One Step Closer Away Part III

by GeeLady

One Step closer Away, Part III --------------------------------------------

*(The events in this story take place over approximately two years. This story is the sequel to One Step Closer Away Parts I & II).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson turned the steering wheel of his Sebring and pulled north onto Half Acre Road. The vehicle purred and he sped to catch up to morning traffic.

House held his cane between relaxed knees, hands draped on the handle. He was uncharacteristically quiet.

"Something wrong?" Wilson asked.

For a moment either House didn't hear him or declined to answer. Eventually he grunted.

Wilson looked at House, rolled his eyes, then with unmistakable cheeriness, "I've decided to quit the circus."

"Good for you." House mumbled. "And I'm running away to join an orphanage."

"Outstanding." He sighed.

"Kill anybody lately?"

"Sure."

"House!" Wilson snapped. It had the needed effect, House lifted his eyes from his sneakers and looked out the window instead. But he still said nothing.

After last night's vigorous lovemaking, House was not himself. Off in a world of his own unique making. "Are you going to tell me what's bothering you?" Wilson insisted.

House played with his cane on the car's deep brown carpet, drawing little squiggles. "Cuddy broke up with her latest "desperately seeking looser.org" looser."

"Oh." Hospital gossip Wilson could handle. At least the man was talking.

"Yup." House looked out the window again and was silent.

Wilson felt let down. So far, not much of a gossip session. "And....?"

Wilson waited a few seconds, "When I say "And", I mean "thereupon" or "next", and you're suppose to finish it with additional information. I read that in a manual somewhere."

Wilson pulled into his parking space. House opened his side and got out, leveraging himself to his feet with the use of the solid door and his cane. "I'm going to ask her out."

Wilson stared after House. Not quite the finishing words he was expecting, he caught up to the rapidly retreating House as he entered Plainsborough Teaching Hospital's main doors.

Wilson grabbed the dark sleeve of House's winter coat, forcing him to slow down and then pulling him aside so they could talk in relative privacy. The early AM rush of employees steadily filed through the double glass doors. Wilson blocked House's path and each time the inner doors opened, he felt against his face that odd sensation of cold outside air mixing with the heated atmosphere of the hospital's interior.

"When did they break up?" Wilson asked - a question that actually didn't matter to him at all. The question he really wanted to ask,...he was afraid to ask.

House skirted Wilson's blocking and bee-lined for one of the two elevator's. He didn't need to push the UP button as one of the two doors slid aside almost immediately. A man and woman exited and House entered. Wilson slipped in beside him.

"Yesterday." House said. Wilson swallowed. His gut was suddenly flipping over, churning his breakfast around like a clothes-dryer. "I see you've given this a lot of thought."

House got off on his floor without answering, entered his deserted office with Wilson still in tow. "So, you've decided you want to see Cuddy? Date her? And...I'm assuming not just once."

Ducking behind his desk but still standing, House busied himself with papers then looked up at Wilson with the briefest flash of his coral blue's. He flicked that tiny downward nod of his. A House invented nod. A dramatically curt "yes".

The answer to the question Wilson had really, but not really, wanted.

House seated himself in his swivel chair and switched his computer on. From long association, it was a typical gesture: be otherwise occupied at life's crucially emotional junctures. House would simply leave it up to Wilson to guide the conversation where Wilson, not House, cared it to go.

Wilson asked, "And did you give any thought what-so-ever to oh, I don't know ... US?" House checked his messages. He was all business. "I thought I made it clear from the start there never was any "us"?"

Wilson sighed. His rejected and wounded inside's were itching for a fight. His more controlled doctor exterior swallowed the ache in his throat and said, "Yes, I'm an idiot for foolishly entertaining the smallest hope that, after nearly a year-long personal relationship, you might develop a feeling or two."

When House didn't respond, "That happens to people sometimes." Wilson continued bitterly, "I guess I forgot who I was dealing with. I forgot the rules: I give my soul. You give nothing."

House looked sharply at him. "You got exactly what I said you'd get." With a little more force than necessary, House began opening his mail.

Wilson, tongue in cheek, shook his head in disbelief. "So, should I pick up my toothbrush? Oh - wait - I forgot. I wasn't allowed to keep anything at your place. You would have been reminded that you were fucking a human being with a heart, feelings and everything."

"It's nothing personal."

Wilson laughed ironically. "Of course it is. Just not to you."

House skimmed over his mail, tossing most in the waste basket. "After eleven years, that surprises you?"

"Surprises? No. Disappoints? yes. I suppose I had hopes that you might display some modicum of emotion not born of drugs, beer or the urge to screw. But don't worry, your cover is intact." If his words hurt him, House didn't show it. "You're a walled fortress, House, with no windows and a lock on the door. I won't have to tell anyone, though, they're used to it."

Cameron entered the office.

House, his eyes on his papers, his voice level, "We done here?"

Wilson should have prepared himself for this. It was House, after all. You expected dinner out? Wilson scolded himself. Drinks in a great restaurant too expensive to cry in? This was the man who could warm or chill faster than an arctic summer wind. Wilson mentally kicked himself for allowing his heart to hope. You can't hope in the hopeless. House - the cold-hearted son-of-a cold-hearted bastard. How many generations did it go back, Wilson wondered?

Nodding at Cameron pleasantly, Wilson said to House-now-ex-lover, "Yeah. I guess we are."

Cameron looked after Wilson's swiftly retreating back. "What was that all about?"

"Nothing." House said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cuddy took her time under the morning shower of warm water. She felt very much aware of her body and the changes within it. She felt happy. Vibrant. Tingly. And a little tired which was to be expected. She would have Wilson do the test. He was a friend and would keep the results private until she felt it was the right time to tell House. How he would take the news she had no idea.

Two months previous, with his customary mock-impudence, House had asked her out...

~ ~ ~ "So, I've been thinking it over and just to keep you happy I'll agree to a date with you but with one condition: that we use your place. We could use my place but then I'd have to cancel my regular escort service - just this once - and that is such a pain! Even though my social calendar is packed, I could make a little room for you, say, Friday evening. And probably Friday night."

.....Cuddy just smiled from behind the pen in her mouth. Typical of House to barge in to her office, prop himself on the arm of her leather chair and try all over again. They had played this game of catch for years. Up until today she had always tossed the little red ball back. She was his boss. She had to remain objective.

But lately she'd had a change of heart. And she couldn't quite put her finger on the reason. Only...perhaps he had grown on her. Again. Or more probably had worn her down. Finger-nail picked his way gently through her carefully reserved, though never cold, defenses.

Lately she had been looking at him more and looking differently. From behind her folders, from across the hallway as he chewed out a lab tech or ogled one of the nurses (or her). He and Wilson had been an item, or something approaching a generic form of item, but it was now clearly off. The way to House was open. And Cuddy realised how much she liked his face. A forty-eight year old face that exuded a boyish yet surprisingly sultry charm. Blue eyes that could make you weep or run shivering. She also liked his humor and looked forward to his little jokes and jibes about the size of her backside. A butt he studied far too closely, even for a doctor.

And what manner of music or beasts soothed that restless mind?

Cuddy found her own mind in orbit around his body, indulging itself. His body in pain; gratefully slumped under the tender fingers of Vicodin; his muscles suppled under the shallow breaths of sleep; freshly showered wet House skin; House in his bed at night under rumpled covers...

How did he sleep? How deeply? In what articles of clothing?

The less tangible things of him were as captivating. Cuddy was glad he felt at ease around her. At ease enough to joke, be serious, ask for help, ask her opinion or lash-out. Even lie. Who lies to a stranger?

Other than Wilson (and for a while Stacey), she had been the only person to have miraculously woven her way into House's very private soul. Friendships with him often teetered on the edge of collapse. Just the few, the three of them, had mastered the balancing act of loving House. It was a nerve wracking, tight-rope walk, but well worth the sweat....

House was scrunching up his face in exaggerated thought, "And most likely - at least I hope - Saturday morning. I like my eggs sunny-side up."

Cuddy stared at him, her expression a carefully controlled blank slate. This time, he would be stymied. This time, she would score the point.

He looked at her sideways, waiting. When she continued to stare back, his eyes narrowed.

Cuddy wanted to work it, stretch it, tie him up in knots until he did not know his way home. "Have you done your clinic hours?" She asked.

He rolled his eyes, tucking his top lip over his bottom. "Um, not all of them."

"How short of "all" are we talking here?" "Slightly less than all. About, say, almost none. But I have good reason to neglect them."

"I'm sitting on pins."

"Really? - weird! My reason is...I genuinely loathe clinic duty. It causes me to think there really is a God and SHE walks among us a sadistic, evil, raven-haired witch!"

Cuddy smiled at that, but as though it was a private joke and just hers.

House actually shifted his cane, from holding it between his hands to moving it back and forth between them. As simple an alteration in his behavior as that was, it was a huge win for Cuddy. "You're on." She said.

House seemed to take that as get the hell out and do your clinic duty, but as he was about to pass through her glass doors, "I mean for Friday, House."

He stopped and turned around to face her, his hand still on the knob, wide blue eyes flickering back and forth between browns, trying to find the joke. "Seriously?"

Cuddy nodded, sucking on the tip of her pen. "And as for Friday-night-maybe-Saturday-morning - and just for the record I like my eggs scrambled - " Cuddy smiled a tiny "Yes, I AM evil" twist of one corner of her mouth, "..we'll see. But it won't get you out of clinic duty. Go." He went with a slightly reduced limply-limp in his step. In other words, a bounce.

It had been a very relaxing dinner out. A ride on his fun but uncomfortable - at least for her - Honda in the biting December night. And drinks in her stylish living room. She even requested he light a fire in the hearth.

Referring to the crackling wood, "Is this a hint?" House had asked.

"What sort of hint?" She waited for the question-disguised-as joke she knew was coming next.

"That so far this evening has sucked and you hope to burn down your house with me in it. Or it was nice and you want this cosy fire as a conventional indicator you want the evening to continue?"

Cuddy laughed, delighted that he was acting just as himself. House as House, not as House on his best behavior on a date. Not that she thought he was remotely capable of best behaving. His natural self simply meant he was enjoying their time together.

"You mean, do I want you to sleep with me tonight?" Just seeing how the question affected him gave her a sexual rush. He actually blushed! "The answer, Greg," Cuddy watched those blue's dilate, "is yes."

The next two hours had been the highlight of her year. Crippled he was, but it made him no less a delicious treat in the bedroom. ~ ~ ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cuddy, freshly showered and dressed in her prettiest purple blouse and black skirt ensemble, entered Wilson's office without knocking. Screw formalities.

Before even sitting down, "I'm pregnant." She said.

Wilson sat back in his chair surprised. And a bit nervous. "Um, I...never gave you a..."donation"..."

She shook off his fright. "No, no. I mean I'm pregnant. Not by donation. By someone."

Wilson was genuinely surprised and happy for her. "Congratulations."

A smile lighting her face, Cuddy took the chair Wilson offered and looked at him without speaking.

A tad uncomfortable under her stare "Congratulations...?" He repeated with befuddlement.

"Will you do the test?"

Wilson sat back, glad to be on familiar, doctor soil. "Oh, you haven't actually confirmed..?" She shook her head.

"Not even with a home kit?"

Cuddy shook her head again. "But I have all the indicators. I'm retaining water, I'm nauseous, my appetite is all over the map, I'm tired, I'm showing..I think, a tiny bit."

