| |
The Economics of Truth: The Benefits of a Living System
by Tron
The Economics of Truth:
Benefits of a Living System
Why does life force change into our lives? It's disruptive, destructive and above all wearying. Change is horrible and cruel. It rips from us our comforts and our complacency. Our fragile psyches get smashed like a vase being dropped from the top of a cliff; our bodies become tough and gnarled like crab apple trees. It's not pretty or fun or safe. Why make us change when it hurts so much?
The answer is that the universe is employing a very peculiar brand of psychology: Tough Love.
We change, or we face extinction.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
It didn't matter how much scotch he drank or how many vicodin he popped, House still couldn't settle into his empty bed. His bad leg, after he fell to the hardwood floor to retrieve Wilson's key, hadn't stopped throbbing. And it only seemed to grow worse the more he sat still. His blood seemed to pound its way through partially collapsed veins adding to the lancing pain that seared its way up his nerves to his brain.
In the darkest hours of the night, House found himself pacing between the bathroom and living room. He turned back every time he saw his front door, the image of Wilson's back retreating through it like an abused dog, burning his weary eyelids. The pacing didn't help. The alcohol didn't help. Sleep didn't help. Vicodin didn't help. But the slapping of his bare feet on the dark hardwood floor gave him something else to concentrate on besides his pain and his fears.
Two hours after dawn, House's stormy eyes started eyeing the top shelf of his bookcase with something approaching lust. He began to pace closer to the bookshelf, like a big cat closing in on its prey.
At nine thirty, House took the stepladder from the kitchen and set it up next to the bookshelf. He climbed up and began searching for the pea-soup-green metal box that lay hidden behind the medical books with long, desperate sweeps of his arms. Books fell to the floor with heavy thuds.
The phone rang. Perfunctorily.
House made his way back down the ladder, almost falling, and sat on the floor with his prize. The phone was ignored. It was probably Wilson wanting to talk about the night before... House didn't even want to think about the night before. What had happened and, more specifically, what it meant.
"You've reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service," his voice on the answering machine said in a bored tone.
House maneuvered himself off the bare wood onto the carpet that lay in front of the fireplace he'd had boarded up before setting the green box between his outstretched legs. He looked like a child eating candy from a secret stash, or he would have if it hadn't been for the four-day-old beard and haunted look in his eyes. He fumbled with the lock on the box before opening it to reveal the hoarded medical supplies that he'd carefully collected his first weeks home after his leg surgery... back when he'd still been using morphine.
"If you feel you've reached this message in error," his voice continued to speak on the machine, the calm of the voice from the past a distant and discordant soundtrack to his agitation. "Go with it. Hang up. On three. One, two..."
He took out the strip of white rubber and tied it around his upper arm, his movements hurried and clumsy, before grabbing a sterile syringe and the clear bottle of morphine. The machine beeped and House heard a familiar female voice as he pushed the needle into the top of the bottle and drew the clear, color-less drug into the main chamber.
Not Wilson...
"House, pick up," Cuddy said, her voice tinny but sounding harassed as she usually did around her head diagnostician. "I know it's your day off and no doubt you've got lots of exciting plans, but I've got a case."
House put the bottle to one side, removing the air and bubbles with a flick of his finger, before he placed the tip of the needle at the crook of his arm just where he could see one of his veins, purple beneath his pale skin. He paused to get control of the trembling in his hands, so that he wouldn't have to make more than one puncture, but then he actually heard what Cuddy was saying.
"A sixteen-year-old girl presenting with cardiogenic shock," came the dean of medicine's voice. "No heart attacks."
House sighed, removing the needle from its place on his arm. He stared at his feet for a long second, his left hand clenching and un-clenching while his right still held the syringe.
The machine clicked off and House put the needle down on his coffee table before stripping himself of the band of rubber. He closed the lid of his green box before hauling himself up with the aid of the table and his couch. Taking his cane from the floor, House hobbled to his bedroom to get dressed. His leg still hurt like the alien from the movie 'Alien' was trying to rip it's way out of his leg with it's teeth and claws, but he couldn't do much about that now.
His ride to work was mostly spend trying not to think that he'd have to pass Wilson's office to get to his.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
House didn't even try to dissect his reasons for being relieved when Cuddy had intercepted him in the foyer and steered him up one floor, past the pathology lab and down the halls to where the sick girl's room was. House didn't really care where he was, just that he hadn't seen Wilson yet. Because the minute he saw Wilson, he'd have to endure the other man's resentment. A sure friendship killer.
It didn't matter what the reason was: either a) Wilson would resent House for proving him wrong and embarrassing him. Clearly the kiss was a test to try and trick House into revealing himself to the other man. Since House had managed to push Wilson away, he'd proven (falsely) that he wasn't interested and now Wilson would be embarrassed that he'd actually kissed his straight best friend without some sort of alcoholic inducement for an excuse.
Or b) Wilson would resent House for actually rejecting him... which was a can of worms House found completely implausible. Wilson was straight. Well, straighter than House anyway. He'd been married three times! All of his affairs had been with women. There was no possible way Wilson could actually want House like that.
It was a test... It had to be a test. Of course it was a test!
"Her heart looks fine," Cuddy was saying as they walked the halls. In House's hand was the girl's file. In Cuddy's hand was a suspicious manila envelope. "ER did a full cardiac work up. Tox screen's clean, blood shows no infection..."
"All on the top page," House waved his copy of the file at Cuddy in a condescending manner. "I'm a real good reader... Personal chart handoff means there's something else. I'm hoping it's not personal." Cuddy looked like she'd expected the question.
"The guy who brought the girl in says he knows you," she smirked. House frowned and then looked down the hallway where they'd stopped. There was a familiar looking middle-aged man standing outside of a hospital room. He had shaggy blonde curls and wore a bum-chic looking brown leather jacket and a morose expression.
'Crandall?' House thought, surprised to see a little chunk of his past popping up from out of nowhere.
"I thought I'd met all your friend," Cuddy's smirk grew wider. House kept his flinch from reaching his face and his gaze on this unexpected blast from the past. He wasn't so sure about his friend at the moment and he really didn't want to get into that with Cuddy. "I was also wondering if you could take a look at these."
Her tone sounded nervous but hopeful and House could tell she was handing the suspicious manila envelope at him. He thought he said something about hoping there was nothing personal going on... He tucked the medical chart under his arm, still surveying the man at the other end of the hallway.
"When you have a chance," she shrugged. "No hurry... It's just a couple of medical histories. One with a minor cancer concern."
"No problem," he told her, taking the envelope and dismissing her by walking down the hall towards the man. The man, round-faced and earnest, noticed him and grinned before jogging down the hall to meet him. It was Crandall.
House narrowed his eyes and frowned slightly. This had all the earmarks of a very trying day.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
So far, House had succeeded in avoiding his soon to be ex-best friend. His new case, Crandall's so-called daughter Leona, was proving to be fairly interesting on many levels. Her heart problem was completely unrelated to the condition that had landed her in the hospital in the first place and she'd had another hallucination. That and House still wanted to know why Crandall was so dead set on this girl being his daughter. That was probably a more interesting mystery.
Leona was currently having radiation therapy, due to House's decision that she would need a bone marrow transplant, and House was sitting in on her session, swinging back and forth on the chair as he watched the technician monitor her stats. It was very boring, but he figured the chances of anyone, especially Wilson, finding him here were pretty low so he stayed.
