreseeable future was a definite possibility.
Necessity is the mother of invention, or something like that, and a sackful of disposable cameras was just about as desperate a bid as any House had ever made. There had to be some sort of grading system for effort, right?
Inside his Plastic Bag O' Desperation resided every type of disposable camera known to man. The standard Funsaver camera, of course, but there was also black & white, underwater (in case of flood), flash, PowerFlash, indoor/outdoor, and digital (among others). There was even a spectacularly grandiose one-time use video camera--price tag $29.99, and wouldn't Jimmy shit a brick over that one?
Speeding to his destination (the much-reviled McDonald's closest to their home, which he and Wilson used to frequent quite often and happily before the child made it a federal offense to pass by without stopping for chicken parts), House could only hope that it was enough to keep him in Jimmy's good graces.
Surprisingly enough, it was. Wilson, having known House longer and in more senses of the word than most people, had made a stop by the House-Wilson hacienda on his way over, specifically for the purpose of grabbing both cameras.
Due to the fact that their son was directly spawned from evil, however, he had only managed to find one of the aforesaid before the inevitable temper tantrum had perforated his eardrums, thereby forcing him into the vehicle and on the road before someone small and loud ended up buried beneath the rose bushes.
He'd grabbed the video camera, of course, and it was, as should have been expected, dead as a sack of hammers. House, instead of being the Shit Who Forgot the Cameras, found himself immediately catapulted into the strange territory of being the Husband Who Not Only Remembered Cameras but Also Was Thoughtful and Brought Enough for Everyone.
Hail the Conquering Hero, and all that. There were kisses, not all of them from Wilson.
The kid alone seemed unimpressed, until House bribed him with Skittles. After downing a mouthful of same, candy juice dribbling down his admittedly adorable chin, his small son was ripe for having his picture taken. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary at a kid's birthday party, but it was just so damned cute. He was unable to resist the dual charms of a good-looking kid and a cheap drugstore camera.
He'd been torturing Stacy and even Julie with pictures of the boy for some time now, but he'd never felt compelled to take pictures for his own enjoyment. He had trusted himself to remember the big things, the important things, and left the baby books and photo books and scrapbooks and computer slideshows to Wilson.
Suddenly, however, he found that he wanted to remember this incredibly small moment forever and always, for himself, and he wanted to be able to hold the memory in his hands years from now, when the brat was no longer a brat but a full-grown House-shaped thing.
Thus was an obsession born.
He didn't realize it was an obsession at first, although he went through four cameras all by his lonesome (and stole a fifth from Cuddy). Wilson did, though, because that's what Wilson did (and will always do, forever without end, amen). He didn't say a word, though, because anything that kept House and his father from each other's throats was considered to be a Very Good Thing. Besides, there really couldn't be too many pictures of Church in the world, could there?
Au contraire, mon frere, as Wilson was found moaning to Cuddy a mere three weeks later, the two of them holed up in her office.
"You've got to make it stop," he said, as if Cuddy had more of a chance at doing so than himself.
"Like I have more of a chance at making him stop than you do!" she snapped, trying in vain to straighten the mess of picture frames that were currently cluttering her not-so-immaculate desk.
"He's out of control! And it's spreading..." he let his voice trail off threateningly, but Cuddy didn't need the reminder. There had already been incidents of pictures of herself leaking out to the general population, not all of them unflattering. She'd had more requests for dinner and drinks in the past three weeks than she cared to count.
"I think he's trying to set me up!" the words were out of her mouth before she could throw her hand over it to stop them.
Wilson narrowed his eyes, and almost-nearly growled, "There weren't suggestive pictures of you pasted all over the Oncology Lounge."
A sniff, an aborted giggle, and then, "Yes, well, you deserved it."
"I absolutely did not!" Wilson began, but Cuddy was already raising a hand to stop him.
"Admit it. This is better than anything else we've been put through, and he's quite good at it."
Wilson's mouth pursed in that attractively unattractive way that it did (which was House's current subject, although Wilson didn't yet know it), and he reluctantly agreed. "He took Church to the park three times last week. Without complaining."
And so it was settled, then. At least as far as his keepers were concerned.
His juniors, however, were not so easily amused by House's antics, although it did take them a bit longer to admit there was a problem (Stockholm Syndrome much?). Six weeks into the obsession, and Cameron finally broke down into tears.