"So you want the whole rabbit-dying..?"

"Yes." She took out a vial. "Here. I took a blood sample from my arm this morning."

Wilson took it, nodding. "Glad to help. You know there is no rabbit, right? And even when there was, they all died?"

Cuddy laughed a bit, then bit her lip. "Don't you want to know who?...not that I'm sure telling you would be good news...I mean..for you. And maybe not even for him, you can never tell with him..." She was jabbering, such was her shock, joy and fear.

Wilson knew, in a sudden horrible clarity that caused his insides to flip over. His heart ended up on the bottom beneath twisted, bearing down, bleeding-out gut. "House?"

Cuddy nodded, uncertainty in her eyes.

Wilson hammered his emotions in place and cleared the swelling lump in his throat with a cough, "It's okay..." - No, it's not! - "...I'm fine with it..." - Not fine. Not acceptable! - "...House and I...it just didn't work out." But it could have. I loved him. I still - God! - I still love him more than you with your swelling insides could possibly understand.

"Are you sure? About confirming for me, I mean? I didn't have anyone else to ask. And I don't want anyone to know until I'm sure."

"No problem." Wilson said as though soothing one of his cancer patients of the thousand questions. "It's fine. Glad to help."

"This is a miracle. I wasn't suppose to be able to conceive naturally. It's February. My mother was born in February - oh my God, do you think he'll freak?" She asked.

Wilson, anxious to get out of his office now (away from the heart-crushing news), and throw up in a freshly scrubbed toilet, instead just stood and played concerned doctor and friend. "I'm not sure. But I think he'll want to do what's right." It was one of his best, soothing speak-but-say-nothing's. Let her place meaning into the meaningless phrase. Let Cuddy pull from him the one thing in his life that had made him get up every day. Let her bleached smile sop up what was left of hope.

Let him get out of his sterile, hated office. Shed the useless, empty of purpose hospital. Swallow pointless emotions and maybe discover a new reason for living.

Cuddy stood with him and made her own way out the door. "Thank you."

"Sure."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson checked Cuddy's hGC levels. Present but low. Too low, actually.

As his scientific eye examined Cuddy's results, his heart looked for sympathy but found only anger and envy. He was painted green with jealousy that she had been rewarded, for a ridiculously few invested minutes on her back, the prize he had coveted for over a decade. Not the child but the father. Wilson shook the painful thought from his mind and attempted to focus on the work at hand.

Impossible, though, with images of him and her, of naked House and naked Cuddy sliding back and forth across each other on her undoubtedly Pillow-top King-size with the frilly shams.

Wilson's eyes watered, making it difficult to read the next results (he performed two tests just 'cause he was such a sweet guy) to be sure for her. For Cuddy, a friend. His boss and rival, and his former lover's lover whom he hated at this minute more than he thought he could hate anyone. A hate she did not deserve. Never-the-less for the first time in his life, for a brief moment, Wilson wished another human being dead.

When he read the second results, his hate turned to nausea which mixed with the remnants of lunch in his stomach. Wilson dashed for the nearest waste basket and vomited up hot chicken sandwich. Extra gravy.

"I want to do an ultra-sound." It was the first words out of his mouth when he entered Cuddy's office. She was seated behind her desk but not really working. She was humming. Wilson did not sit.

"That's kind of over-kill, at least at this stage, don't you think? I'm pregnant. Even the blood test - thank-you by the way for doing it - is a formality." "Yes, your hGC levels are up, but not as high as they should be...for a pregnancy."

"I'm forty-one."

"That makes no difference. The levels are lower than they need to be to indicate pregnancy. We need to do an ultrasound to be sure."

"Some pregnant women's hGC levels are lower than average-"

"-not this low."

Cuddy, for the first time since the conversation started, sat up straighter. Wilson hoped she would guess. Prayed like hell she would, so he would not have to say the words he had to say. Had often said to so many.

"I have all the indications: I'm showing, I have nausea, fatigue, and insane urge to urinate every ten minutes..."

"I believe you when you say you're experiencing these symptoms. Are your breasts tender?"

"No, not yet, but..."

"They should be. They should be swelling already. Are they enlarging?" Next, the worst question he had, "Or have you lost weight?"

Cuddy stared at her Oncology Department Head. She licked her lips. He was an oncologist - his specialty. It was on his door. "I've lost a couple of pounds but that was before-"

"Lisa," Wilson had to make her see, "I don't think you're pregnant." Then, since she refused to accept the alternative he was suggesting, he suggested it for her, "Some tumors, some cancers, present with slightly elevated hGC levels."

Cuddy sucked in a very large, very controlled breath. She looked at her desk top as though to seek escape. "Are you saying I have cancer?"

"I strongly suspect it, yes. Most likely, from the symptoms, Ovarian."

Cuddy steepled her hands and rested her chin on her fingertips. She breathed in and out for a few seconds. When she spoke, Wilson would not have suspected anything wrong at all.

She stared passed him, beyond him, to the future. "How advanced do you think it might be?"

"An ultrasound, or better yet, a MRI and a biopsy will tell us for sure." Wilson recalled his wish. '...makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires...' Not this. He had not wished this for her. A good, good friend.

"Okay." She said. "Explain to me your tests, treatments and whatever the hell else..." She trailed off and Wilson sat down, explaining in his learned, habitual, every-day-cancer-patient voice what he could do, what she could do and expect, and what neither of them (cancer was a contrary, foul bitch), could yet predict.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Six weeks later, Wilson entered Cuddy's office and was surprised that she walked from around her desk to greet him with a handshake. "Please sit down." She said.

He sat in the brown leather chair opposite her. "Thanks. Uh, you do know I work for you..?"

"I know." She said, "But this meeting is different."

Wilson sat back and linked his fingers together in his lap. Cuddy looked tired.

That was always the first little cloak that cancer draped over its victims: that almost invisible but perpetual color of fatigue. It shaded their faces first, then their bodies, then finally their minds. When Cuddy was certain she had his complete attention, "I'm making arrangements..."

Wilson listened to the words echoed often by his patients. Many of them, too, had made "arrangements".

Cuddy continued. "There will be a chair opening on the Board, obviously-"

"-I don't think I want to become a member of the Board again. Not that I don't appreciate the offer-"

"-Let me finish." She insisted. "I've begun a campaign to recruit you for the post of Administrator. I want you to be the next Dean of Medicine at Plainsborough."

Wilson was struck dumb then made his decision, "I don't think I'm really qualified."

"You're uniquely qualified." Cuddy countered. "You're tenure has been exemplary, you're well liked by your peers, your patients think highly of you, you're an excellent physician..."

Wilson completed the train for her, "...and I know House."

Cuddy nodded in admittance. "Yes."

"Deal with House??" Wilson rolled the idea around on his tongue, allowing it a slow crawl into his mind. "With House?....House??" Wilson held up one flat palm, "I'm flattered...plus I want to run screaming into the night actually, but-"

"James,..."

Wilson was silenced by her rare use of his first name.

"...you know House wouldn't last a week under any other administrator. You know him, he knows you."

In the biblical sense once upon happy time, Wilson sadly mused. "..And you think I'm the only one who can handle him?"

"Who else could do it? Or would? Three other people have worked with House and still they only know him fractionally. Foreman doesn't have the experience under his belt to make a likely candidate for Dean, even if Chase did he would hate the politics and Cameron,..her feelings for House are too close."

"Aren't yours?"

"Yes. But I've never allowed them to prevent me from running this hospital, or let House interfere with the best interests of it. And despite that House and I recently dated a few times, which never got serious, neither of us can be now." She bit her lip. "There's no time." To distract her from that awful truth, "House once cost the hospital one hundred million dollars."

It had not been phrased as a question but she answered it such. "In that case," Cuddy said, believing it then and now, "House was the best interest."

Wilson rubbed his forehead, trying to get his mind around what would be a huge undertaking. He would have to recommend another department head for Oncology, give up his practice and take on House. Full time. Every day. See him every day. Talk, listen, try to deal.

Try to forget.

"Is there hazzard pay?" He joked. "I'm...not sure. Working with him even closer than I do now...?"

Cuddy sympathized. "I know it would be difficult, given your...past relationship. But House functions here. We're his safety net. And you know as well as I what would happen to him under anyone else, or anyWHERE else. A big crack would open up in this lousy world and House would fall right through it. He wouldn't be able to help himself. I don't want that to happen, because I love the son-of-a-bitch. And so do you."

Wilson nodded again. He understood. His heart did too. It ached with comprehension. Cuddy pleaded with him. "None of the cancer treatments have made a difference. I'm dying..."

Wilson flinched that she said it so starkly.

"...No one else can do this job and also be there for House. The Board supports me in this. They'll support you. It has to be you."

Wilson nodded. He knew it of course. Seems Fate, Providence or the Devil was not going to allow him to escape the strangle hold on his heart for a man who did not love him.

At his shaking head, Cuddy asked, "What?"

"I feel, somehow, like I'm betraying him."

"You'll be saving him."

Wilson wondered if, really, there was any other way. To save House and save his own feelings. To be the boss, in control, of House might give him just the distance he needed to once and for all get over him. Wilson yielded to Fate. "Okay."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even though he had not been on the Board for over two years, the Board was pleased with Cuddy's recommendation of Wilson as New Dean of Medicine. That it happened to be her final, deepest wish which had influenced their decision was politely not mentioned.

Two months after her diagnosis of Stage Three Ovarian cancer, Lisa handed the keys and the power to James Wilson. Her personals were removed and sent home. Cuddy's name was scraped off the glass door and Wilson's decal-ed on.

Cuddy adjourned to the cancer ward to await whatever waited for her there.

House...

Even Wilson didn't know what the hell to do with House. At the news of Cuddy's cancer, he had retreated into full House-mode. Angry, arrogant, rude, distant. A royal pain in everyone's ass. The man was becoming unglued.

"You should have had ten cancer specialists here three months ago!" House shouted at Wilson in the new Dean's office (behind the double glass doors which did eff-all to mute the volume). "Instead you dicked around with the usual useless crap you serve up to every other cancer patient that has ever walked through your door."

Wilson stood with his hands in his pockets. There was no use shouting back to this man. Shouting back was like pouring kerosene on a flame. House would ignite. Wilson allowed House, who was venting his grief for Cuddy by screaming at everyone who would tolerate it, to wind down until he was calm enough to have a human conversation.

"Everything was and is being done for Cuddy." Wilson asserted evenly. "The cancer was too advanced by the time we detected it for anything to have likely success."

House dripped sarcasm, "Here's where you offer me platitudes and hope and I pretend to listen with resigned serenity. Go ahead. Begin!"

Wilson, having little else to at that point anyway, did, "Ovarian cancer is very difficult to detect in the early stages, that's why it's often discovered only after it's almost too late to do anything about it."

"Congratulations, you've managed to leave your foot print in the statistical middle ground. You were the friggin' oncologist department head, didn't you notice anything?! Before you began dressing like a lawyer, I think you used to be a doctor."

Wilson decided not to mention that it was not he who had been dating the woman. "Cuddy would appreciate a visit from you. She's been asking for you for days. She wants to say goodbye."

"I don't have to say goodbye because she's not going to die."

"Gregory House is going to astonish the world by curing cancer." Wilson said. "Right. Something a thousand researchers haven't been able to accomplish during the previous fifty years."