Of course, he hadn't counted on Wilson's persistence or curiosity.
The brown-eyed oncologist walked into the darkened room and House's heart immediately began to pick up the pace. The diagnostician couldn't tell if it was from his lamentable condition of having, as Wilson termed it, a crush on the man, or if it was a flight response that was preprogrammed into his brain like it was in every other evolved ape.
House glanced at him, swallowed hard and looked back at the young black girl in the room beyond the protective glass. Maybe if he ignored him, the oncologist would go away. As if that was ever likely to happen under the best of circumstances. Apparently they were going to talk about this whether House wanted to or not. House wondered if it was too late to flee, but realized that he probably couldn't out run the younger man. And hiding hadn't seemed to work...
Wilson looked briefly at the older man before moving past him and tapping the technician on the shoulder.
"I got it," he quietly told the technician, who immediately rose from the seat to let Wilson sit down. House wondered where Wilson was going to start. Would it be with the ill fated kiss that House was having a hard time forgetting or would the younger man attempt some sort of idle conversation before broaching the topic?
"So why are you friends with this guy?" Wilson asked quietly after arranging himself in the swivel chair and hearing the technician shut the door.
Apparently, Wilson was going with the second option. House would have preferred the oncologist to just come out with it, just to get the whole nasty business over with. But, ostensibly, he was going to be treated with a few nerve-wracking minutes of semi-polite conversation first.
House pursed his lips thoughtfully, still futzing around with the swivel chair he sat in. He decided that his best option was a semi-defensive, sarcastic evasion of the question all together.
"We were twenty years old," he shrugged, looking at his cane and the ceiling rather than at Wilson. "He had a car. If he'd been a woman, I'd have married him."
House knew that Wilson knew him well enough to know that his answer wasn't really an answer at all. But instead of calling him on it, Wilson shook his head in strained amusement, before continuing his questioning about trivial things. House's apprehension grew. This was not going to be a pretty argument, not when Wilson finally got around to asking his damned questions.
This blasted friendship was so over... The realization washed through House like a drenching in ice water and even came with the accompanying shiver.
"Is he a match?" the oncologist asked, referring to House's doubts that Crandall really was Leona's biological father. He was asking if Crandall was a match for bone marrow, the reason why she was in radiation. That and he'd probably seen Crandall and read the girl's chart and seen the order for a DNA test. And if he'd seen Crandall, it was no wonder he was curious about why House would be friends with such a perky, gullible man.
"No," House replied, switching his gaze back to the girl in the radiation chamber. "Lying girl lucked out, we found one in the registry."
"Is he the dad?" Wilson persisted with the other objective of his question.
"I don't think so," House told the younger man pointedly.
"You didn't run the test?" Wilson sounded shocked. House had ordered the test, but hadn't put down whether or not he'd rescinded that request.
"Said I wouldn't," House replied tersely, now staring at the computer showing Leona's brain waves. Wilson blinked and House looked back in on Leona as the uncomfortable silence stretched on. There was something dark oozing from her mouth. That wasn't right... Was it?
"Okay," he said slowly, as if he were trying to work it out for himself. "Either you lied, or he as pictures of you being nice?"
"Stop the radiation," House commanded, rising from his chair. Wilson turned off the machinery with a warning beep and they both rushed into the radiation room to stare at the dark brown sludge that was oozing from Leona's mouth.
"What the hell is that?" Wilson asked, disgusted.
"I have no idea," House said. Wilson grimaced in pity and rushed back into the anti-chamber to pick up the phone. One hurried, hushed conversation later, as House frowned at the black ooze that was slowly rising up from Leona's mouth, several nurses rushed into the radiation chamber and began to clean the girl up before moving her back to her hospital bed.
House moved back to lean against a wall, watching the bustle around the girl and keeping one eye on Wilson, who was hovering in the doorway if they needed an able-bodied doctor. Wilson's worried brown eyes kept flicking back and forth between the aging, crippled doctor at the back of the room and the dying girl being tended to by a flock of nurses. It was as if he were trying to decide which person needed him more, who would benefit from his presence more.
He eventually decided to edge along the perimeter of the room to stand next to House, who immediately tensed in expectation. The nurses brought in a gurney and lifted the unresponsive Leona into it.
"House..." the younger man said hesitantly, if very quietly so that the gossip-prone nurses wouldn't hear him. Wilson looked upset and up close, almost like he hadn't slept very well the night before. "I just... I wanna understand. That's all."
House gritted his teeth and looked down at his sneakers as if they would hold the answer to solving all of his problems. Wilson had never used that tone of voice with House before. It was soft, pleading. It was the tone he used with patients to get them to relent a decision that the oncologist considered unwise. It was more than that too, as if the younger man had added a layer of hurt like butte-cream icing on a cake.
"Figure it out for yourself, Jimmy," House growled sardonically before following the nurses out of the room. "You're good at that."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
House wasn't sure whether to be thankful that he seemed to have dodged the bullet, conversation wise, or whether to be nervous. This was Wilson, after all. The man was persistent when he wanted to be and had never taken House's wishes seriously when he felt it was the opposite of House's best interests. The oncologist would want to talk, would probably think them talking out their differences would be a good thing. That understanding would be a good thing, but all House could see was heartache.
House, of course, usually turned out to be scarily accurate in his predictions.
House sat in his office practicing the fingerings along with the recording of Jessie Baker's jazz piano playing when Wilson walked in holding something in a take-out container. It smelled like Mexican food and the faces that Wilson was making as he ate it were very suspicious. House felt his body tense and become alert, like a large predator scenting prey.
Wilson sat down across from House and deliberately put his meal where House could see it.
"It's brown, it's lumpy," House announced, narrowing his eyes as he watched Wilson enjoying it. Wilson looked positively mouth watering himself as he smirked and the way he was looking at House told the older man that mouth watering was the goal of the performance. "I'm gonna heave all over my desk."
They both knew that was a lie, as was House's distain.
"Chicken mole," Wilson explained with a smug expression as he looked at the dish. "Twenty-one herbs and spices..."
House, intrigued by Wilson's ringing endorsement, reached across to steal some, but Wilson had anticipated the movement and snatched it away before House could even get a pinky into the spicy chocolate sauce. House wondered how long this cheeky, friendliness would last. Would it be until he got an answer out of House? Or would he get tired of not knowing and give the endeavor up?
And what would House be willing to do to keep the other man around? That question was even more terrifying, especially because House knew that there would be a tipping point at which both parties would give up fighting and simply walk away.
"I find it very comforting," Wilson continued as if they were picking up an old discussion from where they'd left off. The smug son-of-a-bitch wanted something and knew exactly how to manipulate House to get it. Internally, House laughed. No wonder he liked the oncologist. "You defending a man you haven't seen in years. To know my friend, no matter what, will always be my champion, my protector."
Wilson did want something. There was a deeper purpose to his questions, a hidden razor's edge to his words that was both innocuous and leading at the same time. House realized, with a jolt, he was the prey, not the other way around. Wilson was House-hunting.
"I'm not protecting him," House groused back, glaring at the container in Wilson's hands. "I'm smacking her."
"The modesty of a true hero," Wilson teased pointedly.