"You've got to make it stop!" she said, as if Foreman and Chase had more of a chance at doing so than herself.
"Like we have a chance..." they both began, which led to the familiar refrain of "Jinx, you owe me a coke." Chase was already a six-pack in debt to Foreman, and a pack and a half to Cameron. They'd been working together far too long.
In the conference room, there were pictures everywhere, of Church, of Wilson, of Cuddy, of themselves, tacked onto any available surface. The coffee pot was almost totally obscured, and Cameron's desk (by default, no one else would sit there for fear of being attacked by House's mail) was a morass of picture frames.
Alone, serene, sat House's desk, untouched by picture or frame. The surrounding walls, however, were quite a different story. Wilson's office, too, had been declared a demilitarized zone, if only because the various knickknacks, toys, and tchotchkes would have rebelled. Everything would be lost in the ensuing riot. It was not a chance House was willing to take. Then what would he have to torture Wilson with, when things got rough?
What, indeed. Pictures snapped in the kitchen as Wilson puttered about making dinner. In the living room, their son draped across his knees, the two of them watching some inane children's show with rapt attention. In the hallway, as he refolded the towels in the precise way that he expected the towels to be folded. In the bathroom, cuffs rolled up so as not to get his shirt wet as he bathed the child, as he ended up even more soaked than the bathee. In the bedroom, curled into a ball of Jimmy, snoring the not-so-peaceful sleep of the worrying, harried mother.
But the boy was and would continue to be House's favorite subject. House saw himself sometimes hiding behind those dark curls, and then, with a tilt of the head, he would find himself looking at Cuddy. A wrinkled nose, and her mother was present; a tense of the jaw, and his father was in evidence. Sometimes, it only took a darkening of the eyes and a drawing down of the brows, and inexplicably he found himself looking at Jimmy Wilson in the guise of his son.
And then, at other times, it was Church and only Church he saw, and House loved those pictures best. The personality that would later become a person was fascinating to him, in a way that very few things every really fascinated him.
The weird sense of humor that started at two years (and before), would be seen again and again, as would the sudden flashes of anger, quickly extinguished. A need to please, a need to be onstage, and a need for attention were also there, but there was also a stunning independence, so unlike the admitted (under duress) co-dependence of his fathers.
Church in the park, chasing after the ducks with hell in his eyes. Church, being chased by the ducks, squealing gleefully. Church, exhausted from running, sucking happily on a popsicle. Church, giving dirty looks to strangers who stopped by to comment on his overwhelming adorableness. Church, curls plastered to his head, laughing and splashing in the rain. Church, asleep in the back seat, a towel wrapped around his shoulders.
He could take a million pictures and still never get to the essence of the child, and in a larger sense, his family and extended family. Yet, as each year passed, it didn't stop him from trying. There was something hiding just out of sight, it seemed to him, and if he could just snap the right picture, he'd find it.
In another time, Wilson would have filled him in (You think that somehow you can pinpoint exactly what it is that fills you with joy, but you can't. It's unexplainable, unquantifiable, and you'll never be able to solve it, no matter how hard you try), but marriage was changing Wilson as much as it was changing House. Sometimes, he'd finally realized, House simply needed to figure things out on his own.
Years passed, like they do, and House switched back and forth between all of his obsessions, to keep his mind free for that most important of all his obsessions. Nevertheless, those little drugstore cameras got a little fancier over time, but one was never far from House's hands.
The pictures that swallowed the Diagnostics Department and Cuddy's office--and much of the hospital, as Church was surprisingly popular with much of the staff-- were regularly added to or replaced, according to House's whims. New fellows came and went, and their pictures were added to the mix, and then slowly subtracted as they too went out on their own, although none were loved so well as that first matching set.
And, as can be expected, Church House grew. And grew. And grew. From fat, chirpy baby to roly-poly toddler; from loud, obnoxious kindergartner to solemn, obnoxious adolescent.
Somehow (thanks to Wilson), he made it into his teens, finally growing into his dark, throaty voice, eyes dancing between sly devilry and piercing intelligence. His sharp, sarcastic tongue was softened only a bit by handsome features beneath dark short-cropped curls that defied their owner at every turn. He was, by everyone's reckoning, a good-looking and well-mannered (if a bit arrogant) young man.