"At least I'm going to try to do something." House said, gesturing to Wilson's empty coffee cup. "Why don't you hit the cafeteria? I hear the espresso's are half price today."

"House!" Wilson said before House had a chance to storm self-righteously out.

House reluctantly turned back, managing to twist his patience into a shaky coil.

Wilson tried to find a ground between sensitive and commanding. Cuddy had perfected the language of Boss-Talking-to-House. He himself was still an armature. "Everything that can be done for her is being done. I know you care about her and that this, for once, is not just a puzzle for you." He walked up to him. Could smell his hair and the salty tang of his terrified sweat. Death and House did not see eye-to-eye. His eyes were a ghost's, sunken into a haunted, drained face.

Wilson wanted to help him. Wished he could put his arms around him and take his agony away. But he couldn't hardly deal with his own. "But if you neglect your current case-load with lab time for Cuddy's terminal" (he underlined "terminal") "cancer, I'll restrict your access. You'll have restricted resources and you'll have to run everything, and I mean every decision, by me first." Wilson hated to put the thumb screws to him, but House was rapidly advancing from unglued to outright berserk. "Don't test me on this point."

"A month." House said, staring back defiantly.

"A month for what?" Wilson asked.

"You. It took you a month to go from hand-holding caring Doc' to By-the-Book Bastard."

"Calling me names is not going to change her prognosis." Wilson pointed out.

House's sorrow and anger were palpable, but his wretched eyes dropped like stones into the deep. House turned to the door, his every movement a beacon of misery.

But Wilson received a House-nod. A trifle twitch, but it was House's third rail between obedience and rebellion. He would do as he was told...for now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

March came and went and Cuddy was going faster with every week. House did not visit her. In the second week of April, in his office-attached conference room, "What've we got?" House asked Cameron while pouring his third cup of coffee of the day though it was only nine-thirty.

As House had handed her the file an hour ago, Cameron knew he already knew what was in it, but she summed up point form for him anyway. House liked to know that she had done her reading like a good employee ought and was ready with a theory or two.

"Fifty-four year old male presents with halitosis and severe constipation that has not responded to treatment other than frequent trips to the emergency to be "evacuated"."

"Yeah, I'll bet they ALL left." House sipped his coffee. "Any scoop on why no poop?"

"Diet. He's a middle aged bachelor. Probably eats like you. Burgers, fries and way too much coffee."

"Yet I CAN poop. What else? What does his I'm assuming really bad breath smell like?"

"We just got the chart, I haven't checked yet."

"Well, let me. You keep busy thinking up possible diagnosis on why this guy's fudge won't budge."

"So? All packed up and no can't go?" House said to his very uncomfortable looking patient.

The patient's face was flushed and the sweat plastered his thin black hair to his scalp. He was taking a breather from straining on the toilet in the room's attached washroom and was lying, on his side notably, on the bed. "Not for at least a week. Until there's no room left and some gets kicked out to make room for the next load. I can't even eat."

Noting the guy's spare tire, "That's probably best." House perched on a stool and flipped through his patient's chart. "I'm going to get my pretty assistant doctor-"

"-a woman doctor?"

House nodded, throwing a telling wink. "A very pretty woman doctor. Don't worry she's seen shit before. Smelled it, touched it, scraped it into a petri dish, even labeled it. I think she's got a fetish actually, so I'm fairly confident you're going be her Graceland."

"Oh God." "Pretty, hot Doc's going to take a chunk of your funk and see if we can't squeeze out a diagnosis on why nothing's rollin' from the colon."

"Are you always this happy about someone who can't shit?" "No, I save my really big laughs for testicle troubles. Much more fertile ground for jokes and mocking purposes." House stood and leaned in close to the guy.

"What are you doing, trying to kiss me?"

House squinted. "You wish. I'm smelling your breath."

"And?"

"Whew." House stood back. "Smells like...Feces Men by Victor. Not a fragrance I'd wear on a hot date by the way."

The man grimaced, his face turning pink, "Give me something so I can take a shit!"

"Presently all I have is advice." House threw him a magazine. "Take this to the bathroom, use some Vaseline - it'll make the trip smoother if a gofer pops out . Miss Fetish will be by shortly. Don't forget to wash. Lots of soap. Just-after-bathroom hands turn her on."

House returned to his office. Cameron wasn't there so he had a few minutes to think. Opening one of his thick volumes, he read for a few minutes. When Cameron returned, "Well? Did he offer you a free sample?"

Cameron smiled at House. He seemed better this morning than he had lately. No matter how screwed up things - or he - got, a good, weird case always cheered him up. "No-"

"-the cheapskate!"

"I had to take a smear." She finished.

"Ewww, poor you. Sure glad I don't have to do that stuff."

Cameron poured herself a coffee and added a liberal amount of cream and one sweetener. "I'll run it for everything I can think of."

House nodded, head back in his book. "Make sure emergency took his BP, and do a CBC and chemistry panel. And I want all the scuttle-BUTT when you're done."

"Yes-sir, 'Rodney'."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Foreman entered Wilson's office waving a blue folder. "House took my case."

Wilson sat back from a mound of paperwork, rubbing his eyes. "And you want it back." "Duh."

Wilson threw a "don't push it" look.

Foreman said, more respectfully. "House has no business scooping up a neurological case."

Wilson picked up his phone and quickly called for his assistant to call for House. "You mean you'd already diagnosed the patient?" He asked, replacing the receiver.

"No, but it is clearly neurological."

"How do you know?"

"The symptoms fit."

"What are the symptoms?"

"The symptoms," House pushed the door open with his cane and entered the discussion, "also fit kidney dysfunction."

"What ARE the symptoms?" Wilson asked again.

House and Foreman spoke in unison, "Bunged bowels/Constipation and bad breath/halitosis."

Wilson's attitude went from curious to annoyed. "That could be from an all-nighter at McDonald's!"

Foreman effected his best "I'm the neurologist and so I'm correct" look, "It's neurological."

"He meant nephrological." House said, his "I'm a recalcitrant ass" look spread across his features but put there by nature.

Foreman turned to House, "House. The man hasn't shit in a week. That means muscle weakness, and that indicates periodic paralysis. And that means it's neurological."

"Or it means his bowels are over strained from being stretched out like nylons on a fat lady...and THAT'S because he's CONSTIPATED!"

"Enough!" Wilson said, burying his weary face in his hands for a second. "House." He pointed with a H5 pencil, "You get him for twelve hours. If you can't figure out how to make this guy's bowels move, the case is Foreman's."

Both House and Foreman were about to protest but Wilson held his palms out. "Don't talk to me anymore. Go." "You're not screwing me anymore but you're still screwing me." House threw back over his shoulder. Foreman was already out the door and hadn't heard it.

Wilson answered, "I gave the first twelve hours to you, idiot. The rest if you remember," He was now not speaking of the patient, "wasn't my choice."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

House examined Cameron's findings. "Does he take any vitamins?"

"I can ask." Cameron answered. House was quieter. She knew that a few hours ago, he had gone to argue for his case against Foreman. Since Wilson's promotion, House had been avoiding the Dean's office like he avoided work.

"Ask. Get a diet on the guy too. His medical history include any digestive abnormalities?"

"Regularly but not out-of-the-ordinary. Just the usual heartburn or indigestion, up until this." Cameron's beeper wanted attention. She checked it. "Mister Peyes's kidneys have shut down."

"That's his name? Pies? Please tell me his first name is cow."

"His kidney's aren't working and your asking about names. And it's Pey-es." "You're the one who said I should become more personal with my patients. Make up your mind." House stood and walked to the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To Wilson's office. Foreman'll be beating down the door to get the case. Start the patient on broad spectrum antibiotics, he might be going septic. And get someone to help you flush him out again if that's at all possible. And biopsy an adrenal gland."

"You want me to start cutting into him with no kidney function? We have no idea what's happening. That would be nothing more than a shot in the dark." "The kidney's have shut down, therefore there is kidney dysfunction. An adrenal biopsy is the next logical step."

"What do you suspect it is?"

"I expect that I will have a suspect once we biopsy an adrenal gland."

Cameron was alarmed. "We can't remove one of his adrenal glands without a plausible diagnosis first, or at least a good guess - we've got nothing." House was her boss, but, "This really could be neurological, you know."

"Who's side are you on?" "The patient's."

House tried reason, "A biopsy will give us something-"

"If we're going to start cutting into the guy, we may as well grab a foot of bowel and biopsy that."

"Good idea!"

"House, I can't support invasive procedure's without a reasonable theory."

"He has all the symptoms for a kidney dysfunction, a biopsy will tell us more and we can make a diagnosis."

"He only has two symptoms."

"Well, of those, he has them all. Do the biopsy."

"You're just looking for a distraction so you won't have to think about her."

"If I needed a distraction, I'd insist you come to work naked."

"House, you haven't visited Cuddy once since she was put-" "-I've got other things on my schedule at the moment, like curing our dying patient. If it's not on your schedule yet, mark it down!"

"House-"

House turned on her both in manner and emotion, "Go work for Foreman then! While still working for me the last reasonable diagnosis HE made cost a woman her life!"

Cameron stared at her boss. House was flushed and angry. Almost as though he was detoxing but she had seen him palm several Vicodin in the last two hours.

House calmed enough to add. "Either do the damn biopsy or quit." He left.

~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson again faced his two competitive, and combative, department heads. "You've had almost twelve hours, House, the guys kidneys are screwed. You're not going to start chopping him up. The case is Foreman's."

Foreman rocked on his heels, the tiniest smile of triumph on his lips.

Wilson threw Foreman a look that would have chilled a bonfire. "Don't get cocky. You have SIX hours. If the guy's worse after that, the case goes to Kassab in Intensive."

"I know it's M.S.," Foreman said, "But I'll need more time."

"The patient doesn't have it. You have six hours, after that it's keep him alive on dialysis until Kassab makes a diagnosis." Wilson opened a drawer and retrieved an aspirin bottle. He shook out four and popped them in his mouth.

House said, "Give the guy back to me after Foreman fails miserably, which he will do. I-"

Wilson sat down. "He goes to Kassab who's primary interest, by the way, is the life of the patient, a surprisingly common ethical stand for most physicians but one which you two seem to have forgotten."

House tried again, "I haven't used up my twelve hours yet. Look, Wilson-"

Wilson slammed the drawer shut, making the pens, paperclips and other objects on his desk jump in unison. "Cases do not come across your desks for your amusement or to stroke your gargantuan egos!"

"Cuddy never yelled like that." House said quietly but the ill-timed attempt at humor didn't stand a chance against the thick tension or his employer's mood.

Wilson did not trust himself to even look at House or Foreman and still maintain his own decorum. "Funny enough, my name isn't Cuddy. Go do your damn jobs."

Cameron waited until she saw House return to his office. She managed to ambush Wilson on his way to the cafeteria. "I need a gallon of ridiculously strong, tar-black, heavy on the cream coffee, with an obese amount of sugar." He said to her then explained, "House and Foreman."

Cameron announced, "I think House is losing it."

"You and most people."

She stopped him with a hand on his forearm. "No, I mean it. He's making rash decisions, he's acting as though he's detoxing only he isn't. This morning he was joking, this afternoon, he screamed at me because I refused to needlessly cut into our patient."

"Not your patient anymore. I gave the case to Foreman."

"Good, but don't be surprised if it turns out that House ignores that."