"Push me and I'll let her die," House suggested, now glaring at the very smug oncologist. "Just so you'll stop annoying me." Wilson had put the container with the chicken mole back on the desk and House decided it was time for another attempt at stealing some of it. But, again, Wilson was faster. House huffed his annoyance.
"Here's my theory," Wilson said, almost grinning at the older man. "You're jealous..." That caught House's attention. "He's maturing, he's accepting responsibility, you're emotionally stuck at seventeen."
House was right, this really had nothing to do with Crandall. Wilson was accusing the older doctor of running away like a teenage boy who'd heard the damning word 'commitment' or at the very least 'pregnancy'. But where did House's 'test' theory come into it. Wilson's tone didn't sound like they'd stemmed from wounded pride.
"He's manufacturing responsibility," House pouted. "He's not maturing. He hasn't changed at all."
There was a pause.
"So, then why do you care?" Wilson asked.
The question hadn't been about Crandall or Leona. They were just a not so subtle guise for the real question. Why did House care to hide? Why was House so bothered over this? But House wasn't having any of it. He pretended to be completely oblivious of the actual slant of Wilson's questioning, taking it as a literal question to their surface conversation.
"That black ooze we saw?" House replied, just as Wilson brought a delicate forkful of mole to his mouth. "That was a bowel movement," Wilson still ate the food, so House tried again. "Out of her mouth."
If Wilson wanted to question House, he could. But it had to be plain questions with no hidden meanings, because the older man refused to dance to Wilson's rhythm.
"You're trying to end this conversation by grossing me out?" the oncologist asked pleasantly. "I'm an oncologist. Half my patients have their skin sloughing off," Wilson stood, taking the Mexican food he was munching on farther away from House to encourage the older man to hurry up and divulge the truth so that he could get what he wanted. "Why are you so worried about this guy?"
But what he meant was 'Why is last night bothering you so much?' House sighed.
"He was having a rough time with his girlfriend," he finally told Wilson, deciding to go with the literal over hidden meanings. House pulled his legs off of his desk and turned to Wilson but didn't look at the other man. "He was in love, he's always in love... He wanted to marry her. And I thought she was flaky, was sending very mixed signals."
"So, you gave him advice, and she dumped him," Wilson extrapolated. House looked at Wilson for a minute.
"No," he sighed. "I told him that I would talk to her."
Wilson moved closer, mole forgotten, as House knew it would be once Wilson got what he wanted. "And you blew it?"
"Technically," House wheedled before trailing into silence. He found himself trying to justify his actions when he'd been twenty. It was a loosing battle, but some how House didn't want to be diminished in the younger man's eyes. It was a very hypocritical feeling that the diagnostician was perplexed by. "I was doing him a favor. She was nuts."
Wilson gave him a long searching look that ended with a slight shake of the head as Wilson concluded that whatever House had done, it hadn't been kind or altruistic, and concluded that he probably wouldn't be getting any of the answers he truly wanted out of the older man. The oncologist dumped the container with the mole and his fork on Houses desk before leaving.
House frowned, wondering why he felt so awful now when that should have been considered a victory. He'd staved 'The Conversation' off for two rounds and if he lasted the full twelve... Wilson would be forced to walk away.
Did he really want to win this fight? He didn't even know what the prizes were. Boxers gained from loosing all the time and sometimes they won more that way than by actually beating their opponent. So, what would he get if he lost? And what would he loose if he won? Would he keep his pride? But at the expense of what?
He decided to shake the low feeling Wilson had left him with and turned the music he'd been listening to back on before starting in on the mole Wilson had bought for him.
However, the bout was not over and if House knew James Wilson, the other man would not quit after two rounds in the ring.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Round three started with a right hook that came out of nowhere and left House wondering where in the rules it said a man could throw a punch while his opponent was still resting in his corner of the ring.
House leaned on his desk, eyes closed as the masseuse, Ingrid, kneaded his damaged muscles into a state approaching relaxation. Of all of Wilson's ideas, Ingrid had been the best. House could feel the edge of the pain caused by tension starting to fade away into a dull ache, the feeling that House had always associated with a very good day.
He'd closed the blinds to his office just for a little bit of privacy while he had his trousers around his ankles, so, naturally, someone bursting in unexpectedly was a given. Wilson opened the door, shoved aside the plastic vertical blinds and strode purposefully into the room.
"Listen," he started, before noticing the woman at House's feet. Wilson's eyes went wide with shock, his gate was abruptly arrested and his cheeks pinked in embarrassment. "Oh, sorry... Okay."
But he didn't leave, seeming to be fascinated by the sight. House sighed, the pain coming back as he began to feel more and more uncomfortable.
"It's not what you think," he groaned, wishing he had a lock on his office door for just this reason. Ingrid looked up, sensing something was wrong, and then looked at Wilson while continuing to massage House's leg.
"I rub his leg," she announced in heavily accented and heavily perplexed English. Wilson shifted his gaze from 'anonymous woman kneeling in front of a partially naked Greg House' to 'Masseuse I hired a year ago to rub House's leg during that brief stint of sobriety' and gave a nod of recognition.
"Oh, Ingrid," Wilson smiled... and then frowned. "Hi."
There was a long uncomfortable pause that Ingrid failed to notice. House used the pause in which to hope that Wilson would stop staring at him and make his point or leave. Leaving would be preferable at that point. Wilson seemed to be deciding whether he should say what he needed to say in front of the woman at House's feet.
"Okay," Wilson started, figuring that Ingrid's English couldn't be good enough to follow the conversation. "You feel guilty for stealing the guy's girl, I get that. And I'm glad. That's a good thing."
House rolled his eyes, but said nothing as he wondered where Wilson's point was. The last time they'd started this conversation, there had been subtext and that had been the point. So, where was the subtext or was Wilson genuinely interested in Crandall's friendship with the biggest bastard on the planet? If so, Wilson probably ought to be examining his own motives too.
Wilson continued, pointing his finger knowingly at House. "But you did do the paternity test. And either the paternity test comes back negative and you shove it in the guy's face, or it comes back positive, and you shut up... And your leg starts hurting."
Wilson looked very pleased with himself for figuring all of that out. The one problem was that his leg had been hurting all day... since the night before when the younger man had kissed House and House had shoved him away. What was Wilson trying to do? Prove that House was still the same man he always was?
Well, duh...
"Or I never ran the test," House added, just as another person barged their way into his office. "Not what you think!" he yelled out, as Cameron looked up, startled.
"Leona's lungs collapsed," she blurted out, keeping her eyes firmly on House's face rather than blatantly staring at Ingrid like Wilson had. "The treatment's not working. We've got the wrong fungus." She left as quickly as she'd come.
Thank God for referees, clearly Wilson's attack during the rest period had been an illegal move. But Wilson's point was remained unsaid. House wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"You can stop," House sighed, motioning for the masseuse to stop her ministrations. "She ruined it."
Wilson rolled his eyes and left House to pull his trousers back up.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Round three came along and House had the perfect defense all planned out. He was at home and tomorrow, Saturday, was his second day off. Cuddy, after some badgering, had agreed to give House Sunday as well as a sort of 'thank you' gesture. After all, he had given up one of his days off for a case and he'd saved her from having six-thirteen's baby. Cuddy really didn't want to be artificially inseminated by looser sperm and if she was going to ask House's opinion, House's opinion was exactly what she was gonna get. It's not his fault that the woman had forgotten that House was not a caring, kind individual with a sense of propriety.