"Stop squirming, you two," Church called, and the House men in question obediently stopped squirming. They'd never agreed on a thing before his birth, and they weren't likely to agree on anything now that Blythe wasn't around, except the fact that Church was the center of their respective and otherwise completely non-overlapping universes.
Church had somehow caught them sitting within arm's length of one another, and something inside him called for him to capture the moment. It seemed to him that Grandpa House was getting on in years and Pop wasn't likely to be getting any younger, either.
House had never told him the whys and wherefores of all the animosity between them, and he probably didn't really want to know. But for one shining moment, on the front steps of his grandparent's house, House and Grandpa were suddenly transformed into people who almost liked each other.
House, slouching elegantly in bare feet, for once unconscious of the prosthetic leg, shelling peanuts and taking surreptitious swigs from the beer that was secreted away from any prying Jimmy eyes. John, looking deceptively straight and solid, sucking the head of a crawfish, stealing his son's beer and keeping an ear out for the concerned son-in-law.
The picture was one of many taken that weekend and House never said a word about any of them, especially that particular one. Yet, when the photos were developed, that was the only one allowed to grace House's otherwise-pristine desk.
He kept coming back to it, over the following months and years. His eyes might drift over it for weeks, and then he would see it again as if for the first time. There was some truth there, something so basic and simple that he never could put it into words.
His son was grown, a man for all intents and purposes, and there were hundreds of pictures of them together, if not in the photograph itself, at least in each other's company. There was only this one picture of himself and his father that he could find that didn't feel forced.
House could almost, if only to himself, consider the possibility that he was and had been a good parent. A good father.
"Snap out of it, old man," a light hand on his shoulder that turned into a surreptitious hug.
"Why aren't you in class?"
"Why aren't you working?"
The two remaining House men smiled identical mischievous smiles at one another, and House inclined his head in defeat, "Touche."
Church smiled suddenly, his eyes lighting on the picture at his father's desk. "Hey, I forgot about that picture. You had it all this time?"
House resisted the knee-jerk urge to lie at being caught at something that might be construed as remotely emotional. "It's a good picture," he said, a touch more defensive than was absolutely necessary.
"Eh, it could've been better," his son replied, but House recognized the distracted tone in his voice, the barest turn of the head that kept him from having to look a person in the eyes.
"I need feeding, sir," Church murmured, sliding out of his reverie, "I am incapable of eating on my own. Feel up to it?"
"You're incapable of paying on your own."
"Well, I'd buy your lunch, but it's your money anyway. Defeats the purpose, right?"
"We could always bum off your mother."
"You are a cunning, evil man. I like that about you."
As House grabbed his coat, Church once again turned his attention to a certain picture. "Remember those pictures you took of Jimmy, a whole year's worth or something, and you took them all with the leftover message cameras from my Bar Mitzvah?"
A year's worth of Wilson's pissiest faces, all inscribed with the pre-exposed message "Mazel Tov!". House wasn't likely to forget a project that good and that annoying. The kid was up to something. "You have an idea?"
"An awful idea. I have a wonderful, awful idea." That dark head moved suspiciously left, then right. When he saw that all was clear, Church asked, "I need help finding some of those really crappy wedding cameras."
House barely caught himself from dropping his jaw on the floor. Mildly, he inquired, "Something you want to tell me?"
Eyes rolled heavenward in an Ode to Jimmy, Church sighed, "Don't be more of an asshole than you can help. I'm trying to prove a point to Jer about the nature of our relationship. It's disturbingly crowded."
Pause. House was uncomfortable in his husband's traditional role of Mother Confessor, but he soldiered on manfully. "Oh?"
Church laughed his rich, deep laugh, patting his father's arm soothingly. "Poor Papa. Nothing like that, moron. Him and that damned laptop."
Ah, now this he could understand, and even sympathize with. "Come along, my son, and I will happily learn you in the ways of our people."
"Petty revenge? Overt manipulation? Just plain ol' meanness?"
"You're a fast learner."
As alike as they were different, the two men headed off shoulder to shoulder to implement their (admittedly juvenile and yet stunningly effective) scheme. Despite whatever disappointment House may have felt at his son's refusal to go into medicine, he had never shown it.