Wilson regarded her gratefully. "I'm glad to have one clear head in the herd." Wilson put his hands in his pockets and jingled the change there. "Are you saying he might do an and around Foreman and endanger the patient?"

"Maybe. But even if he doesn't, I'm still worried about him. It's like he's trying to distract himself from....has he seen Cuddy?"

"I don't think so, and it's not my place to suggest it. House is dealing with it the only way he knows how - avoidance."

"Just thought you ought to know. Excuse me, I have to go do a biopsy."

"I gave the case to Foreman."

"And I just told you House would ignore that."

House had Cameron run for Hyperaldosteronism. To his frustration, Cameron agreed to a aspiration only biopsy prior to turning the patient over to Foreman.

Once he had control of the patient, Foreman had Chase do a Romberg's Test to search for Sign. After several hours, House, Foreman and Chase showed up again in Wilson's office.

"It's not M.S., is it?" House said to Foreman.

Foreman raised his eyebrows in a shrug. "No. But it's not Hyperaldo' either." Wilson spread his hands on his desk. "Then what is it? Or do you have any idea?"

Cameron walked through the door. "It's Alexander's Disease." She announced and handed the results to Wilson. House glanced sharply at her.

She continued, "A very rare adult onset manifesting very few symptoms. That's why we couldn't figure it out. When he got up to walk to the bathroom, he staggered twice. It didn't look like it was from the constipation, so I tested him while I was waiting for the biopsy results." She explained. "He's positive for white matter lesions in his second and third ventricles." She looked at House. "I CT'd him behind your back."

Foreman said pointedly to House, "And Alexander's is...?"

"Neurological." House said.

"Therefore my case." Foreman said to Wilson.

Wilson sat back in his chair. "Kassab's case, actually, now that the circus acts are done."

Foreman looked puzzled, "I was right that it was a neurological-"

"-I don't care who was right. Neither of you exactly distinguished yourselves with this little pissing contest. And I was an idiot to allow it to go on." Wilson grabbed his overcoat. "I should have assigned the case to Kassab as soon as I saw you two in a battle to see who could be the bigger ass." Wilson stood up. "I'm sick of this. Go home. For you two, the case is over."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson presented House with a second case. An acting like he was detoxing-but-not House. The case - a test. With only one winner slash loser.

House spent all of a half day on the 68 year old fatigued man and sent Cameron to ship him out with advice for multi-vitamins and a prescription for Viagra. Cameron argued until she was wiped, then bee-lined for Wilson's office to tattle.

"He is dismissing a case without a confirmed diagnosis." She told Wilson. "First he wanted to cut into a guy just to try and find a diagnosis and now he's ignoring case's. If the patient was just impotent, the clinic would have found that and wrote a 'script'." Cameron was sad for him but, "House is a danger. You have to do something. He needs controlling."

"You almost make it sound possible." Wilson sighed. He'd been on the job less than two months and already he was battling House for every crumb of compliance. "You have to make it possible. He's down in the lab running tests on Cuddy's blood and tissue, bumping out other technicians, literally! He's obsessing over her, trying to cure her. Save her."

Oh, God. "How long has he been there?"

"All day. Me too, but I've had enough. I left him in the Lab." Despite her frustration, Cameron looked worried. "Wilson, he looks like hell. It's like he's trying to kill himself."

Which meant House was really screwed up. He hated work and especially lab work. Wilson stood, donning his white doctor's coat over his black suit. "I'll deal with him. If House has any cases pending, let Foreman and Chase attend."

Wilson leaned against the Lab entry door, watching House. The man was a walking, talking wrinkle, so absorbed in his own little war of salvation, he hadn't noticed Wilson enter.

"Cuddy's tests?" Wilson asked.

House did not look up from his slides. He knew why Wilson was there. "Cameron is such a snitch. Does it matter to you that much?"

"Yes, actually. Believe it or not Lisa and I were friends."

House let a breath escape; a huff of holier-than-thou. "You're already speaking about her in the past tense."

Wilson hadn't meant the "were" that way, but was too tired at that moment to defend it. "We had a chat. Lisa and me, I mean. She does not want you to do anymore tests on her or any part of her. Your Lab privileges are suspended House."

House pulled his face away of the microscope's eye-piece. "Yeah. I suppose I am." He tossed the slide in the trash. Clearly his results had not been what he'd been hoping for.

Wilson wondered how long the man was going to last. "How are you?"

"Not bad. Busy."

"How long were you planning to bury your grief in here?"

"As long as it took to find a treatment. But now even if I could, you're pressing the buzzer."

Wilson tried what he knew was a useless tact. "We can all see you're hurting, House. You're not the only one. If you'd just let people in-" "-I let you in, in every possible way."

"You did NOT." If House wanted to argue about it, fine! Wilson was more than itching. "You kept yourself as remote as always. You lied about Cuddy."

"No, I didn't. And choosing not to tell you isn't lying."

Wilson crossed the few feet of space between them. "We were lovers for almost a year. You ended it in eight minutes!"

"If you came down here to scoop me up in your loving arms, you suck at it." House limped to the cooler and replaced the vial of Cuddy's blood back in it's proper place.

"As a scoop-ee, you suck worse. You're hiding, just like always. You hid from Stacey and then when she left, you hid in a bottle. You hid from me while I was standing in front of you for God's sake."

"I seem to remember standing in front of you a lot. And kneeling, squatting, bending over..."

"Yes, I remember our year of loving dangerously. Do you?"

"I remember having sex, not love. And only weekend sex."

Wilson sounded bitter, "Yes, I stand corrected. Nothing was different before, during or after. You got what you wanted, and I got...what YOU wanted."

"You got me front, back and upside down."

"Now all I have is a screwed up diagnostician hiding from me, himself and reality. And here you are hiding from Cuddy too." Wilson had a lot of unspoken pent up words that wanted their freedom. "You're turning back into fucked-up House. You hardly sleep, you're ignoring your responsibilities, screwing up cases, you're popping ant-acids like Vicodin!"

House threw him a telling look. "That's because for some reason I have a LOT of things causing me indigestion."

Wilson looked around the paper littered Lab. "Fine. You can finish your current battery of tests, then the lab is off limits. Starting tomorrow, you're restricted to Clinic duty."

House tapped his cane on the hard tiles. "Fine!"

Wilson searched House's eyes to see if he was just saying that to get rid of him or actually intending to comply. After a moment, House appeared resigned.

Wilson walked to the door. Glancing at the mess, "I'll leave you to say goodbye to your new friends here." But at the door the ache of tension fell from his shoulders. The magic of House took effect, as it always did. At least with him.

It seemed not to matter what awful things House did to himself or others, or what unkind things he said, most people, after a time, were disarmed by him. He cast a spell on people. Some deep sorcery he possessed and exuded almost unconsciously, like sweat, that most times protected him from the repercussions of his own exquisite brand of asshole. He could insult big and small and they'd feel guilty because of the shocked, hurt look on his face when, with equal vigor, they defended themselves.

House was a kid in a grown man's body, breaking windows up and down the street with his victims running after him sweeping up the glass, with looks of apology.

"House. If you need me, I mean really need me for anything...I'm here."

House raised bloodshot eyes to Wilson's gently pleading ones. No answer was forthcoming as Wilson had hoped but at least those tired blue's had not said no.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

House checked out yet another man's dick with nothing approaching interest. "You've got herpes." He said to the guy without ceremony.

House's patient blushed red. "That's impossible. I've never cheated."

"Then your wife has." House scribbled in the guy's chart and with stupefied boredom, wrote out yet another script for an ever widening variety of STD's that had shamefully wandered into his life that day.

"She thinks I'm the only man on earth." The middle aged, not bad looking business man in a suit insisted.

"I don't care." House answered.

"You're my doctor." He said.

"Still don't care. And what I am, by the way, is your got-me-by-default doctor. I have no choice but to be here. Therefore I'm only your doctor for this next excruciating minute. In a few seconds, I get to go away."

Herpes Husband only half listened as his mind went to the possibilities of his wife's doubtful fidelity. "You really think she's boinking some other guy?" House stood, sighing. "I don't know her. For all I know, or care, she's licking carpet. Herpes makes it's home on many a genitalia." House handed him the script. "Get this filled at the hospital pharmacy, and interview your wife's best friend's carpet's. Chances are, they need to see their very own pharmacists too."

House exited the exam room and snapped up the next chart. His leg hurt like hell, he was out of Vicodin and presently he had no time to go get more.

In the next exam room a pleasantly plump, balding man of fifty greeted him. "Hello."

House ignored that and sat on the stool. With his right hand he clutched his aching thigh, with his left he held and glanced through the patients chart. "Your arm is sore." House summed it up.

Nice Man smiled. He moved his right arm around a bit and rubbed his shoulder. "Yeah. I was digging and my arm kind of seized up."

"How much digging?" House asked, trying to ignore his own pain.

"Well, Judy and I want to put in this sunken rock pool in our back yard, so I've been at it for days...." Irritated, "One word answers please, I've got an appointment with some mind altering drugs." House told him.

"Uh,...a few days."

"A few DAYS...of digging. When did you notice your arm getting sore? Me thinks I'm correctly surmising that the "sore" didn't happen all at once."

"Well, the second day I guess. It started to hurt that morning, but I'm fifty-one you know and lots of things are starting to hurt. My back sometimes gets-"

"Remember what I said about one-word answers? I think you were in the room at the time."

Nice man frowned. "You're kind of unpleasant."

"And you're seriously over-pleasant. So, together we balance the universe. Raise your arm."

Nice Man obediently raised his left arm.

House glared at him. "Raise the one that hurts, you idiot!" "I can't. It hurts." The man glanced at the door.

House saw. "You wanna leave? I got no problem with that."

"I want another doctor."

"Well, I want another patient, looks like we're both screwed. You've probably injured your rotator cuff, so raise your arm."

At the man's hesitation, House took his arm and raised it for him.

"Ouch!"

"Does that hurt?" House asked innocently.

"Yes. It hurts like hell."

"Come on! That's not pain." House's leg throbbed and twitched like a coiled snake. "That's just a wee owie. You wouldn't know pain if you married it."

"My arm hurts! And I want another doctor. Nurse!"

House squeezed the guy's injured arm and he shut up instantly. Frightened green eyes went cold with fear when House put his crazed with pain ice-blue's to within an inch of his patient's face. "You think you know pain? That's a joke! You're a joke." House raised the guys bad arm again, higher, holding it there.

"Ow, ow, ow.." The patient was really scared now. Too scared to call for help.

"Think that hurts?" House asked, his lips a gleeful twist. "Huh?" House rotated the arm, feeling the resistance in the joint. The man felt it too and gasped.

House, mind drowning under waves of ceaseless pain, let the guys arm go. "You think you understand pain? Ever had an aneurism in you thigh? Felt your muscles dying, the nerves curling up? Ever felt pain so bad you wished someone would shoot you? - WELL?!"

The man stared. Too terrified to answer, he shook his head.

"I have. Still do feel it. Every day. Every hour of every day. The only thing that stops me feeling it - and by that I mean feeling it right this second - is running out of my drugs or because of idiots like you sent to take up my time with your endless complaints about your pathetic little aches."

The fellow kept looking at the door, hoping someone would walk in and rescue him from the mad doctor.

House wasn't finished. "Ever been shot?"

A tiny, humble, please don't kill me doctor, head shake.

"I didn't even know him! I almost died."