The only thing left to do before he drank himself to sleep was to read the paternity test results. Wilson had been right; House had ordered the test. But he wasn't about to tell the smug bastard that.
When House actually got around to reading the results for the test, he was lying on his couch, his head resting on the armrest. As he snicked open the sticker at the top that supposedly kept unauthorized people from reading the results, his phone began to ring. He ignored it, letting it switch to his answering machine like he always did.
It was probably Wilson anyway, and the older man still didn't want to talk.
The machine beeped and he unfolded the document.
"Uh, your machine's broken," he heard Wilson's voice say on the recording. The younger man sounded nervous and slightly sad. The big red letters on the page in front of him spelled out the word Negative. So, Crandall wasn't the father after all. Too bad. It seemed Leona was stuck with him, especially after what House had said to her. "There's not even a message... House? Are you there?" There was a pause. "Okay. See you Monday, I guess."
House put the document down on the coffee table and sighed. He'd have to deal with Wilson eventually. But how could he be expected to compete in a fight where he didn't know the rules, didn't know the stakes and had no idea what was going on? House didn't work that way, didn't like the insecure feeling of floundering around and not knowing how to swim.
House sighed. Maybe inviting Wilson over for a couple of beers and an 'L Word' marathon hadn't been such a hot idea after all.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, and it was time for round four... or at least that is what House thought.
He spent most of the day hiding from Wilson. This time he was in the clinic, figuring that all of his complaints about clinic duty over the past couple of years would make it the very last place Wilson would think of looking for the older man. And by then, House would have found a new hiding spot in one of the places that the younger doctor had already checked.
There was a very funny case in the clinic that morning, something that promised to keep House entertained for hours. Not because it was terribly fascinating a case, just because it was completely disgusting. The man's tongue had swollen up so big, it looked like he was trying to swallow a pink slug the size of a terrier down his gob.
He'd had the man admitted and, using the impetus of his forced joviality, he limped up to the diagnostic's lounge.
"He's got a temperature of one-oh-three," House finished with after he'd tossed Cameron the chart, poured himself a cup of coffee and rattled off 'Swollen-Tongue-Guy's' symptoms.
"And why do we care?" Foreman asked, leaning against the bookshelves as he watched Chase and Cameron read through the chart and the history House had taken.
"Because we're human beings. That's what we do," House replied, tone snide and mocking. "He said he was at a luncheon meeting..."
"You... took his history?" came Cameron's incredulous comment.
"Guy looks like Harpo," House replied, still fixing his coffee. Foreman checked his watch and then proceeded to look very bored. "You should see him."
"You asked him what book he's currently reading?" chase asked, his Australian accent adding a peculiar edge to his confused tone.
"It's hilarious to watch him try and talk," House explained, with a slight smirk making his frown a little softer around the edges. "I asked him anything I could think of. Favorite color: 'Blwoo.' I asked him if he was sure." House limped over to the white board with his mug of coffee and Foreman started to back up. House turned to look at the neurologist. "Where are you going?"
"You're an ass," the black man told him, picking up his black attach case and moving around the conference table to the door.
"I know," House said, frowning at the other man. "Where are you going?"
"This is either a toxin, an infection or an allergic reaction," Foreman explained, stopping to face House as the older man picked up the dry-erase markers. "I assume you gave him epi, so that rules out allergies. Put him on antibiotics in case it's an infection and if it's a toxin, we'll keep him here overnight, let the swelling go down, send him home. I'm going to the movies."
He continued his walk out the door as House turned back to write on the white board, but before Foreman could get to the door to the diagnostics lounge, it opened. House turned around, expecting to see either Cuddy or Wilson, but instead it was a short, balding man in a grey suit.
"Which one of you is House?" he asked. House blinked at him and looked around at his underlings.
"Skinny brunette," he replied glibly before turning back to his symptoms.
"No, that's Doctor Cameron," the man said. House frowned and turned back to the guy. Now, everyone was standing, watching the scene playing out between the man and House.
"I'm skinny," House shrugged. "How do you know her name?"
"I was a patient of yours," the man explained.
"Oh, well," House replied sarcastically. "If you wanna leave the chocolates down stairs..."
But the man cut him off, not with words but with a gun. He pulled it out from under one of his lapels, aimed it low and shot House in the abdomen. House heard the gun shot, a loud bang that echoed off the glass walls in the lounge, but didn't really feel the bullet pierce his skin. He did, however, feel the force exerted by the small object as it buried itself into his body because of the way it caused him to stumble back into the white board and fall to the floor in a graceless heap.
For House, the time it took the pain from the wound to reach his brain seemed like forever and, while it traveled, all he could feel was numbness and the erratic pounding of his heart. But when the pain hit, he gasped and his whole body seemed to freeze.
There were shouting and movement sounds, but the only person who stayed in House's field of vision was the man in the expensive grey suit with the sleek black gun. The man turned his attention back to House and said something, but his words seemed so far away as if House were hearing them through a wall. The man's voice seemed soft and kind, but the eyes glittered with anguish and hatred. He raised the gun again and it was now pointing towards House's face, but for some reason House couldn't find the energy to care anymore.
The man squeezed the trigger and another shot rang through the room. House didn't feel the pain from the second bullet, though. He'd passed out.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The only parts of House's dream that he'd had while unconscious that he really remembered with any amount of clarity were the parts that had Wilson in it. The man's presence seemed to sharpen the world around him and give him focus when he had none.
At first House had thought it was strange that Wilson hadn't used the opportunity of House being bed-ridden to corner him and have that 'Conversation'. The absence of the oncologist was a niggling little worry that tickled the edges of House's conscious thoughts. But then the realization that the younger man was probably mad at House explained the absence, so House stopped worrying.
So, when Wilson caught up with House in the physical therapy room House was once again surprised.
"Really, It's more helpful if you do the prescribed rehab yourself," Wilson said while doing House's laps on the treadmill. House frowned. Something odd was going on. He hadn't gotten that swooping feeling in his stomach the moment the younger man had started talking. House also had the nagging feeling that something was missing, but he couldn't say whether it was the feeling he usually had every time Wilson entered the room, like an invisible man had suddenly punched him in the gut, or if it was something far more important.
House ignored it and Wilson as he flipped through his surgery report. Maybe the missing thing was in the report.
"My body's fine," he grumbled. "My mind on the other hand..."
"Maybe she was a girlfriend," Wilson offered, immediately assuming that House's skepticism about his mental state was over the question of him meeting a woman who claimed to be 'Harpo's' wife when 'Harpo' was in fact a widower. Since that was what he was worrying about, House didn't bother to correct him. "Or maybe she just said it to jerk you around."
"I spoke to every one of the nurses on that floor," House replied, though he could only vaguely remember doing so. There were no faces that he remembered or specific words, just a lingering impression that he'd gone and talked to nurses. "The patient only had six visitors, two females, no babes. His mother and his aunt."
"So, they missed someone," Wilson countered reasonably. "They're not security."
"My posse never saw her or me talking on the other side of the glass," House responded.
"They were a little bit busy trying to save the guy's life," Wilson told him with a small chuckle. But House hadn't heard him.
