You hadn’t even meant it seriously.

It was just something you rambled about one afternoon in the diagnostics office — a passing comment about a vintage first edition of a medical text, bound in oxblood leather, signed by a 19th-century anatomist you'd nerded out over. Obscure. Out of print. Basically impossible to get.

“They only made like… fifty copies ever,” you’d said with a half-laugh. “It sold for twelve grand last auction. I’ll just keep printing the Wikipedia page like a loser.”

House didn’t even look up from his ball bouncing off the whiteboard. "Sounds riveting." You assumed that was the end of it.

So when he drops a plain, nondescript box on your desk two weeks later with zero fanfare—no ribbon, no note—you blink at it, confused.

“Forgot to give you that. Been collecting dust in my bag,” he mutters, already halfway out the door.

You open it. Your breath stutters. Inside is the book. The actual book.

First edition. Crisp spine. Embossed gold title. Your name is penciled lightly on a Post-It like it’s just another case file.

“What the hell, House?”

He pauses in the doorway. "Relax. It's not like I need rent money."

You look at him—really look—and there’s no joke in his eyes. No smug smile. Just quiet observation, and the barest lift of one brow like he’s waiting for you to start crying so he can pretend to be annoyed.