House saved the best for last. "Ever loved someone and watched them leave? Watched them die? Ever slept with another man you didn't love but whom you couldn't live without?"

Nice Man responded in the negative to all those choices.

House felt his mind treading desperately, barely keeping his senses above the water-mark. "I have." His leg screamed at him, his heart laughed and his mind begged him to end this. End it before he lost everything.

End it now...

House took a deep breath and backed away, seeing the patient clearly for the first time in several minutes.

The guy was frightened beyond speech.

House backed away to the door. He had to go. He ought to stay and try to repair the damage he had just caused to this innocent, pleasant man and to, undoubtedly, his tenure. But he had no idea how. "I,...I'm,..sorry...I,...sorry..." He muttered and quickly left.

Wilson found House in his office, sitting in his desk chair, bent double and clutching his leg. He was silent as a mannequin except for hard, terrified breaths.

Wilson said, "The leg's real bad." He did not need to ask. He knew.

House just nodded.

Wilson checked the hallway for passer-by's. It was empty for the moment.

He bent down on his haunches and touched House's face. House spoke, "God, I scared the shit out of that patient. I ...hurt him."

"I know. They told me. Nurse Daniels explained. She's trying damage control with the guy."

House did not shake off Wilson's touch. He, rather, leaned into it a little. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what I was doing,..thinking,.. I just got so angry...just couldn't stop."

Wilson nodded. "I know."

"I'm fired, aren't I?"

Wilson sighed. "I'm going to talk to the board. Remind them that Cuddy wants you here, that you're a valued resource, but in the end, it won't be just my decision. I'm going to recommend suspension with pay and tell them you've agreed to go to counseling." With one finger, Wilson raised House's face to make him look back. "Even if you don't." He added.

House nodded. It was more than he had hoped for, considering the level of screw up. This was way worse than what he'd done to Tritter.

Way.

Wilson turned his attention to House's pain. "Did you take your Vicodin?"

House nodded, held up four fingers.

"Not enough?"

House's eyes were wells of agony. He shook his head.

"I'll get the morphine."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cuddy was a sunken woman. Rail thin, her skin flat against her cheeks, her eyes staring nearly sightless at the ceiling tiles. Her lips a thin, colorless line, said in a painful whisper, "I want you to stop."

House sat on the edge of the bed beside her. Cuddy, her beautiful face drawn and brown from repeated, and ultimately useless, chemotherapy treatments, turned her face to House's. He looked almost as bad.

"But I might be able to find-"

"No." She stopped him. "I don't want any more treatments or experiments. I don't want to see you killing yourself because of me."

"I can't just give up-"

"-Yes you can. I'm asking you to. I'm telling you to stop. As your boss I used to outrank you. As a patient, I still do." The few sentences had sapped her nearly empty reserve of strength. "House. Let it go,....let me go..."

He sat with her until the end. The others kept a respectful distance. From the one small window into her private room, Wilson kept one eye on House and one on Cuddy's monitor. The readouts were low and dropping. Her body was throwing up its hands, seconds away from giving in to oblivion.

When she did, even then House did not cry. He held her face between his hands and kissed her forehead before walking to the door.

Wilson, his own grief for Cuddy held in check because no one had ever seen a mourning House and so knew what to expect. Hurt, sad, in pain, yes, but this was new. An alien being.

Wilson stepped back as House came through the door, leaning heavily on his cane. House had smoothed over his surface but his eyes spoke of grinding resentment, and when he looked at Wilson, back-flipped to unchecked devastation.

"She's dead." Was all he said.

Wilson opened his mouth to speak but House turned away before he had a chance. Wilson looked back into Cuddy's room. House had covered her up. Her funeral arrangements she had made in advance. There was nothing for any of them to do but show up.

Wilson did have a promise to keep. For her he would do his best, whatever the cost to himself personally.

He would keep House safe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cameron, dressed in a respectful black pants and blazer over a burgundy blouse stood before House. He dressed in his usual "these were on my floor" style, did not care what she thought. "No, I'm not going. What business is it of yours?"

Cameron was incensed. "She was your friend."

"Yes, and again, what business is it of yours?"

"She'll know you cared at least."

House stood, tried to walk around his assistant who kept stepping in front. "She's dead, she doesn't know anything. And yes, by the way, she knew I was her friend. But - third time - what business is it of yours?"

"She deserves to be shown respect."

Tired of the conversation, "Get out of my way." House tried to escape again and the quicker on her feet Cameron, once more, stood in his way.

"Where are you going?"

"Did you change your last name to Parker? because your first name has to be Nosey."

"Answer me."

House brought his cane down hard on his desk, actually cracking the wood. "What I do is none of your goddamn business!"

Cameron stepped back, finally silent. House had become violent before, but never to an extreme and never to her. Chase had gotten his chin bruised once but that was when House was in full detox misery.

House looked abashed enough to drop his eyes down in a kind of silent apology. Then, "In case you didn't know, I no longer work here, so I don't have to answer to anyone." His cane was splintered and useless. He tossed it on the desk and hobbled passed her, out the door and down the hall to the elevator. Cameron was worried enough to follow, but not before she retrieved a hospital issue aluminum cane for him from Supply.

Cameron followed House discretely. When he entered the staff men's shower, she waited outside the door listening as best she could. From inside, she could hear House opening a locker, shedding clothing, retrieving a towel from the linen cupboard and turning on water.

When the shower door closed with a click, Cameron opened the outer door quietly and stepped into the wood-walled, ceramic floored room. Already white steam clouds were escaping above the shower stall, the walls running with moisture.

Through the frosted glass shower door, Cameron could see his outline. Standing, he rested his back against the right wall, and was holding his crippled thigh up to the heated spray. He held it there a long time and Cameron was mesmerized by the patience in the gesture. She counted the minutes as House held his thigh to the soothing heat, frozen in place. A man carved. Motionless.

When he moved, she jumped.

But he wasn't done yet. A towel was draped over the shower door that obscured House's head and shoulders though Cameron had a wide, albeit indistinct, view of the rest of him. Her heart thudded as he lathered up and rinsed off, water running off his chest, stomach, genitals and legs, taking away the days stress and worry.

And perhaps a fraction of its pain.

Cameron felt a little guilty voyeuring her boss. But not enough to stop doing it. She loved his body. He was forty-nine. Chest softening, face no longer smooth as youth. But she loved it anyway. His whole self, desirable. His face, handsome and molded with emotion. His mind, contrary and compelling. His mouth, saying one thing and eyes, so often, saying another.

She was with Chase but she wanted House. Still.

His words, (painful, sad words), came back as yesterday. "You don't love, you need. And now that your husband is dead, you're looking for your next charity case. That's why you're going out with me..."

She had been stunned by his unadorned honesty. So taken aback by his insight - he'd been right. So right.

Then.

And at the same time, she had felt utterly shattered by his view of himself - so broken up inside that she had not said a word in response. Neither of them had spoken until the waiter came and took their dinner orders. And by then it was too late to respond.

How could she have? With twenty-five words, he had ruptured through her certitudes of him and re-wrote them: World famous doctor. Good looking, sexy, intelligent, funny, demanding, endlessly surprising, ...these things she had believed. And assumed he did too.

But in a troubled moment he'd transformed before her - ta-dah - into a man who thought he was far less than that. Below average. Not good looking, not charming, nothing much nice about him at all. He was too damaged. Too wary to take a chance on someone he believed only loved him out of pity.

And too old.

Plus the politically incorrect that he'd left unsaid: a cripple.

In addition, what every simpleton labeled him as: a drug addict.

Twenty-five words had broken her heart for him and he had not heard the shatter.

What she'd wanted to say she'd never said. Not that day nor any day that followed: ~Maybe some of what you said about me is right. But to me, you're also wonderful. I love working with you. I look forward to seeing you every day. Hearing your jokes. I love your face. I love your body, I'm immensely attracted, I want to see you again...~

A life time ago, it seemed. But only three years in fact. Her need he had spoke of, and of which he'd been partly correct, had faded. The desire remained.

Below her chattering memories, Cameron heard another sound. Choking. Not food stuck in the trachea kind. The heart stuck in the throat kind.

House was sitting on the floor of the shower now, knees bent, unsuccessfully trying his best to stifle himself. Cameron wondered if there were tears. To a patient House had once said in passing that he could not cry. Not that he did not. He COULD not.

Apparently, choking, tearless sobs were included in his physical makeup.

He had loved Lisa Cuddy.

It had taken Cameron a long time to accept that he would never love her. A hard lump to swallow. She'd long ago stopped speaking of it to him.

After a few minutes, he became quiet again and there was nothing but the sound of water. Cameron had the overwhelming desire to throw open the shower door and embrace him no matter how uncomfortable with it he became.

But instead she ducked into the locker area, away from House's field of vision in the steamy room. With difficulty, he stood, pulled the towel inside the stall, wrapped it around his waist and stepped out onto the chilly floor.

House walked to the only straight backed chair in the room, near the lockers, and sat down. He drew a hand down his face to remove excess water and rub life back into it.

"Hi."

House jumped and twisted around. "Geez!" He stayed seated but glowered at her. "What are you doing in the men's shower?"

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry. And to make sure you're okay." As though a soldier had blown his bugle, Cameron saw House's instant emotional retreat. "I'm fine."

It took seconds but when Cameron reacted, it was pure instinct. Of course he was not okay. She placed her hand on his bare shoulder. Of course, he stiffened.

"I heard what happened at the Clinic." She said.

"So did I." He answered and looked down at her hand, puzzled by it. For him it was an almost unrecognizable human connection. His eyes looked up, questioning her. "I said I'm-"

She kissed him, cutting off his assurance that, despite the woman he was in love with having died two days previous, that he was just fine. Great. Nothing to fret about. He wasn't bothered at all.

Her lips did not retreat. They told him she didn't believe him. They told him that he would not be allowed, this time, to refuse comfort.

Cameron kissed him deeper and was surprised, a little, when he kissed back. She suddenly sat down, straddling him.

That surprised him more and he broke the kiss. "What are you doing?" It was a whisper from so far down in his throat, she hardly heard it.

Her hands rested, feeling at home, on his shoulders, and she stroked his skin, feeling him for the first time. "I want this." She answered.

When he looked back at her, his eyes were searching for and found the truth. "No you don't."

But she kissed him. Paused. "Yes, I do." Kissed him again, pressing in, sensations spiraling down and down, moving her head from one side of him to the other. He responded this time, too. But she suspected he had no idea why.

And she wanted him to know. She broke the kiss, regretfully. "Do YOU want this?" she asked.

His countenance, so rarely unguarded, was naked and his mind, immobilized. He seemed on the edge of many words but said none of them.

Cameron began kissing him again, afraid that if she let him time enough to think he might make the decision she did not - oh God! - did not want. Cameron kissed him, gently, forcefully, kindly, passionately. House kissed back, having difficulty keeping up with her ever changing oral maneuvers. When she reached down to slip the towel from his waist, he seemed not to notice. Cameron settled herself down on him. Through her slacks, she felt his hardness and her flesh throbbed for more.

When she reached down again to unzip her pants, House stopped her hand. She took a few seconds longer than necessary to break her kiss. By his action, she knew there would probably be no more after it.

"Just pretend I'm her." She whispered to him and saw ocean irises widen, then look away. Retreat had again called for him and he obeyed. Whatever he might have allowed between them was now concealed in a deep well of solitary pain.