"There's only one possible conclusion," he announced, not looking at the man still walking on the treadmill. "It was a hallucination." He got up and moved, with out his cane, over to where Wilson was walking and shoved the surgery reports under his nose. "What does that look like to you? Point six?"
"Anesthesia?" Wilson asked, continuing to walk as he read. He frowned at the pages. "No. It's got to be six smudge. Let's say you're right. It wouldn't be that uncommon after a trauma, after that much blood loss."
House shook his head and took the report away from Wilson.
"If my perceptions are compromised, then my judgment is compromised," House replied acidly as he moved to sit down on a nearby bench. "What if his wife had told me that the patient had just got bit by a rabid Vietnamese leper?"
"So, pull yourself off the case," Wilson suggested with an exasperated sigh.
"And the next case?" House replied bitterly, looking at the grey carpeting between his shoes.
"You take two weeks off," Wilson shot back, still sounding very reasonable and mild in the face of House's bitterness. But, House reasoned, there was nothing unusual about that. Wilson was always very placid in the face of whatever House could dish up. "You recover."
"What if I don't?" House asked. He blinked and frowned before looking up at Wilson. "What if it wasn't the shooting?"
"The guy who sees connections between everything sees no connection between being shot and minor brain disruptions?" Wilson said, but he sounded neutral not incredulous as House would expect.
"What if it was the surgery?" House replied.
"What if it was the fact that you tore out your stitches and lost two pints of your blood?" Wilson countered, still sounding reasonable. Shouldn't he be indignant over that? Come to think of it, this was simply too normal for them especially after what had happened the Thursday before House had been shot. It was almost as if they'd silently agreed that it had never happened and they'd never talk about it. Which is how House would handle the problem, ignoring it and hoping it would go away, but not Wilson... Strange.
House frowned as saw something on his surgery report that, for some reason, he hadn't seen the first few times he'd read it through.
"Why did Gillick give me ketamine during my surgery?" he asked before glancing up at Wilson. The other man blankly shrugged, so House decided to go ask Cuddy. For some reason, she was working in the clinic. House barged into the exam room and confronted her about it. He made accusations and then threats before his boss would tell him the reason for why House had been in a dissociative coma during his surgery.
She only told him as he was walking out of the strangely calm clinic. Where the hell were all of the nurses and idiots with runny noses? She told him about the clinic that treated chronic pain with comas, basically implying that she had done that to him.
He yelled at her for screwing around with his brain, but when she started asking questions, House backed off and left.
The world went slightly out of focus then and House knew with an unusual certainty that most of the time he'd been either talking to his team or to Moriarty, the man who'd shot him. And he knew what had been said too, concepts and ideas, but he couldn't remember the exact words of the conversation. All he had was sure knowledge and lingering sensations.
But he pushed the feelings away. It was probably just side effects from the dissociative coma Cuddy had put him in.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The next time he saw Wilson, after more worrying symptoms that indicated that there was something seriously wrong with the way his brain was working, House was in the bathroom using the urinal. Wilson was in the stall two down from him and both were looking down at the jobs in hand.
"You may have been lucky," Wilson was saying. House frowned. What had he said before? "You don't catch testicular cancer early, it kills. Probably eroded some vessel..."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know," House cut him off testily. "The question is: why didn't I think of it?"
"Well, eyes popping out is a rather odd presentation," Wilson said sarcastically, no longer using that reasonable tone.
"Sack blowing up, on the other hand," House countered, looking over at the other man. It was also odd that House had no mental images of what Wilson might look like underneath his slacks when he looked at him, just an odd focus that seemed to make the rest of the room fade slightly around them. Almost like the entire world was in black and white, but Wilson was in glorious Technicolor. The browns of his v-neck sweater were rich, and his hair seemed extra bouncy and shiny. House felt grey in comparison.
"If you could think of everything yourself, you wouldn't need a team to annoy," the oncologist sighed. House finished and, after tapping off the drops that still clung to him, tucked himself away before walking ungracefully over to the sink.
"I screwed up some basic anatomy," he told the other man as he pumped the soap dispenser to get the liquid soap onto his hand. It was surreal. House knew there was soap in his hand, just like he knew his name but the texture, color and shape of the blob didn't eve seem to register. He washed his hands any way, determined to ignore what it seemed he couldn't fix. He looked up into the mirror and watched as Wilson finished up and joined him at the sinks to wash his hands. "And I missed connecting a testicular explosion with a testicular problem. You think there was any way I would have done that before Cuddy messed with my brain?"
"She was trying to help you," Wilson sighed, turning the tap. "And it worked."
"Yeah, I can run like the wind," House scowled, looking at the other man before moving to the towel dispenser to dry his hands. "But I can't think. And seeing as I'm too old become a professional athlete, it looks to me as if she screwed me over big time."
House left the bathroom, strides long and purposeful. Wilson quickly scurried to follow him.
"You don't want a healthy leg," the oncologist accused.
"Oh, here we go," House groaned. 'Here's the patronizing Jimmy we all know and despise,' he added mentally.
"If you've got a good life, if you're healthy, you've got no reason to bitch," Wilson reasoned, catching up to House and walking along side the older doctor. "No reason to hate life."
"Well, here's the flaw in your argument," House replied with a slight smirk. "If I enjoy hating life, I don't hate life, I enjoy it."
"I didn't say it was rational," the oncologist said. House stopped and turned, with a disbelieving frown, to look at the younger man. Wilson sighed. "HIV testing is ninety-nine percent accurate, which means that there are some people who test positive, who live with their own impending doom for months or years before finding out everything's okay." House wondered when Wilson would get to his point. "Weirdly, most of them don't react with happiness or even anger. They get depressed. Not because they wanted to die, but because they've defined themselves by their disease. Suddenly what made them them, isn't real."
'Ah, there's his point. At last,' House thought, but he said: "I don't define myself by my leg."
"No," Wilson laughed deprecatingly as he shook an accusing finger at House. "You have taken it one step further. The only way you could come to terms with your disability was to somehow make it mean nothing. So you had to redefine everything. You have dismissed anything physical, anything not coldly, calculatingly intellectual."
"Why are you protecting her?" House asked suspiciously. People have always said that the best defense was a good offence. Wilson was attacking House, so what was he defending and why?
Wilson seemed dumb struck for a moment.
"Because she's done nothing wrong," he said finally. House nodded, as if in understanding.
"You're completely comfortable with what she did to me?" he asked, anger slowly starting to boil up from the pit of his stomach.
"Yeah, I am," Wilson nodded solemnly. "Yeah."
"You agonize over moral choices," House said slowly, piecing things together in a deliberate way so as to make sure he didn't miss anything. As he did so, he stepped closer to Wilson, using his height and closeness to intimidate the younger, slightly shorter man. "You're not completely comfortable with anything until you've taken days to get your head around every possible side... I've known what she did for six hours. How come you're acting like you've known for days?"
The carefully blank look on Wilson's face was all the answer House needed. He barged into Cuddy's office, his righteous anger wielded like a sword. Wilson trailed after him and, though House was looking and shouting at the woman in front of him, he could still feel the oncologist at his back and that feeling felt more real than Cuddy or the office did.
"What do I have?" House shouted, approaching her.
