Hello everyone! This is a shamelessly indulgent one-shot, mainly written because I love reading about the House/Wilson dynamic from an external point of view and there isn't enough of that around for my taste (if you've written anything like it please feel free to refer me to it, self-promoting is totally encouraged).

I truly hope you'll enjoy it, and I want to thank you most sincerely for checking it out. Of course, if anyone finds it in them to take the time to review they'll have my deepest gratitude ^^

Although this is supposed to be a one-shot I certainly wouldn't be adverse to delve a little more in this universe, so don't hesitate to tell me if you'd be interested. If I continue it may or not become slash, so please also feel free to indicate whether that would please you.

Finally (and I apologize for the size of this author note!) as much as I love the English language I certainly can't pretend to be as precise as a native speaker, so please forgive me for any grammatical mistakes or confusing structures. I'll love you forever if you actually warn me about them, by the way.

As a kid, Chase had wanted nothing more than to be a hero.

He used to spend a good part of his nights lying in bed with his eyes open, staring at the perfect darkness around him as he made up convoluted scenarios, drawing from his vast knowledge of westerns, war stories and video games to spice up the circumstances of the rescue. He liked taking his time to find the perfect storyline, obsessively deciding on every little detail of his adventures; but no matter how intricate the décors were, the punch line stayed the same.

He saved the person in danger, sometimes the jerk that kept picking on him at school – who usually apologized while crying a lot as Chase put his own life in danger to drag him back from the ridge of a deep canyon – sometimes Miss Layer, the prettiest teacher of the school, who usually thanked him with a light kiss on the cheek, sometimes one of the little brothers or sisters he had taken hours to make up as well – he had four, Clara, Joseph, Mark and Fiona, and they got in a lot of trouble.

And then he went home and his father came back early from work for once, and he was first worried and then proud, sometimes even ruffling his hair.

And his mother smiled her softest smile at him, the one that persuaded Chase that she must be the most beautiful person in the world, more beautiful even than Miss Layer or the kindly-faced Madonna in his medallion.

The consequences of his daydreams had brutally come to the housekeeper's attention the day he had decided the cat of the household needed to be rescued from a tree on which she had obviously climbed too far. Chase fell from the tree, almost broke his neck and indeed broke two of his left ribs. He had spent the better part of an afternoon the next week in a stiflingly warm office where a round man with a kindly face and a respectable beard had attentively listened to his most interesting scenarios before congratulating him on his vivacious imagination and sending him on his way with two candies Chase had only accepted to be polite – they were yellow, obviously lemon-flavoured and Chase didn't like the sourness. He hadn't thrown them away directly after leaving the office, though, because Joseph loved those.

To this day Chase ignored what the letter his parents had received two days later explained, but he hadn't been sent back to the psychiatrist's office. It didn't matter anyway – Chase had seen that the cat had never needed him to save her from that tree. His reveries had stopped.

And nineteen years later, on a rainy morning, when an unknown man barged in their conference room and proceeded to threaten Chase's cantankerous boss with a gun, being a hero was the last thing on his mind.

It was actually a bit unfair, reflected Foreman as he stood gazing at the room where his boss was being frantically operated on, that the first time he could look down on the man was also one he wasn't allowed to feel good about without also feeling guilty. He shot a glance at the woman standing next to him, wondering if he could share this thought with her and deciding against it as he noticed her hands were clinging to her elbows, knuckles whitened by the pressure she exerted on the abused muscles – she might actually bruise herself if she kept at it.

He sighed a little; Cameron was certainly the only person he knew able to sincerely worry for the man after three months spent "working" – slaving away – for him; personally, after one month in this fellowship he was just about ready to consider the shooter had done them a favour, no matter how horrifying the thought might seem.

His hope for an enriching if not pleasant experience along the world-renowned diagnostician had fast waned and only his fear of what abandoning the position would mean for his career kept him here, being regularly insulted and exploited by a madman. House was simply insufferable and Foreman wondered, not for the first time, how Cameron could still feel any sympathy for the bastard, lame leg or not. The way Chase apparently managed to ignore everything but the very worst of their boss's idiosyncrasies, even though he had been working in PPTH the longest of them three, was maddening as well, not least because he didn't like thinking a spoilt rich kid could cope better than him under pressure. The blonde intensivist's stubborn attachment to the post was actually a bit of an enigma, as Foreman didn't think he liked House any more than he did – and with Rowan Chase as his father, he certainly didn't have the worries Foreman had about his livelihood.

