You hadn’t even meant to say it during that lunch in the break room—just a passing comment about your favorite book. A title you thought no one else cared about.

House hadn’t said anything. He’d just raised a brow and gone back to his Vicodin, as usual. You figured he wasn’t listening.

Until three days later.

You walk into Diagnostics and freeze. The book is sitting on the edge of his cluttered desk—your favorite, unmistakably worn with a new spine crack. Read.

He doesn’t acknowledge it at first. Just taps his cane against the floor and flips through a file like nothing’s different.

“If the plot twist was supposed to be shocking, it failed.”

Your smile grows before you can stop it. He read it. He actually read it.

And you can’t help it—you pull up a chair beside him, already talking too fast about the ending.

He just smirks, letting you go on.