Cameron thought how unsettling that he had not reacted with anger at her suggestion, though she knew it had been insensitive and stupid of her to suggest it. His next words said it all. "You're certain you would want me to pretend that you aren't you?"

She loved that part of him. He knew; sensed she still loved him. And somehow, though he did not love her back, he loved her enough to protect her from something that would be a falsehood; a simple physical release; an orgasmic jolt. A false feeling of closeness that would deflate as quickly as it had expanded. Imitation love; spurious feelings. An emotional imposter she knew he could never honor and something she would surely regret.

Cameron climbed off and looked down at him sadly. "I just wanted to give you something you needed."

"I don't need a pity fuck. If you want to give me what I need, raise the dead." It was said without rancor and, she believed, uttered with deeper meanings than the simple words revealed. But she did not ask what.

House stood up, his erection waning. He was nude and seemed not to care whether she could see all of him or not. Perhaps the years she'd worked for him had given him something he needed more from her, if not love. Maybe, just maybe - decent, caring friend number two.

"I know you loved her."

"You don't know anything." House held out his hand. "Can I have my towel now?"

Cameron unabashedly looked him over once. Then bent down to pick it up for him from the floor behind her. "Here." She said. "I'm sorry." She also handed him the aluminum cane.

House wrapped himself in the towel and, without warning, leaned in and gave her not an un-sensual kiss on the lips. "No more trying to fix me." He said after releasing her.

"Wouldn't think of it." She walked to the door. "Cameron."

She looked back.

He was rubbing his left arm, thinking, but changed his mind. Shaking his head, "Thanks for the cane."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The cuts on his arm had almost healed and the two week old scabs itched madly. The internal raw ache was, unfortunately, scab free for the moment. Usually the cutting or burning took it almost all away; the hollow sickness that defied diagnosis. As long as he performed the mutilation surgery about once every week, he was fine. Not the Facetious-Insecure-Neurotic-Emotional "fine" but the blandly genuine type of fine: nearly, but not quite good.

An easy feat of navigation it was not, arriving on the littered corner of Fine but not Good. It required skill and control.

House palmed the best knife for the journey, his slightly dulled, slightly serrated four inch weapon he mostly used to slice cheese. Cheese and flesh.

House laid the blade against his left forearm, a bit above the old scabs and closer to his elbow joint. He drew the edge across the skin and felt the familiar pull of resistance on its edge. There was pain, of course, but how much pain was subjective. He had come to a thorough knowledge of the degrees of pain over five years of having been front and center.

He drew the blade across again, deeper, and his flesh protested. Pain and blood this time stirred from a deeper pool and he gasped at the life in it. That was better.

One, two more. His breath hitched in his throat, finally escaping between gritted teeth. But the blood wasn't flowing so freely that he needed to be concerned. A paper towel roll was within reach if it did become a problem and he had to start sopping it up. Bandages were there too and tape. If one is fucked up enough to slice up one's own body, it was best be fucked up AND prepared.

The screwed up, suspended doctor-man in him needed a little more pain this week (and therefore power), so House turned the blade on it's side and, using an angle of approximately two degrees, very skillfully cut a two inch square flap off his forearm. He left one edge intact - better for the healing part. Fucked up, yes, but still a physician. The irony made him smile.

This opening bled far more and he quickly had to soak up the blood with a few paper towels folded for such purpose. No bandage for it.

Not yet. One final dive into the distraction of self inflicted pain- House pulled the flap back to expose the raw nerve endings to the agony of cold room air.

Yes, that hurt! His leg he could almost forget. Cuddy's aching absence almost stepped aside. Even Wilson's nice, worried face, almost always looking at him with patience and concern, faded into the white background noise of stinging wounds. The most efficient route to the corner of Fine but not Good and he had arrived in record time. In a few weeks, the dints would hardly show.

House swabbed the fresh wounds with alcohol - one last hurrah for the ouch factor - then applied sterile dressings with tape to keep them in place.

A good night sleep lay ahead. A pound of flesh, two or three Vicodin, three or four ounces of Comfort and his body could sink into comfortable numbness. His soul, nicely buried in all that silence, could scream all it wanted. For a while he would not have to listen.

But this time his soul wasn't having any. House heard it loud and clear beneath all the drugs and denial that he was anything but fine or even in the same district as good. The little piles of pills told the story. Piles on the coffee table, all in a row. Vicodin, Seconal, Amphetamines...

House dialed his mother's home. He had never thought of it as his father's. Not ever. Dad had not been there much and when he had been it had become the house, the place he did not want to return to after school.

"When I'm not here, you're the man. You're almost eight and you haven't cut the lawn yet. That's not acting like a man, it's acting like a child. So you'll go and do it now - I don't care if it takes you all night."

It hadn't. Just until ten-thirty. Way passed his mother's lovingly prepared meatloaf dinner and bed time for a school night.

"When we were humping through the bush, we didn't have a cozy bed to return to. We slept where we dropped."

Gregory was ready to drop. Sweat dripping, grass sticking to his thin legs and shaking arms, hungry, sleepy...

"Here's my very first army-issue blanket. It's a warm spring night, you'll be okay. It's time you knew what your old dad had to go through. We had to sleep outside summer and winter - so no whining or it'll be two nights."

Gregory crawled in under the porch. His dad didn't know it but he had found and stashed a thin mattress he had found in a ditch under there so he wouldn't have to sleep in the dirt. He used an old stuffed animal he'd similarly found for a pillow. Both smelled like animal pee. He slept badly and woke up cold with morning dew.

His dad would sleep in when he was home from duty, so his mother would come out and bring him inside early, carrying him to his room and tucking him between the clean sheets and warm wool blankets. She would toss an extra quilt on top of him to bring the warmer, deep body blood back into his limbs. "He means well, Gregory." She said often. "He's your dad, he loves you."

He believed her until, at age fourteen, the thought became ridiculous. There were plenty more times under the porch after that, but at least the ice-water baths had stopped by then. Nothing short of a second this-time-boiling-hot water bath would return the circulation after one of those liquid "lessons".

"He's proud of you." His mother would often say.

Dad never did say it. Not during high school: "What's with these C's and D's!?" To Blyth: "What the hell are they teaching him at that school - How To Be An Idiot?" To Gregory: "Do you want to be a failure?"

Not when he entered medical school: "Marines aren't good enough? Are you ashamed of me or something? You have to show the world you're better than your old man I guess."

Certainly not when he was kicked out of Harvard: "You goddam fool! You cheat and then wonder why you've never achieved anything. You're whole education's been a waste of my money! Now what are you going to do?"

Not when he finished elsewhere with honors and was hired on for one of the most prestigious posts under Doctor Alan Samuel, the head of Infectious Disease at Boston General; Pre-infarction years: "It's about time!"

Not when he met Stacey and became a relatively happy two person family: "A damn lawyer huh?"

And not when the infarction came calling and tore his leg - and life - in two: "You should count your blessings. Plenty of Marine veterans I know with no legs."

And not when Doctor Lisa Cuddy hired him as Department Head of Diagnostics at Plainsborough: "Well, at least you got out of that Blood Bank. Where's the Head?"

His mother's phone rang and the machine picked up. House hung up without leaving a message. What message? - Mom, I think I might kill myself. See, I'm a drug addicted cripple living in pain and lately life's been, well, lemme give you the run down: I had sex with a gay man for about a year - tell Dad to suck back a few brews before you tell him that one - I dated a woman I really, really liked but she died of cancer before we got to the happily-ever-after part. I fucked up and nearly killed a patient but my employer who has endless hope for me, let me try again with another patient and this time I terrified and tortured him. So I've been suspended. You get it, Mom? I'm not sure I want to kill myself, maybe seventy percent. I'm really, really tired now. I love you. Tell Dad....tell him.....

He could think of nothing he would want to say.

House played with the pill piles, sticking his finger in them and scattering them across the coffee table, tracing little paths. He wanted to cry but wanting and having are not always compatible. Runner-up was opening the pressure valve on his guts and screaming; letting the emotions steam out for a while. But without tears, the valve didn't work well. Clogged up mostly.

His loud mouth did the trick sometimes, eased a little the unbearable pressure. His employees knew all about that. The pills and a huge amount of alcohol settled it all back down a bit but, by and by, if enough shit came down the explosion would start and he'd scream at someone, double his Vicodin for a while, drink until he was stupid, blow a paycheck on a longshot, rent a woman, or take off on his bike at speeds only astronauts dreamed of. It had been, up until recently, an effective treatment.

Even sleeping with Wilson had eased the aching back-pressure.

Occasionally, though, the build-up would take him nowhere but his soft couch and a pile of little pills.

House forgot the pills and stood up. That was a road already traveled and he'd come back again - a bit worse for wear. Not going there again. Instead he walked to his piano and let his fingers fondle the keys, tapping out a tuneless bar or two. But he just wasn't in the mood.

Leaning heavily on his cane, House traced the lines of the one piece of Stacey that had stayed behind when she'd made the speech and moved on. It was a heavy black ceramic vase that sat on the floor beside the long window next to the piano. It was the only window in his apartment that looked out onto trees, street and regular people passing by. Oblivious, conventional beings who had no idea a fellow human on the other side of the apartment wall was baby steps away from ending his own life.

House raised his cane and brought it down violently on the vase and all things once-upon-a-time. Normal, just-about happy times he could no longer visualize. The vase cracked and then with a second strike, shattered. But not into tiny bits that would help him feel better for the destruction. No, into larger shards he would probably just sweep up in the morning.

House laughed. The pills, rather, laughed.

He fell to his knees. The drink, rather, fell him to his knees.

Now on all fours, he rested his head on the hard floor. And he chuckled. Not a "I feel a bit drunkie" giggle. Only the humorless laugh of a man on the jagged edge of a nervous break down.

House's respirations quickened until his lungs pumped furiously.

Oh well, no one died from hyperventilation. Pass out, get a few zzz's, wake up with a headache. That's all. Better than eating piles of little colorful pills, he figured.

House's body obliged his thinking and he fainted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When she had not heard from House for a few days, Cameron phoned Wilson who tried calling House. No answer.

Wilson instructed his office assistant to take messages and cancel his three o'clock. He threw on his over-coat and drove quickly to House's building. Suspended House still came to the hospital every couple of days to check on things. He wasn't suppose to but Wilson had bent the rod of discipline just a little in hopes of keeping the man sane.

Pulling up to House's apartment building, Wilson thought, De-ja-vu twice, thrice over? How many times have I done this?

Wilson knocked first and called, "House? Come on. If you don't open the door, you're suspended WITHOUT pay." Sure Wilson, you know you wouldn't. "You can't ignore me forever." Yeah, right.

Wilson used his key.

For the second time in two years (so far he figured his average could be calculated at once per year), Wilson found House passed out on the floor of his apartment. Around him was strewn the shards of a vase. Wilson crouched down and lay a finger on House's neck. His pulse was good and he was breathing evenly.

"Booze, pills or both." Wilson muttered aloud. The verbal muse roused House from his hard napping spot. He pushed himself to his knees and swung his legs, with a little unsolicited assistance from Wilson on the bad leg, around to sit on his backside. "Afternoon." Wilson said cheerily. "First my cucumber, now the vase. You and pottery. There does seem to be a weird Moore/Swayze/Ghost thing there."

House massaged his temples. "My...everything is killing me."

Wilson helped him to his feet and handed him the cane. "Or as usual you're doing the killing."

