Mmm. Lunch break.

[sabinetzin]

Title: Plans
Summary: House will try anything for Wilson's sake.
Fandom: House
Word Count: 878
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Pairing: House/Wilson, with bits of House/Bonnie, Wilson/Bonnie, and House/Cuddy
A/N: For house_fest. Circa House Training. Swear god I wrote four drafts of this freakin story, none of which bears any resemblance to this one. Perhaps I will do a making-of thing for it.



So Plan A didn't work. Of course, it never did, but that was the point of Plan A- to buy time to make better plans. Pretending to buy a house from Bonnie distracted Wilson for a grand total of twenty minutes, after which he went skipping merrily back to Cuddy. But, luckily, he'd formulated a really good Plan B, if "really good" could be defined as "heart-stoppingly stupid."

House knotted his tie clumsily, enjoying that mental image. He studied himself in the mirror – neater than usual, no holes in the shirt, pressed pants for once. Fuckable, yet casual. Upon further consideration, he got rid of the tie. Too suspicious.

Riding his bike out toward the restaurant, House idly wondered when it had come to this – trying to sabotage his best, probably only, friends' love lives – and why. If he were feeling self deprecating, he'd probably have decided that it was a misguided attempt to keep them lonely so they'd have to stay with him. Fortunately, introspection was not the order of the day, and his ponderings just lead back to thoughts of Cuddy's breasts.

He parked in a handicapped space, Bonnie waiting for him at the door. Making no attempt at concealment, he yanked a handful of flowers at random from the closest planter. Brushing off the dirt carelessly onto his pant leg, he offered them to Bonnie, who promptly deposited them in a nearby trash can.

House grinned, a gesture closer to a grimace than smile, and prepared to seduce his best friend's ex-wife.

"I wanted to apologize," he told her after they were seated.

"No, you didn't," she replied, voice level, not taking her eyes off the menu. "James put you up to it."

"What if I said I invited you out of my own accord?"

"Then you're lying," she said calmly, "or it's another trick. Or the world is coming to an end."

"You saw through my cunning ploy," House rejoined, opening his own menu.

"I thought you'd gotten all the information you wanted," Bonnie responded, "so this must be some new scheme."

He seized his fading chance. "But you came anyway."

"You're paying."

Screw Plan B. Time for Plan C. "We can either sit here and pretend not to hate each other for an extremely long dinner, or I can just tell you the plan, bribe you to go along with it, and be on my merry way."

"Why should we pretend not to hate each other?"

House rolled his eyes. "All the cool kids are doing it. Plus it would make the plan work better."

"Veal masala," Bonnie told the waiter, looking at House. "What is the plan?"

"Porterhouse. Medium. No sour cream on the potato. I'll give you two hundred to tell Wilson we slept together," he told her.

"Excellent choices," the waiter said, collecting the menus. "I'll do it for one fifty."

House opened his mouth to speak, but stopped, looking the waiter up and down. "Me and her, or me and you?"

"Doesn't make a difference to me," he replied, shrugging.

"Won't work," House decided, shaking his head. "But I'll keep you in mind for future projects." He shrugged again and left.

"You're in love with him," Bonnie said, eyes widening.

"The waiter?" House asked, looking in the direction of the kitchen. "Nice ass, but I wouldn't call it love."

"You're in love with James," she insisted. "It all makes so much sense now."

He squinted at her. "You're not going to take 'Am not' for an answer, are you?"

Bonnie outlined her words in large hand gestures, as if diagramming it for him. "You're trying to make him jealous."

He scoffed. "I think that much should be obvious."

"I haven't been with James in years. He doesn't give a damn who I sleep with, and you know it. You're trying to make him jealous that somebody else slept with you."

"Maybe I'm jealous somebody else is trying to sleep with Cuddy," he parried.

"You'd just barge in on her if that was true."

"Would not."

"New Years, the year after James and I got married. We went out with Lisa and a guy I worked with. You showed up ten minutes before midnight and managed to get him locked out on the roof while you snuck off with Lisa."

"Things I do when I'm high don’t count."

"If you want James, go to the source. You should be wasting your time trying to sleep with him, not me."

"She's off her medication," he told the waiter, who had just arrived with plates and a confused look. "She's having big gay delusions."

"I'll have mine to go," she said, picking her purse up from the floor. "I'll be outside waiting for a cab."

House handed a wad of cash to the waiter after she had gone, scribbling a phone number on the outermost bill. "Tell him she has herpes."

The money disappeared into his vest. "From sleeping with you?"

"Don't be cute. And bring me some steak sauce."

-

"James Wilson," the crisp answer came.

"I have whiskey and zombie movies."

There was a silence on the other end of the line. "I'll be there in half an hour."

There was more than one way to skin a cat, House decided.