Yet, in this small, simple thing--and in all the other small, simple things he had taught Church over the years--he felt the pride of a father who knows that his legacy is being carried on, that his life will somehow be fulfilled long after he is gone.
Church House is his father's son, and his obsessions start out much the same. Innocently enough.
Author: simple__man
Pairing: House/Wilson
Word Count: 3430
Rating: G, and yet,
Warning: kid!fic, OC, and mild cursings
Summary: Simple thing really, natural even, to take pictures of one's offspring for future reference. Annoys the hell out of one's juniors (and keepers) as well, and hell, what's that if not a bonus?
A/N: This fic belongs to the Church-verse. If you're unfamiliar with it, you're welcome to check out previous installments at my fic journal simple__stuff. Long story short, Cuddy has a kid, House provides half the necessary components of same, Cuddy freaks out, and House and Wilson raise the kid together. Special thanks to George Lopez's album "Team Leader" which had the bit on disposable cameras. Blame him for this. He has more money.
It started out innocently enough--most of House's obsessions did.
Who knows exactly how the obsession started, although House could probably track it back to the exact instant, if we let him. We know it was the boy's second birthday, and we know that it only happened because House was, as usual, running late.
That morning, Wilson had said, "Bring the cameras, I've got everything else," but he'd said it while standing around completely without clothes on, and did he honestly think House was concentrating on whatever he was blathering about?
Besides, that exchange had occurred at six o'clock in the a.m., and it was now eight o'clock in the p.m, and in between these times House's mind had been somewhat occupied. Patient dying, as per usual, but every case was as tricky or trickier than the last and he'd been just a little caught up.
Never mind that Wilson somehow ran his entire department, saw his own patients, consulted on any number of cases, did his clinic duty, attended board and transplant meetings, and, oh yeah, made sure everything was ready for the little rat's natal day celebration. Jimmy had always been an overachiever. Besides, it didn't take much to diagnose cancer, right? Everything fairly straightforward. Not like his cases. Not at all.
As House was trying to convince himself that he had a leg to stand on (so to speak), he was also speeding to the nearest drugstore. Wilson was many things, most of them very good things, but one thing he most assuredly was not, was forgiving where it came to fuck-ups that involved the child. House had learned this the hard way, which is actually a very funny story, but for another time.
Ordinarily, Wilson's over-protectiveness where it came to the boy was a much-appreciated fact of life, given that the kid would probably be dead already if he'd had only House and Cuddy to count on to keep him happy and well-fed and, y'know, alive.
Of course, Cuddy had more than likely brought the cake and ice cream just as instructed, and was, even now, being lovingly accepted into the bosom of his family. Bitch.
It wasn't his fault, anyway. As usual, everything could be traced back to Wilson.
Upon the brat's birth, Wilson had purchased one of those spiffy, overpriced cameras that always managed to somehow get itself left behind. If it did happen to make the trip, then someone would invariably leave the lens cap on at the most desired moment (i.e., just as the spawn was divesting itself of all its garments, or Grandpa House was acting particularly goofy, or Jimmy was caught looking entirely too edible).
Barring that, it would run out of film, be sat upon, burrow under the child's toys, or find some other way to wriggle out of doing the work for which it was designed. Thus Cuddy always lovingly referred to it as "House", and House always lovingly kicked it under the nearest piece of furniture.
The video camera also suffered from the same disease as its coworker--never being where it was wanted when it was wanted. Besides, the damned child was always doing something insufferably cute just when the twice-damned camera had been left off the charger. Even if he had remembered to grab the camera(s), they probably would have found some way to screw things up for him.
Wilson was dead serious about birthdays, and there was only one punishment that fit the crime of screwing up one of said. He was already on short rations for daring to suggest that Mrs. Wilson's seventy-sixth was not reason enough for him to leave the peace and relative comfort of his domicile. Should he be found guilty of contempt of birthday once again, so soon after, then a sentence of absolutely no sex at all for the foreseeable future was a definite possibility.
Necessity is the mother of invention, or something like that, and a sackful of disposable cameras was just about as desperate a bid as any House had ever made. There had to be some sort of grading system for effort, right?