"You're not sick," Cuddy told him flatly. House felt Wilson move to stand next to the couch in the corner of Cuddy's office, knew without seeing it happen just as he knew the younger man had his arms folded across his chest (left arm over right with his right hand clutching his left bicep and his left hand tucked underneath his right). House could barely tell what Cuddy was wearing, just that it was dark.
"What do I have?" House repeated, still yelling.
"You need to calm down," the dean of medicine told him, her hands out in a supplicating manner. House continued to shout regardless of what she'd said.
"I have my brain! That's it!" he told her, the muscles and veins on his neck cording in anger.
"We were trying to help," Wilson said from behind him, voice defensive and angry. House pivoted towards Wilson, snarling at him.
"Yeah, nobody tries to screw up, they just do," House snapped sarcastically, before turning back to Cuddy.
"You were out of control," she explained, her chin thrust towards him aggressively. "You were shooting morphine."
"I can make people better," House shouted back, looking between the two of them. "And you two decide to trade that for jogging shoes!"
"If you're suffering from side-effects, then we can look at that," Wilson said, grabbing House's attention as the younger man tried to diffuse House's anger.
"You value the physical so much," House said, moving towards Wilson and stopping just in front of the other man. "Let me put this in terms you can understand."
And then House punched Wilson, a right hook to the jaw that sent the oncologist stumbling into the coffee table behind him and falling into the armchair behind that. Cuddy rushed over and grabbed at House, trying to restrain him, but all House could see was the bright red splash of color that stained Wilson's lip and left hand.
And it was strange, but beneath his anger, House felt a detached sense of horror at what he'd done. He'd punched Wilson, caused his best and only friend hurt. He'd caused that smear of red blood on the younger man's upper lip and hand. And that strange, detached part of him wanted to apologize and kiss the younger man until House was forgiven.
But the anger was stronger and more immediate.
Wilson looked at the blood on his hand for a moment, before looking up at House with a twisted wry smile on his face.
"You're unbelievable," he said, breathless and suddenly weary. "Even when you're out of your mind with anger and fear, you still couch it in logical terms." House moved towards the younger man, the anger in him ready to take another swing. There was a pressure on his arm that restrained him.
"Are you hallucinating?" Wilson asked, his smile sad.
"Yeah, I'm hallucinating," House snarled.
"No," Wilson sounded pitying but also slightly perplexed. "I mean right now?"
And then his voice changed into that of his murderous roommate who again asked: "Are you hallucinating?"
The world suddenly came out of focus and Cuddy, Wilson and Cuddy's office snapped into his room in the ICU and the face of the man who'd shot him. House's breath was rapid, like he'd been running, and his heart pounded away in his chest. But the world, instead of growing sharper with the increase in adrenaline, only seemed to stay fuzzy and out of focus.
What the fuck was happening to him?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
House started loosing chunks of memory after that... and the next time anything seemed to make sense or be in any kind of focus was when he found himself sitting on the hood of a blue Pontiac eating burritos and quesadillas with the man who'd shot him, Moriarty.
"How can I tell what's real and what's not?" he asked, watching the road they were on stretch into the distance. Everything still felt fuzzy and out of focus, and it kind of felt like he was looking for something to sharpen his senses, but Wilson was nowhere within sight. "Everything looks the same, sounds the same, tastes the same." He looked down at the burrito he was eating and frowned at it.
The funny thing was that, while everything seemed real, the feelings he usually associated with people had changed. Wilson wasn't anything special now, just another guy. Well, if you discounted the fact that out of anything in this world, he was the only thing that was in focus. Of course, the fuzziness could just be the morphine... Suddenly he respected his team for having logical and intelligent ideas when before he'd only ever mocked them. Again, his slowness might be attributed to the morphine, but maybe not... But there were some moments that seemed like just another day at the hospital and everything was exactly the way it should be.
It was like sense had been thrown out the window with both the baby and the bathwater.
"Seems like I'd be the last person you'd want to ask," Moriarty said around his bite of chicken quesadilla.
"Why not?" House shrugged. "You're obviously not here, I'm obviously not here. Which means this is a creation of my mind, which means I'm really just asking myself."
"If you're talking to yourself, that's a lot of unnecessary explanation," the other man pointed out, before taking another bite of cheese, chicken and tortilla.
"Hey, I'm trying to work this out," House reproached him. "That requires give and take, even in my own mind."
"What was the question?" Moriarty asked with a wry shake of his head.
"How can I tell what's real?" House asked.
"Does it matter?" the other man asked, still eating. House frowned at him, considering the question.
"That doesn't sound like something I'd ask," he accused.
"All right," Moriarty sighed, sounding like he was giving up and just playing along with House's crazy notions. "Your concern is that if you act in the real world based on information that's not real, the results are impossible to foresee." House nodded.
"With you so far," he said, watching the other man carefully. The bitterness, pain and scruffiness of the shorter man seemed to mirror his own and he could see why his brain had picked this person to have this conversation with. It was almost like having the conversation with himself, just without the mirror and vague sense that only crazy people talk to their reflections.
"But information is incapable of harm in and of itself," Moriarty continued. "Ideas are neither good nor bad but merely as useful as what we do with them. Only actions can cause harm."
"That sounds like me," House affirmed as the other man finished up his quesadilla piece.
"So, you do nothing," Moriarty advised. "You refrain from taking any actions. You continue to throw out your ideas as you always would, but if they're based on faulty assumptions, your team will point that out. They wont do anything that could hurt him."
House frowned at the road and the dull noise of the cars driving past them.
"So I trust my team?" House concluded. He supposed that must also mean that he would have to trust Wilson and Cuddy too. Trust that the people around him would stop him from stepping off a cliff of his own making. He'd never really done anything like that before, wasn't sure if he could.
Could he learn to trust?
House's world became slightly blurry again, as if he were walking through the world with cotton in his ears and novacane rubbed onto every other part of his body. But at the exact same time, everything was sharp and clear. His arguments were lucid and his action produced sensory information that felt like the every other piece of sensory information his brain had ever received.
Finally, House broke through his hallucinations and returned to the real world. And when he finally woke properly from his requested dissociative coma after his surgery, it wasn't Cameron sitting by his bed. It was Wilson, just like he'd thought it'd be.
First House did a mental inventory of all his various aches and pains, eyes closed and breaths even. His neck and abdomen throbbed uncomfortably, but the morphine seemed to be doing its job keeping the worst of the pain at bay. His leg actually felt better, though House really couldn't tell if that was because of the more recent pains from his wounds, because of the morphine or because of the ketamine he vaguely remembered requesting.
Then he cracked a bleary eye to look at Wilson. The younger man looked haggard and worn. His face was shaved, but there was a grey pallor that spoke of long nights spent in uncomfortable chairs, and his clothing looked rumpled. His hair hung lank across his head. The man lacked his usual spit polished exterior and House had never seen him looking so vulnerable.
The increase in House's heart rate at the sight of his best friend actually woke the oncologist with the change in the constant beeping from the heart monitor. Wilson had been sort of napping awkwardly in one of the uncomfortable ICU chairs. His eyes snapped open to look at the heart monitor's screen before looking down at House and giving him a tired, but relieved smile. Wilson stretched jerkily before getting up and moving over to House's bedside.