House ignored that and made his way to his couch where he slumped. Elbows on knees, head in his hands, House looked prepared to stay that way for a while.

With a sick heart, Wilson then noticed the pills and empty bottle of Southern. "So, you were planning on a trip and not coming back?"

"If I say maybe, can we drop it?"

"No. And there's no "maybe". You were going to OD again. Why?" Wilson figured he could guess but House needed to start talking. Only House looked a few steps from his grave and Wilson was nauseous at the prospect of trying to coax House back to the living once more. House looked up at Wilson through the head pain and rubbed his face again. It had become a nervous tick.

Wilson shoved the pills unceremoniously aside, some rolling away on the floor, making room for himself on the coffee table opposite House. He put himself right in House's face - only a foot or so away. Mimicking House's slouch, Wilson took House's right hand in both of his own. He would have taken both of his hands but knew it would make House flinch.

"As your boss, I can suspend you. As your colleague, I can lecture. I'd rather, as your friend, hear what you have to say about those pills. Or anything else."

When House didn't answer right away, "House. Greg. For once in your life, tell me what you're really, actually thinking. What you're feeling." House looked at him, a glance so brief if Wilson had blinked he would have missed it. There was a few seconds where House's lips fell open; just a thin black line of maybe. But he closed it again, saying nothing. Wilson urged gently, "You won't melt. I promise your reputation as a manipulative jerk will remain intact."

House looked at him. Up, as Wilson was sitting higher than he was. Red rimmed blue looked with closed thoughts into clear hopeful brown. But House dropped his head again before looking too long became an actually commitment to speak. When he did speak, his voice cracked and broke. Footstep sounds over shards on a hard floor. "Thanks for checking up on me." Half of Wilson's heart broke at his friends not unexpected decision to withdraw into his silent anguish. The other half because despite twelve years of friendship and a year of being lovers, House had not yet learned to trust him.

Wilson's turn to make a choice. He stood, smoothing out his pant legs. Cuddy had dealt with House as a tamer deals with a partly-wild rebellious animal: sometimes encouraged with a treat, other times disciplined with the sound of the whip.

No treats to offer, Wilson rested his hand briefly on House's shoulder, then he tucked away James the friend with the sadness of inevitability and pulled out Doctor Wilson, Dean of Medicine - Boss.

"House, your tenure is on shaky ground. You need to pull yourself together and it seems you'll need some help doing it. So either it's talk to me or I'm going to make you talk to the hospital psychiatrist. It's your choice." Wilson walked to the door. "Get a shower. You smell like a bar room floor."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

House returned to work, but only as a visitor, loitering the day away in his office. Wilson had ordered him to go home and get some rest, but he liked being in his office, even if he wasn't allowed to work. Fine with him. Get paid, listen to an album or two. Sometime in the next ten hours or so he planned obey his boss's order. But first he wanted to listen to a few tunes (over the years, he had spent so much time at work that he'd slowly brought in almost his whole record and CD collection), throw his ball hard against the wall and forget the shittiest year of his life for a while. When his right arm would tire, he pitch for a while with his left while Kenny Wayne Shepherd eased his mind.

Nothing eased the ache between his shoulder blades. House threw the ball hard and it bounced off his light box, falling in behind his book case. It hooked itself on a partially turned in screw half way down and wasn't reachable by kneeling down. House debated leaving it there until tomorrow but Wayne had a few more tunes for him yet. House bent over the shelving unit as far as he could go, his tall frame stretched to the limit, but it wasn't quite enough to get at the ball.

His left arm ached dully and his back twinged him again, not appreciating the awkward position.

House let his cane drop to the floor. He was within an inch of getting his big softball back when a tingling sensation in his body nudged him that something was wrong. It furthered the message when his chest tightened up behind his rib cage. House stood quickly, the blood rushing away from his head. He leaned against the book shelf with his left hand while he rubbed his chest with his right. It did nothing to alleviate the pressure. House turned, and found he had to make every movement well thought out and deliberate, his legs were not cooperating. One, two steps and he had to stop. On top of the chest pain, his leg was starting to wail. Then it seized up and refused to move another foot.

House understood, medically, what was happening of course. It's just that his human and fallible mind had thrown the toggle over to denial so he did not call for help right away, even though his cell phone was in his pocket.

It was hard to breath now. House was close to his desk and his comfortable chair. He would get there soon - eventually - sit, rest, punch the fast dial for a Code and wait for the blue-uniformed calvary with their wheeled, white steed.

That was the plan. Only he couldn't walk anymore. Or hardly breath at all. And his chest was indignant with pain at the crushing hand holding his heart in its furious grip.

It was curious. House knew he was having a heart attack. Knew he was probably going to die. Yet his life did not flash before his eyes nor did his thoughts turn to his Mom and loved ones...one. All it did was curse the damn baseball.

He staggered and fell.

"House?" Chase entered the office of his former boss. "You do remember that when you transfer a patient from one department to another, you actually have to sign the form?" He peeked briefly into the conference area - good memories, bad memories. Mostly good. The room was dark.

Chase turned around. "Hey?...what are you-...?"

House was curled up on the floor behind his desk. "House.?" House was facing his computer tower and Chase walked over to him in no particular hurry. He had seen House sleep in his chair, under the table, in a lot of places. "That's a hell of a weird place to sleep, even for y-"

Chase noted that House's cane was not hanging over the back of his swivel chair as was usual. It was on the floor a few feet away, not within reach of his curled up arms.

Chase bent and rolled House over. His face was ashen, his hands were frozen in a grip over his chest and he was just,... just breathing. Chase grabbed the phone and called for a Code. He placed his ear on House's chest and listened. House's heart was beating irregularly then, while Chase was still listening, it stopped beating. "Shit." Chase began compressions. Every three compressions he'd give House a lung full of air.

The code team arrived and took over. They jolted House's heart back into action, put him on oxygen, lifted him onto a Gurney and had him on his way to Trauma in under a minute.

Chase made the phone calls.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson, transformed from general issue oncologist to Plainsborough Dean of Medicine by a crisp, black suit, entered the room of House's pre-operative care.

House, transformed from Plainsborough Top Doc' to newest and nearly sickest patient by a drab gown and oxygen mask, looked briefly at Wilson then returned to staring at the ceiling.

"How is he?" Wilson questioned one of the two efficient nurses assigned to check and care for House's oxygen feed, monitors and general comfort. He did not appear particularly comfortable. A thin sheen of perspiration coated House's pallid face and Wilson noted each labored breath with fear. He did not wait for the nurse to answer and checked the monitor's readings himself.

The door opened and House's heart specialist entered the room. "Doctor Wilson," He greeted them each in turn, "Doctor House."

It was a foreign (and sad) thing to see a weak House lying in a bed, still being addressed as 'Doctor'. But it was not the first time.

"Doctor Michaels." Wilson said. He did not have to ask the cardiologist anything. Doctor Michaels addressed House. "You've suffered a serious myocardial infarction Doctor House. There is coronary artery disease present. You also have a small occlusion in the atrium that will have to be removed. Your left ventricle has suffered - heart damage - some dead muscle..."

House laughed. A small ironic bark.

"...and we'll have to do an artery bypass graft."

"He needs to be stronger..." Wilson said.

Michaels nodded his agreement. "Plus he needs to be rapidly detoxed. Doing surgery of this sort while a patient is on oxycodone is very dangerous. We'll make sure his O2's are high enough, but any delay could allow the plaque to move. If that happens, it'll kill you. Once you're detoxed we'll operate as soon as it's feasible. The surgical team is already assembled and waiting for word from me. You'll have to be on blood thinners for a while post-surgery..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," House tried for crabby, but was too weak to achieve anything above sullen. Sick or not, he demanded from Michaels, "What exactly is the long term prognosis on my heart?"

Michaels cleared his throat, "We'll get you on the heart list-"

Wilson's heart skipped, then pounded.

House was oblivious to the panic in Wilson's chest. "They're not going to give me a heart," He said, "I'm forty-nine years old, I'm an addict, my liver is a few shells short of totally shot..." House trailed off, too weak to finish the list.

"You'll have to stay off the Vicodin post-surgery. There are other drugs, safer ones." Michaels said.

"Been there, done that. Didn't work." House said, muffled by the oxygen mask.

Wilson replaced it with a nose-line. "You have to." He said. "They won't even put you on the list unless you stay clean."

"I'm not going to live in pain."

Michaels scooted his stool in closer, preparing to convince a man he had just met that he, Michaels, knew better. "Doctor House. You have suffered a major coronary event. Your liver is showing signs of cirrhosis. You're forty-nine years old and a drug addict. If you want to see, say 55, there are several things in order that must happen-"

Michaels, counted them for him using his fingers. "-Number one, you have to get clean. Number two, you have to have this operation, then follow a strict diet with daily moderate exercise to strengthen your heart."

"Get my heart well, so they can cut it out later."

Michaels nodded. "If you want any chance of getting that new heart, we have to convince the Board you're serious about getting well."

"And the leg pain will keep me in agony so ironically, I won't actually BE well."

"Chronic pain," Michaels explained as to a silly ignorant fool who had never felt any, "although unpleasant poses no threat to your over-all well being." "It poses a hell of a threat to my over-all well feeling."

"Doctor House." Michaels was getting peeved. "If you stay on Vicodin, exposing your liver and heart to such toxic levels of acetaminophen, I guarantee you will not see a new heart."

Wilson asked Michaels, "Assuming the occlusion is completely removed and the bypass goes as planned, how long will his heart last if he stays on the Vicodin?"

"Five or six years at best. Two or three at worst." Michaels glared at House. "I'm talking congestive heart failure which, by the way, has just left the starting gate."

"A shorter life span but painless." House asserted. He seemed unconcerned.

"Relatively painless." Wilson reminded him, remembering his own electrocuted thigh and the scream that had stayed behind in his mind to harp at him because of it.

Michaels had heard about the stubborn Doctor House, but this was his first real meeting with the man. "I can only do what I can do, I can fix your old heart for what it's worth. But for the rest, to live,..." Michael's shook his head at his ridiculous patient. "You'd better talk to him." He suggested to Wilson and left the room to attend to other sick hearts.

Wilson studied House's face. He was pale but he still looked like House. "You look pretty good for a guy who...looks like he's dying."

"Ditto." House tried to sit up.

Wilson pushed him back down. "You're not suppose to move." He arranged some pillows behind House's head so he could sit up part way.

"Thanks. I'm just trying to get comfortable for the yelling you're about to do."

"No yelling today."

"But in the light of my most recent health crisis, you're going to cut me off Vicodin."

"I don't want to lose you any sooner than necessary of course, but no."

House screwed up his face and cited the possibilities, "You're going to suspend me? Oh wait, you did that already. Restrict my lab privileges? Oh wait, you did THAT already!"

"No. I'm not going to do anything except say I love you." Wilson touched his cheek. "I don't have you, but I'll deal with it."

"Glad you're okay with that."

"I didn't say I was okay."

House took the subject back to, "So no punishment for refusing Michaels doctorly advice? You're not even going to wear an "I'm with idiot" T-shirt and hang around my office?"

Wilson smiled. "Tempting, but no."

House absentmindedly played with a corner of his hospital issue cotton blanket. "You're going to run away to California?"