Inside his Plastic Bag O' Desperation resided every type of disposable camera known to man. The standard Funsaver camera, of course, but there was also black & white, underwater (in case of flood), flash, PowerFlash, indoor/outdoor, and digital (among others). There was even a spectacularly grandiose one-time use video camera--price tag $29.99, and wouldn't Jimmy shit a brick over that one?
Speeding to his destination (the much-reviled McDonald's closest to their home, which he and Wilson used to frequent quite often and happily before the child made it a federal offense to pass by without stopping for chicken parts), House could only hope that it was enough to keep him in Jimmy's good graces.
Surprisingly enough, it was. Wilson, having known House longer and in more senses of the word than most people, had made a stop by the House-Wilson hacienda on his way over, specifically for the purpose of grabbing both cameras.
Due to the fact that their son was directly spawned from evil, however, he had only managed to find one of the aforesaid before the inevitable temper tantrum had perforated his eardrums, thereby forcing him into the vehicle and on the road before someone small and loud ended up buried beneath the rose bushes.
He'd grabbed the video camera, of course, and it was, as should have been expected, dead as a sack of hammers. House, instead of being the Shit Who Forgot the Cameras, found himself immediately catapulted into the strange territory of being the Husband Who Not Only Remembered Cameras but Also Was Thoughtful and Brought Enough for Everyone.
Hail the Conquering Hero, and all that. There were kisses, not all of them from Wilson.
The kid alone seemed unimpressed, until House bribed him with Skittles. After downing a mouthful of same, candy juice dribbling down his admittedly adorable chin, his small son was ripe for having his picture taken. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary at a kid's birthday party, but it was just so damned cute. He was unable to resist the dual charms of a good-looking kid and a cheap drugstore camera.
He'd been torturing Stacy and even Julie with pictures of the boy for some time now, but he'd never felt compelled to take pictures for his own enjoyment. He had trusted himself to remember the big things, the important things, and left the baby books and photo books and scrapbooks and computer slideshows to Wilson.
Suddenly, however, he found that he wanted to remember this incredibly small moment forever and always, for himself, and he wanted to be able to hold the memory in his hands years from now, when the brat was no longer a brat but a full-grown House-shaped thing.
Thus was an obsession born.
He didn't realize it was an obsession at first, although he went through four cameras all by his lonesome (and stole a fifth from Cuddy). Wilson did, though, because that's what Wilson did (and will always do, forever without end, amen). He didn't say a word, though, because anything that kept House and his father from each other's throats was considered to be a Very Good Thing. Besides, there really couldn't be too many pictures of Church in the world, could there?
Au contraire, mon frere, as Wilson was found moaning to Cuddy a mere three weeks later, the two of them holed up in her office.
"You've got to make it stop," he said, as if Cuddy had more of a chance at doing so than himself.
"Like I have more of a chance at making him stop than you do!" she snapped, trying in vain to straighten the mess of picture frames that were currently cluttering her not-so-immaculate desk.
"He's out of control! And it's spreading..." he let his voice trail off threateningly, but Cuddy didn't need the reminder. There had already been incidents of pictures of herself leaking out to the general population, not all of them unflattering. She'd had more requests for dinner and drinks in the past three weeks than she cared to count.
"I think he's trying to set me up!" the words were out of her mouth before she could throw her hand over it to stop them.
Wilson narrowed his eyes, and almost-nearly growled, "There weren't suggestive pictures of you pasted all over the Oncology Lounge."
A sniff, an aborted giggle, and then, "Yes, well, you deserved it."
"I absolutely did not!" Wilson began, but Cuddy was already raising a hand to stop him.
"Admit it. This is better than anything else we've been put through, and he's quite good at it."
Wilson's mouth pursed in that attractively unattractive way that it did (which was House's current subject, although Wilson didn't yet know it), and he reluctantly agreed. "He took Church to the park three times last week. Without complaining."
And so it was settled, then. At least as far as his keepers were concerned.
His juniors, however, were not so easily amused by House's antics, although it did take them a bit longer to admit there was a problem (Stockholm Syndrome much?). Six weeks into the obsession, and Cameron finally broke down into tears.
"You've got to make it stop!" she said, as if Foreman and Chase had more of a chance at doing so than herself.
"Like we have a chance..." they both began, which led to the familiar refrain of "Jinx, you owe me a coke." Chase was already a six-pack in debt to Foreman, and a pack and a half to Cameron. They'd been working together far too long.