House was almost relieved to find that his body, though damaged, still made an attempt at reacting to Wilson's presence as it usually did. That was a good sign, he hoped.
"No wonder you've been divorced so many times," House rasped, a wry twist to his words. "You're such a girl. Did you and Cameron flip a coin to see who'd be sitting with me on Thursdays?"
"Actually it's Friday," his friend said, a watery grin spreading across his face. "And what has this got to do with my marriages?"
"No woman wants to marry another woman, not really," House chuckled, throat dry and scratchy. "Not unless they're lesbians. And you're basically a woman with testicles. How's Harpo?"
"Who?"
"My case?" House replied, a slight cough coloring his words. Wilson nodded in understanding.
"Toxin," he told House with a sigh. "Foreman watched him overnight; the swelling went down. It wasn't as nearly as interesting as you'd thought it would be."
"No body parts blew up then," House sighed, rubbing his face and gauging the growth of the stubble there. It really was around about a five-day beard. House had been out for almost a week.
"Why would they?" the oncologist asked, frowning.
"Don't worry about it," House yawned, the movements making the slowly healing muscles in his neck twinge. House grimaced.
Foreman would probably be gloating over being right about 'Harpo'. Cameron would be wringing her hands as if House's condition were all her fault, she should have done something to stop House's attacker, never mind that the man had a gun. Chase probably was... was probably keeping an eye on his boss while House was laid up in the ICU while praying for a speedy recovery in the chapel. Cuddy had probably checked in on her head diagnostician once or twice, ready to apologize that security hadn't caught the man at the door. Which was silly. If Moriarty hadn't been able to get through security, he could have just followed House home and shot him there... where there would be no doctors to rush to House's rescue.
Much better to be shot in a hospital, really.
House wondered if Cameron had done what he only vaguely remembered asking her to do with the ketamine.
"Did I get ketamine?" House asked suddenly. Startled, Wilson frowned for a long minute before nodding slowly.
"Yeah, I think so," he said. "Why did you ask for it in the first place? I mean the anesthesia would have worked fine, you didn't need to be put in a coma."
"Clinic in Germany treats chronic pain that way," House shrugged. "I figured: 'what the hell.' It's supposed to reboot the brain or something. There's a fifty percent chance my leg problems will come back, but I figured that the odds were good enough."
Wilson looked shocked. His frown at House deepened and he licked his lip thoughtfully in a way that drew House's attention right to that part of his face. House stared at Wilson's lips, pink and slightly chapped, before starting and looking back up into the oncologist's eyes. House swallowed hard, the spit thick and rough going down his throat.
"That sounds suspiciously like change," Wilson told him, his eyes suddenly narrowing. But House thought he could detect a faint playful glint in the other man's gaze. "Are you sure the ketamine didn't reset your personality too?"
"Couldn't have," House smirked. "I asked for the ketamine before I had the surgery."
"So what brought about this miraculous change of heart?" Wilson's tone wry and suspicious.
"You know, I don't actually enjoy being miserable and in pain," House groused.
"I know," Wilson's smirk fell and he looked away from House and down at the floor. "You said."
"When?" House asked, panicking because the last time he remembered saying something of that effect to Wilson it had turned out just to be one big hallucination. If Wilson was remembering the hallucination, then House still hadn't woken up...
"Last time I was over at your apartment, remember?" Wilson replied bitterly, still not looking at House. The oncologist's hands were twisting and worrying the edge of his rumpled white lab coat. "Right before you kicked me out."
"Oh, right," House said, scowling at the sheets that covered his legs. The sense of relief was almost overwhelming. And then House sighed. He was simply to tired to care at that point, he'd have the damn 'Conversation' just to get it over with. "I suppose you'll want to talk about it," he said haltingly after an embarrassingly long silence.
"I'd like to know where I stand, yes," Wilson replied stiffly.
"Fine," House groaned, dragging a hand across his face. "We'll talk. Just not now. We can talk once I win my parole hearing and am sleeping in my own bed, sound good? You can drive me home."
There was a short silence and then: "Can I have that in writing?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The next two weeks were among the worst of House's life. Definitely in the top five periods in his life that he'd just as soon were over with, including most of his childhood and the entire year after his infarction. His body was on the tail end of detoxing from his unhealthy addiction to vicodin, so he had chills, nausea and the sweats along with the pain from his gun shot wounds.
Wilson, whenever he stopped by and found House retching into a bucket, always wore this weary little 'I told you so' look that House almost hated him for. But the pain from his leg had yet to come back, so he did his best to ignore the younger man's smug attitude.
After the first week, House was transferred out of the ICU and given a private room in which to recuperate. When the second week was over, House was cleared to leave the hospital. Wilson helped House with the check out process at the front desk before wheeling him in the regulation wheelchair to Wilson's car. A nurse followed them to retrieve the chair.
"This chair might have been useful when I was actually crippled," House complained, his hands folded in his lap as he obediently let himself be carted to the doctor's level of the parking garage. House stared at the pavement that was passing underneath his sneakered feet.
"Hospital regulations," Wilson sighed, stopping at his grey Volvo and pulling his car keys out from his jacket pocket. He unlocked the driver's side, letting the nurse wheel the grumpy diagnostician to the passenger's side. House stood and opened the door himself before sitting down in the seat and giving Wilson, who was already putting the key in the ignition, a haughty look. The nurse closed the passenger's door and left discretely with the wheelchair.
Wilson reversed out of the parking stall, shifted gears and drove smoothly forwards, following the yellow exit signs that were painted on the concrete walls at intervals. They drove out of the garage and into the sunlight, both watching out of their respective windows in silence. Both counting down the minutes until the 'Conversation' with more than a little trepidation.
Twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of House's apartment building and Wilson parallel parked his car next to the curb. House undid his safety belt and opened the car door before Wilson had a chance to cut out the engine. By the time Wilson had locked the car up, House was unlocking his front door. Wilson followed him inside the building and then inside his apartment.
Wilson shut the door behind him, watching as House began to root around on his desk for something. House shoved aside books, journals and papers bunching them up messily at either end of the wooden surface before looking up at the bookshelf behind his desk. On one of the shelves, at just about eye level, something glinted and House grabbed it. Smirking, he presented it to Wilson with the same air he used when he'd figured out what his latest case's disease was.
It was Wilson's key to House's apartment. Wilson looked at House, confused.
"You're giving it back?" he asked quietly.
"I never took it away," House replied, grabbing Wilson's hand and forcing the key into the other man's limp fist. Wilson started to say something, stopped, started again, but then opted for scowling at the piece of silver metal in his hand. "Well?"
"Well, what?" Wilson snapped. "How the hell am I supposed to know what to say here, House? What does this mean?" He held up the key. "What are you trying to say? I can't read your mind, you know!"
"Why do people lie?" House asked quietly, one eyebrow quirked up as he watched Wilson try to remember what the other man was referencing. When Wilson finally remembered, his eyes went wide.
"People lie to keep what they've got," Wilson replied slowly.
"Precisely," House sighed heavily, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked around his apartment. "I don't want to loose this."
"Then you'd better start telling the truth," Wilson told him flatly. "Because I don't think I can take any more of this 'dog in the manger' crap! What are you so afraid of?"
"Becoming more miserable!" House exclaimed. "You told me that your job and this stupid friendship were the only two things you've got going for you. Well, surprise! That's just about all I've got too. But you forgot one thing. Your reputation."