Hours later, as he passed by the room House had been assigned to after the surgery in a hurried pace, having been relocated to the ICU for the time it took their boss to get better, he deliberately refused to acknowledge the mean little pinch of vindicatory satisfaction that wanted to make itself known as he saw the empty chair and the shelves devoid of any sympathy gifts, as many reminders that no one could possibly sincerely want the man to get better.

If she were pressed to tell the truth, Cameron would have to admit that she didn't like her boss very much. The admiration she had felt for him before they had met, when Dr House was still a title she only came across in papers and journals, had mostly wilted; the main feelings he evoked in her nowadays generally oscillated between deep annoyance and deeper compassion.

She knew her two colleagues didn't understand how she could possibly feel anything other than resentment for the man who made their lives hell on a daily basis, chalking it up to a weird form of Stockholm syndrome or, more annoyingly, to her being a woman; the truth was she couldn't help seeing a bit of Anthony in House. Her boss's eyes, when turned towards his employees, were either disdainfully cool or passionately angry; but sometimes as he looked away she caught a glimpse of something – of a pain, as cliché as it sounded – that irremediably reminded her of her dying husband and then she was just a little more considerate for the day, which never failed to infuriate House and make him verbally abuse her that much more viciously until she quit trying.

Right now it was easier than ever to feel compassionate, mainly because the man was even more injured than usual, though the fact that he was heavily sedated and thus unlikely to be able to insult her capacities as a doctor or to make a salacious remark certainly didn't hurt. He wouldn't stay unconscious for long, however, and if she knew him at all he was going to find a way to make a nuisance of himself as soon as the drugs had mostly left his system, two gunshot wounds and an interdiction to leave the bed or not. The best thing for all of them, she eventually decided, was to find him a case; and with this thought in mind, she paid extra attention to every rumour concerning strange symptoms in the ICU patients and carefully went through the consult requests arriving every day to the diagnostics office. Half a day later she triumphantly paged her colleagues to House's room, four blue files under her arm as she made her own way there – the name on each of them read "Rebecca Adler".

An hour-long ride away, a brown-haired man quickly seized his luggage from the airport's carousel, calling for a cab as soon as he left the modern building. The cabby, a laid-back middle-aged man with fingers slightly yellowed by tobacco and a pleasant smile, agreed to make his way as quickly as possible to the Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, his smile turning into an appropriately sympathetic expression as he enquired as to whether his client had someone to visit. The man answered to his hands that he was a doctor there, his voice a bit scratchy – as if he hadn't spoken to anyone or even drunk anything in a while, and the cabby leaned a bit forward to turn the radio on his favourite station, understanding that this ride would be spent in silence.

Foreman leant back against his chair a little, gritting his teeth, torn between resenting Cameron for making sure that he had only had thirty-or-so hours away from his boss – rather than the week he had hoped for – and acknowledging that House wouldn't have let them in peace during his recovery, thus it was better for them to have a case to act as a buffer between them and the man; especially as he was slowly waned off the most efficient painkillers and his aches came back.

It also incommensurably annoyed him that House, weakly reclining against two extra pillows, a third beneath his bad leg, his face washed out by the blood he had lost, could apparently still effortlessly exert his authority over the three fellows, sarcastically shooting down their propositions and berating them for anything that went wrong with their rapidly-deteriorating patient like this was any other case. The only concession he had made to his current state was to relinquish his beloved whiteboard – which had been a pain to get to House's room, and Foreman wasn't looking forward to having to bring it back up to the Diagnostics office – to Chase, but even then he was being annoying, snapping as soon as anyone even temporarily obscured his view of it, which happened regularly as the room was pretty crowded with the four of them in there.

One could have thought that being shot twice would humble the man, but House was being even more abrasive than usual and Foreman had quickly been reduced to throwing out any idea that came to his mind from behind clenched teeth and praying for an interruption – any kind, even the patient crashing again and the subsequent simultaneous thrills of their pagers – as the differential excruciatingly enfolded.

He got his wish in what was probably the last way he could ever have imagined as the glass door of the room was quickly slid open and a brown-haired man he had never seen before entered the room, his face grim and tense.

"House."

Foreman straightened a little, almost unconsciously, seeing Cameron take a step forward and Chase nonchalantly sliding his hands out of his pockets – apparently he wasn't the only one to temporarily associate strangers coming into their presence with someone getting shot. He turned his head to see how House would react to the intrusion, wondering whether it was totally preposterous to expect to see anything other than the man's customary anger in his expression, such as a little apprehension, and was thus treated to the never-seen-before sight of his boss's eyes widening in what was a small but undeniable show of surprise.

"Wilson."