In the conference room, there were pictures everywhere, of Church, of Wilson, of Cuddy, of themselves, tacked onto any available surface. The coffee pot was almost totally obscured, and Cameron's desk (by default, no one else would sit there for fear of being attacked by House's mail) was a morass of picture frames.
Alone, serene, sat House's desk, untouched by picture or frame. The surrounding walls, however, were quite a different story. Wilson's office, too, had been declared a demilitarized zone, if only because the various knickknacks, toys, and tchotchkes would have rebelled. Everything would be lost in the ensuing riot. It was not a chance House was willing to take. Then what would he have to torture Wilson with, when things got rough?
What, indeed. Pictures snapped in the kitchen as Wilson puttered about making dinner. In the living room, their son draped across his knees, the two of them watching some inane children's show with rapt attention. In the hallway, as he refolded the towels in the precise way that he expected the towels to be folded. In the bathroom, cuffs rolled up so as not to get his shirt wet as he bathed the child, as he ended up even more soaked than the bathee. In the bedroom, curled into a ball of Jimmy, snoring the not-so-peaceful sleep of the worrying, harried mother.
But the boy was and would continue to be House's favorite subject. House saw himself sometimes hiding behind those dark curls, and then, with a tilt of the head, he would find himself looking at Cuddy. A wrinkled nose, and her mother was present; a tense of the jaw, and his father was in evidence. Sometimes, it only took a darkening of the eyes and a drawing down of the brows, and inexplicably he found himself looking at Jimmy Wilson in the guise of his son.
And then, at other times, it was Church and only Church he saw, and House loved those pictures best. The personality that would later become a person was fascinating to him, in a way that very few things every really fascinated him.
The weird sense of humor that started at two years (and before), would be seen again and again, as would the sudden flashes of anger, quickly extinguished. A need to please, a need to be onstage, and a need for attention were also there, but there was also a stunning independence, so unlike the admitted (under duress) co-dependence of his fathers.
Church in the park, chasing after the ducks with hell in his eyes. Church, being chased by the ducks, squealing gleefully. Church, exhausted from running, sucking happily on a popsicle. Church, giving dirty looks to strangers who stopped by to comment on his overwhelming adorableness. Church, curls plastered to his head, laughing and splashing in the rain. Church, asleep in the back seat, a towel wrapped around his shoulders.
He could take a million pictures and still never get to the essence of the child, and in a larger sense, his family and extended family. Yet, as each year passed, it didn't stop him from trying. There was something hiding just out of sight, it seemed to him, and if he could just snap the right picture, he'd find it.
In another time, Wilson would have filled him in (You think that somehow you can pinpoint exactly what it is that fills you with joy, but you can't. It's unexplainable, unquantifiable, and you'll never be able to solve it, no matter how hard you try), but marriage was changing Wilson as much as it was changing House. Sometimes, he'd finally realized, House simply needed to figure things out on his own.
Years passed, like they do, and House switched back and forth between all of his obsessions, to keep his mind free for that most important of all his obsessions. Nevertheless, those little drugstore cameras got a little fancier over time, but one was never far from House's hands.
The pictures that swallowed the Diagnostics Department and Cuddy's office--and much of the hospital, as Church was surprisingly popular with much of the staff-- were regularly added to or replaced, according to House's whims. New fellows came and went, and their pictures were added to the mix, and then slowly subtracted as they too went out on their own, although none were loved so well as that first matching set.
And, as can be expected, Church House grew. And grew. And grew. From fat, chirpy baby to roly-poly toddler; from loud, obnoxious kindergartner to solemn, obnoxious adolescent.
Somehow (thanks to Wilson), he made it into his teens, finally growing into his dark, throaty voice, eyes dancing between sly devilry and piercing intelligence. His sharp, sarcastic tongue was softened only a bit by handsome features beneath dark short-cropped curls that defied their owner at every turn. He was, by everyone's reckoning, a good-looking and well-mannered (if a bit arrogant) young man.
"Stop squirming, you two," Church called, and the House men in question obediently stopped squirming. They'd never agreed on a thing before his birth, and they weren't likely to agree on anything now that Blythe wasn't around, except the fact that Church was the center of their respective and otherwise completely non-overlapping universes.