"Oh, and being gay is going to ruin that?" Wilson said sarcastically. "It didn't ruin my life."
"You're not gay," House shot back.
"I'm bisexual!" Wilson replied, throwing his hands in the air. "The only reason I haven't gotten divorced from any of my boyfriends is because the state of New Jersey doesn't dole out marriage licenses to same-sex couples!"
"You've never had any boyfriends!" House exclaimed.
"I had two in college before I'd even met you," the oncologist replied. "Before Bonnie! And, of course, Max was a guy. Or did you think it was short for Maxine?"
"The only evidence I have to support you being gay is that you spend far too much time in the bathroom blow drying your hair," House said, a short bark of brittle laughter escaping him at Wilson's jab. "So, I'm supposed to assume from your unnecessary grooming habits that you enjoy taking it from behind?"
"You could have asked," Wilson rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"Yeah," House scoffed. "I'm just supposed to ask you if you're a faygeleh? Yell down the hall: 'Hey Wilson? Do you come in the back door or the front?' I'm sure that would have gone down real well. I mean, you're so comfortable with your bisexuality that you've even outed yourself to your best friend!"
"I didn't think you'd care!" Wilson retorted. "You've never cared about this sort of thing before."
"I don't care," House snarled sarcastically, pulling Wilson up short. "Makes me wonder why we're having this conversation, though. Since it clearly wont make a difference to me... You tell your parents?"
"Mum knew since college," Wilson sneered. "Why does it matter? Why do you care? Oh, I get it. You're just angry you didn't figure it out for yourself. You wanted to be miserable. Too afraid to hope because you always get let down, so if you see anything that had the possibility of making you happy, you pretended it didn't exist so you wouldn't have to be disappointed when you don't get it."
"So, I refused to see your apparently blatant homosexuality because I was afraid you wouldn't have the hots for me? Wow, that makes total sense!" House asked incredulously, a razor edge of sarcasm giving bite and volume to his words. "A flaming queen, you are not!"
"Oh, so I have to wear drag to be interested in men?" Wilson spat back, fist now white-knuckled around House's door key. "Why are you so upset? I've got just as much reason to be upset as you do. You never told me you were gay. You just let me figure it out for myself. You can't be angry with me for not telling you if you weren't willing to do the same!"
"I never said you couldn't be angry with me, did I?"
"No, but you still refused to tell me! What were you afraid of? Of people knowing your gay?" Wilson asked softly, arms folded defensively across his chest.
"Military family," House shrugged. "Republicans. Conservative enough to make a stick shocked. Not exactly a homo friendly environment."
"So it's your father's fault you don't want people to know?"
"When isn't it my father's fault?" House asked bitterly.
"You need to stop blaming your parents for your problems, House," Wilson sighed; running a hand through his hair as he nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "You're an adult... supposedly. How you live your life now is your choice, not theirs. If you mess up, it's your own fault. You can't blame anyone else."
"I know that!" House growled through gritted teeth.
"So, why didn't you tell me?" Wilson asked.
"Denial is a lovely place to live," House replied, rolling his eyes in annoyance as if his reasons should have been obvious. "Great views and the property values are spectacular!"
"And what about after?" Wilson queried quietly. "When you'd stopped fighting?"
"I didn't say I'd stopped fighting," House said, frowning at the oncologist. "It was more like I'd realized what I was and then tried back-pedaling. When I realized I couldn't, I ignored it."
"So, what changed?" Wilson asked. "Why are you willing to talk about it now, when you weren't before?"
"Listen, if I could have just given you back my front door key with out you wanting to talk, I would have," House sighed. "Things would have gone back to the way they were and neither of us would mention it ever again. But you wanted to talk, you told me that I either bared my soul or lost everything I wanted to keep in the first place. I figured that the odds of you not running away after I gave you what you wanted were somewhat better than you being willing to speak to me if I refused."
"Costs and benefits," Wilson nodded in understanding.
"Precisely."
"Why do you want to keep me around in the first place?" the younger man asked softly. "If you're that afraid of being found out, for whatever asinine reason, then why would keeping me around be so much more important than that? I know how you work, House. What's the benefit for you?" Wilson was smiling now, shaking his head as he watched the older doctor.
"I don't laugh much anymore," House smiled wryly. "But when I do... I forget how miserable I am."
"I make you laugh," Wilson actually blushed, ducking his head shyly. The reaction made House grin.
"Don't go all girly and giggly around me, please," House groaned, noticing Wilson's reaction. "I don't need you to be gay- gay."
"Hey, you were the one that said I didn't act gay enough," Wilson grinned. "Who's to say I can't be a queen if I want to. It takes a real secure man to get in touch with his feminine side."
"Oh, so you were Max's girlfriend?" House smirked.
"We took turns," Wilson grinned, stuffing the key in his trouser pocket. "I wore the skirt on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We spent the weekends naked." House let loose a short bark of laughter, which rang in the space of the apartment before quickly fading away. The silence that followed was heavy and uncomfortable. "So, what now?" Wilson asked quietly, watching the other man carefully.
"What did you expect to happen?" House sighed. "Was I supposed to fall into your arms? Make sweet, sweet love to you?" Wilson blushed again, causing House to raise a mocking eyebrow. "Just because you forced a confession out of me, doesn't make me comfortable with it, or even okay with it... I might be one day, but not right now."
"Fine," the oncologist sighed, shoving House's door key into one of his trouser pockets. "I can accept that, just answer one question."
"Shoot," House sighed, moving from where he was leaning against his desk to toss himself over the back of his couch. He settled against the cushions, moving so that his feet were propped up on the coffee table, and looked at the younger man expectantly.
"Why the ketamine?" Wilson asked. House thought for a long moment, his memory picking out clear pieces from the hallucination he'd had just after he'd been shot. In his mind's eye, he could see the man still standing by the door shouting at him about defining himself by dismissing the limitations of his body in favor of the possibilities of the mind. Accusing him of now needing to be miserable and crippled in order to maintain that ideal for himself. But it hadn't really been Wilson shouting at him. It had been House himself making the accusation. House sighed.
"I'm trying to prove myself wrong, that's all," he replied, looking away from the younger man to frown at the dark television. He frowned deeper, another thought striking him. "You know, we never finished that 'L Word' marathon."
"Why do you want to finish it?" Wilson frowned, completely nonplussed by House's non sequitur. "You watch it on mute. It's almost like watching lesbian porn, except it's on a public network."
"That's the point. See, its part of my carefully crafted straight guy image," House said sarcastically, making a grab for the TV remote and switching. "Go get me a beer."
"Go get it yourself," Wilson replied with a roll of his eyes. The oncologist shrugged out of his jacket and moved to sit on the couch next to House. House grinned.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Happiness all a matter of perspective, all you need is a little bit of hope and any change that engenders hope is a good one. Any ending that ends with hope is a good one.
It's all a matter of perspective.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
END
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's Note: If requested, I will write an alternative ending where House falls into Wilson's arms and they make sweet, sweet love. The only reason why I'm not including this scene in my original story is because it seems very out of character for him. I really hate writing OOC. But I will write what I consider to be a very OOC fluffy ending if asked.
Please post a comment on this story.
Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of NBC/Universal, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
|
|
|