House's tone of voice was perfectly neutral, which only made Foreman's curiosity about the intruder grow – his boss didn't do neutral.

"What are you doing here?"

The million-dollar question, Foreman reflected as he turned back to look at the man – Wilson – who was now stepping into the room. He quickly detailed him, trying to find some clues as to why the man had come in. Casual clothes, including a green polo whose pockets he had shoved his hands in as he came forward, a tired face, slightly messed up hair – this plus the piece of luggage the man had left at the doorstep seemed to indicate that whoever this was, he had come straight from an airport or a train station. Had the man come especially to see House? It was Foreman's eyes' turn to widen.

"Thought you still had two weeks left fucking your way through the far continent's needier and sexier nurses."

This kind of statement had pretty much lost its shock value two weeks ago, but the stranger's – Wilson's – total lack of reaction was noteworthy nonetheless.

"Cuddy called me." The other man's voice was a bit rough, like his throat was parched. He had made his way over to the bed by now, so Foreman leaned forward a little to be able to see the two men's expressions. "How are you doing?"

Foreman almost rolled his eyes, and from the corner of his eyes he saw Chase cringe the slightest bit – this kind of question either led to an exceptionally acerbic answer or to a long rant about everything that was currently wrong in House's miserable world. He was to be surprised once more, however.

"Just peachy. They have me on the good stuff."

This time Foreman couldn't keep his eyebrows from shooting up across his forehead; he was idly wondering if he had accidentally crossed his way to another dimension – and if so if he could stay here, considering his boss had basically just been the most agreeable he had ever seen him – when what was a ridiculous theory suddenly gained more weight at the unknown man's next actions.

"I'm so fucking glad you're alright." And then Wilson took his hands out of his pockets and suddenly the only thing Foreman could see of the two men was two heads of hair and the dark green polo being stretched on the stranger's back as he engulfed House, bastard extraordinary, in a tight hug. He heard a sharp breath being taken on his right and glanced at Cameron, seeing her instinctively grabbing her right hand with her left and knowing that she at least was remembering the same thing he was – the first and last time she had tried to touch her boss, just a slight pat on his shoulder as she was bringing him some coffee on a particularly difficult pain day and he had batted her hand away, with enough violence to make a little of the coffee spill over on the office's carpet and almost scald the young woman.

Almost reluctantly he turned back to House, vaguely hoping that the man was still sedated enough that he wouldn't be able to cause too much damage. The blue eyes were widening a little once again, but as Wilson didn't seem to be letting go anytime soon, he slowly raised his left arm and – Foreman discreetly pinched his thigh – made a feeble attempt at hugging the man back.

"Glad to see five months away haven't taken away your propensity to overreact and worry yourself to death."

By now Foreman was much too pole-axed to react to the fact that in spite of House's ironic tone there seemed to be something almost fond in his remark, but he caught and understood Chase's mouth twitching at the weird little giggle that then escaped Wilson – it was true they knew nothing about the man, but he certainly didn't seem like a giggly type of person.

"Glad to hear your love for sarcasm is still alive and well."

"Part of my charm." House retorted, trying a bit too late to restore some sense to Foreman's universe by slowly pushing the other man off, clearly uncomfortable with the extended human contact.

The blue eyes then met Foreman's as Wilson straightened, and if he hadn't known his boss was constantly hyperaware of his surroundings he might have thought House had forgotten about their presence in the last five minutes.

"By the way, meet my team."

Considering how the other man's left hand twitched as he took in the three fellows' presence, he at least hadn't been consciously aware that they had an audience. He blushed a little, and as he very politely introduced himself Foreman wondered if he was more embarrassed to have been seen hugging the Grinch or to have totally ignored them since his arrival.

"Ah, hello – you must be Doctors Cameron, Chase and Foreman. It's a pleasure to meet you – I'm Doctor James Wilson."

"Boy-wonder oncologist." House added from the bed, and Foreman stopped trying to get his mind around the idea that House must have talked about them with the man for him to know their names as the echo the name Wilson had evoked in Foreman's memories ever since House had announced it aloud finally found a context – of course. He actually saw this name written almost as regularly as he saw House's; the man now pleasantly smiling at them and shaking their hands in turn was the renowned Head of Oncology of PPTH, owner of the office next to theirs and, apparently, House's friend. Pretty impressive résumé – and Foreman knew which item impressed him the most.

This could be getting very interesting, Foreman reflected as Dr Wilson matter-of-factly sat on the bed as he saw that both visitor chairs were taken and their boss impatiently signalled them to go back to the diagnostic, not noticing or not caring that his right hand brushed lightly against Wilson's thigh as he set it down.