Church had somehow caught them sitting within arm's length of one another, and something inside him called for him to capture the moment. It seemed to him that Grandpa House was getting on in years and Pop wasn't likely to be getting any younger, either.
House had never told him the whys and wherefores of all the animosity between them, and he probably didn't really want to know. But for one shining moment, on the front steps of his grandparent's house, House and Grandpa were suddenly transformed into people who almost liked each other.
House, slouching elegantly in bare feet, for once unconscious of the prosthetic leg, shelling peanuts and taking surreptitious swigs from the beer that was secreted away from any prying Jimmy eyes. John, looking deceptively straight and solid, sucking the head of a crawfish, stealing his son's beer and keeping an ear out for the concerned son-in-law.
The picture was one of many taken that weekend and House never said a word about any of them, especially that particular one. Yet, when the photos were developed, that was the only one allowed to grace House's otherwise-pristine desk.
He kept coming back to it, over the following months and years. His eyes might drift over it for weeks, and then he would see it again as if for the first time. There was some truth there, something so basic and simple that he never could put it into words.
His son was grown, a man for all intents and purposes, and there were hundreds of pictures of them together, if not in the photograph itself, at least in each other's company. There was only this one picture of himself and his father that he could find that didn't feel forced.
House could almost, if only to himself, consider the possibility that he was and had been a good parent. A good father.
"Snap out of it, old man," a light hand on his shoulder that turned into a surreptitious hug.
"Why aren't you in class?"
"Why aren't you working?"
The two remaining House men smiled identical mischievous smiles at one another, and House inclined his head in defeat, "Touche."
Church smiled suddenly, his eyes lighting on the picture at his father's desk. "Hey, I forgot about that picture. You had it all this time?"
House resisted the knee-jerk urge to lie at being caught at something that might be construed as remotely emotional. "It's a good picture," he said, a touch more defensive than was absolutely necessary.
"Eh, it could've been better," his son replied, but House recognized the distracted tone in his voice, the barest turn of the head that kept him from having to look a person in the eyes.
"I need feeding, sir," Church murmured, sliding out of his reverie, "I am incapable of eating on my own. Feel up to it?"
"You're incapable of paying on your own."
"Well, I'd buy your lunch, but it's your money anyway. Defeats the purpose, right?"
"We could always bum off your mother."
"You are a cunning, evil man. I like that about you."
As House grabbed his coat, Church once again turned his attention to a certain picture. "Remember those pictures you took of Jimmy, a whole year's worth or something, and you took them all with the leftover message cameras from my Bar Mitzvah?"
A year's worth of Wilson's pissiest faces, all inscribed with the pre-exposed message "Mazel Tov!". House wasn't likely to forget a project that good and that annoying. The kid was up to something. "You have an idea?"
"An awful idea. I have a wonderful, awful idea." That dark head moved suspiciously left, then right. When he saw that all was clear, Church asked, "I need help finding some of those really crappy wedding cameras."
House barely caught himself from dropping his jaw on the floor. Mildly, he inquired, "Something you want to tell me?"
Eyes rolled heavenward in an Ode to Jimmy, Church sighed, "Don't be more of an asshole than you can help. I'm trying to prove a point to Jer about the nature of our relationship. It's disturbingly crowded."
Pause. House was uncomfortable in his husband's traditional role of Mother Confessor, but he soldiered on manfully. "Oh?"
Church laughed his rich, deep laugh, patting his father's arm soothingly. "Poor Papa. Nothing like that, moron. Him and that damned laptop."
Ah, now this he could understand, and even sympathize with. "Come along, my son, and I will happily learn you in the ways of our people."
"Petty revenge? Overt manipulation? Just plain ol' meanness?"
"You're a fast learner."
As alike as they were different, the two men headed off shoulder to shoulder to implement their (admittedly juvenile and yet stunningly effective) scheme. Despite whatever disappointment House may have felt at his son's refusal to go into medicine, he had never shown it.
Yet, in this small, simple thing--and in all the other small, simple things he had taught Church over the years--he felt the pride of a father who knows that his legacy is being carried on, that his life will somehow be fulfilled long after he is gone.
Church House is his father's son, and his obsessions start out much the same. Innocently enough.