As hard as it was going to be seeing House every day, and now with more worry over his precarious health, Wilson had to stay. He was too caught up in the hurricane to lie low now. Plus he still loved him, no matter what the ass did to himself. "No running away. I've a hospital to run, and a friend who needs my help. Even if he thinks he doesn't."

House relaxed just a little, his busy fingers stilled. "You think I'm an idiot." "No, I think you're a genius. But the most pigheaded, egotistical, weird-wired genius I've ever known." Wilson dropped his voice and leaned in slightly. "And the sexiest." Honesty was the best policy, plus he had to screw with the guy a little. It was only fair.

House blushed.

"I'm sorry about Cuddy. I never had a chance to say it before." Wilson missed her too. Her smile and laugh. And her advice, especially regarding House. "I know you were in love with her."

House looked at the flowers by his bedside. He'd been sent two bunches of dried flowers and a plastic plant. "I wanted to be." Then, before Wilson had any opportunity to respond, he changed the subject. "Who are all these from?" He sounded genuinely surprised that anyone would have sent him flowers.

Wilson pulled up a chair and made himself comfortable. House was in the mood to talk, to him even. Not a thing to pass up considering their very recent, very wobbly associations. "I sent the plant. Foreman sent the carnations. Cameron and Chase the irises."

House tried to reach for the attached cards and Wilson sprung up to collect them for him. Without his reading glasses, House had to squint to read each in turn, ""House. Get well. Foreman."." He looked at Wilson. "Not a saintly essay, is it?"

Wilson laughed, he was really enjoying this. House was being sarcastic but not to him - a nice change. House had decided, it seemed, to be a friend again and Wilson was more than happy to accommodate him.

On the card from Chase and Cameron, House read: ""House, don't be an ass to the nurses. Get well, we all miss you."." House put it down and picked up the last one. "Cameron thinks everybody secretly loves me in their heart. She's so pedomorphic." Instead of reading the one from Wilson, he tucked it back in the pile.

"Aren't you gonna read mine?"

"No. And since it was a gift, it's now mine, so I can do what I want."

"Now who's being pedomorphic?"

House took it back from the pile and opened it. "Fine, since you're being such a grown up about it." But instead of reading it, "I'll bet I can guess what's in here?" House put the card to his forehead and did a respectable imitation of Johnny Carson, "Cancer, Divorce and House." House opened the card and read what Wilson had not actually written, "Name three things Wilson wished he could cure."

Wilson did not know what to say, but it was essentially true. "And what did I really write?"

House read the actual script, "I the "L" word you." He bit his lip and nodded his thanks. "How does being in Cuddy' shoes feel?"

"A little tight around the toes and I don't think I have the legs for them."

"Did you develop a sense of humor since we broke up?"

"I thought a few jokes would make me less boring around really sick people."

"I got news for you, this is the very first time you haven't been boring." House laid his head back on the stiff hospital issue pillows and sighed heavily. "Life sucks. Then you die."

"Death sucks." Wilson countered. "Life doesn't always suck. Doesn't have to suck. Sometimes what you want most just doesn't...happen for you."

House nodded. Wilson figured House probably wouldn't answer this next question but he had to try, "Were we really...just sex?"

House closed his eyes, nearing exhaustion. "No. We were great sex."

Wilson felt a warmth spread through him and also a twinge of conscience. "I never did anything to hurt you, did I? Nothing you,...anything forced or-"

"You never did anything that I didn't want."

Two nurses arrived to wheel House away. "It's time for detox, Doctor House."

"See ya'." House said to Wilson.

Wilson watched them roll House, best-friend-lover-ex-lover-best-friend, through the sliding door. "Not if I see you first."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several hours later, Cameron entered the surgical bay observation area and took a spot by Wilson while Michaels and his team prepared to open House's chest. "Are you going to watch the whole operation?"

"Yes." Wilson answered.

"Really?" Wilson was House's best friend and now boss. Yet she had never seen him hovering over the man before. Helping, enabling, being the lap-dog often, but never acting like a concerned lover.

"What's going on between you two? It's like you know something about him." She couldn't help but be nosey. As close as she had tried to get with House, other than the shower room, she'd never managed to come within the boundary that Wilson seemed to step through as though it were not there at all. Cameron suspected it was not just because they had been friends longer. Plus a change had manifested itself in Wilson. Cameron had always thought of him as a nice guy, and one whom House could manipulate to his heart's content. Wilson seemed content to allow it. He was a man she believed wanted fairly simple things out of life: a job he liked, some one to go home to, a few laughs...

But, lately, another man had emerged. The chair he'd been given to fill was a demanding mistress and Cameron was getting a pleasant education in that soft-spoken Doctor Wilson possessed an inner rod of fire-forged steel. She suspected that, when it counted the most, that rod would not bend. But when needed the most, it would give just enough.

Dealing with House required both. House was a challenge; there was a battle of wills going on: House against anyone with authority. Cuddy had directed the war with discretion, kindness and an unyielding determination to do what was best for those under her. Her one soft spot had been House. Yet, she'd orchestrated him with finesse.

Wilson now commanded a unique position where House was concerned. He'd stepped in, took control, yet now and again slackened House's reins just a little. Without that gentle but firm control, House's own genius and mania inevitably lead to disaster. Recent events had underlined that.

"Doctor Wilson?" He had not answered her. "You must know something."

Dragging his attention away from the operation below, "Oh?" Wilson was not about to divulge the previous half steamy, half heart-breaking year and a half just because she had politely asked.

"It's like you know...he's dying. Like this operation is a futility."

Wilson looked at her. Her eyes were watering but she was not crying.

"Is he?" She asked him. "Is he dying?"

"No. He's not dying."

As if to show him how wrong he was, House's heart machine's little trills and beeps changed for the worse. They meant yes.

Yes, actually, he was dying.

Michael's team all but scrambled over each other to deal with the unexpected surprise. Within a few eye blinks, Michaels was applying the defibrulator. Then a second time. Three times. House's heart refused to answer.

Wilson felt he was falling through space, an unstoppable plummet to the earth. Below he saw the earth split. The crack appeared, and House was about to slip away.

"Oh, God, please, no..." Cameron heard Wilson say it. She had said it too, in her mind.

Wilson's world wobbled. The foundation of it, the man he felt was his life and the one thing in it that made a kind of insane sense, was dying.

House,....oh Greg.....baby,...please don't die.

Wilson, after having spent years looking at cancer patient's insides, watching other doctors cut into diseased flesh, was shocked to his foundation when Michaels quickly incised House's chest, used a rib-spreader with - Wilson was sure - far too much violence, and inserted his hand into the gaping wound to directly massage House's heart.

In his mind, Wilsons thoughts froze like icicles. Then a silent scream from his soul caused a bizarre mental disassociation - of him sprinting from the observation room, flying down the stairs two at a time, bursting into the surgical bay pushing doctors and tables with their medieval instruments out of the way, wrapping his arms around House's violated body and by sheer force of will, pouring life back into his starving cells.

In the calm, not imaginary observation room, Wilson did not move an inch, helpless on his tiny perch of terror.

Michaels, his human hand useless against that undefinable thing called life-force, could not make that injured heart twitch. House had been dead for nearly two minutes.

Wilson rubbed burning eyes. Suddenly he remembered, for no reason at all, that he had not had the oil changed in his car for nearly a year. It would be the consistency of sludge by now.

Wilson, softly, but audibly enough that Cameron heard it, prayed the Birkhat Ha?Gomel prayer that he had not spoken since before his Bar-mitsvah, the year he turned twelve and became a man. After that, in direct defiance of his father, he had left the Temple and never returned. "Amen. Mi sheg'malkha kol tov hu yigmalkha kol tov. Selah."

"That was beautiful." Cameron said.

"It's a prayer of blessing." Wilson explained "It translates - 'Amen. He Who has bestowed on you every goodness, may He continue to bestow on you every goodness.' It's also thanks-giving for one who has already survived an illness." He smiled a sadly panicked and sorrowful smile. "I prefer to be optimistic."

"Amen." Cameron agreed, recalling a single bible lesson her mother had taught her as a child, the meaning behind the Amen: "I agree. So be it." Doctor Michaels, unaware that Wilson had just beseeched God's help, kept up his massage of the dead organ. "Wait a minute.." He said as he imagined he felt a movement.

Up above, Wilson thought he was losing his mind. Doesn't the man know for God's sake? - he's touching the fucking thing!

"No." Michaels announced down below of his false life-find.

It was unbearable.

"Should we pronounce?" Michael's assistant asked.

Wilson closed his eyes to the even more unbearable, mentally screaming at the cowardly surgeon: Of course not, you son-of-a-bitch! If you let that man die, I'll kill you myself!

Michaels barked for a hypodermic of adrenaline and, with a single thrust, plunged the needle into House's unresponsive heart. With a great intake of air, House came back to life. His heart did too, but the beat was too fast and still irregular.

"He's back." The anesthesiologist unnecessarily pointed out. "Thanks, I can see." Michaels answered. "But he won't be for long. Let's finish this before we lose him again."

For the next two and a half hours, Wilson did not take even a pee break as House's occluded, assaulted, squeezed, adrenaline pumped heart was cut into, cleared of a nasty clot (but tiny! Wilson was astounded at the smallness of the thing that had nearly killed it's host), dead muscle parts by-passed, then closed and stitched.

Wilson breathed a sigh of relief. Several. He thanked God-but-what-the-hell-kept-you??

"Close." Michaels ordered and a junior assistant swabbed the leaking edges of House's skin and then struck his body with one final offense. Wilson winced as each surgical staple was punched through the carefully held together flaps of House's cut flesh...."Sh-click, sh-click, sh-click..."

The sheer inhuman ugliness of it made Wilson nauseous to his core. He was dripping with sweat yet chilled with relief. Wiped out but over-joyed. The unruly predicament of loving Gregory House.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson looked out from House's fourth floor private post-op room. It was a sun shining April day.

House had been brought from surgery three hours previous and was still unconscious. The post-op intensive care nurse had come in once, checked his pupils, his airway and oxygen feed, stopped his IV drug-fed slumber and then left. Just a few minutes later a very fat nurse wearing pink entered with a sterile tray of cotton swabs, antiseptic and fresh gauze for House's incision.

"Leave those." Wilson instructed. "I'll take care of it."

If she was surprised by the Dean of Medicine's desire to clean patient wounds, even those of hospital doctors, she didn't show it.

After she left, Wilson did not right away tend to House. He still stared out the picture window at the trees, watching people walk across grass sticky with the new fallen bud husks of the Cottonwoods. Wilson thought it again, what idiot decided to plant allergy-triggering trees next to a hospital?

Inside, House's oxygen machine hummed and his heart monitor beeped with deceptive regularity. He was alive via bypass and medications designed to help his heart keep beating strongly and evenly. The drugs to keep him under were no longer dripping into his veins but he would be out for a while yet. Wilson removed his suit jacket, folding it across the room's single visitor's chair. Standing by the bed, Wilson carefully pulled back the thin sheet they had draped over him. Next he untied the drab grey gown that had been loosely wrapped around his body, so not to irritate the incised skin now held together with stainless steel surgical staples. Those staples were still hidden, however, beneath a taped rectangle of gauze. A vertical row of irregular blood spots could be seen through it's loose weave.

Now Wilson gently removed the tape. It came away easily not only because the pre-operative nurse had shaved her patient's chest prior to surgery, but because he had a thin sheen of sweat there now, lifting and making less tacky the tape's biodegradable glue.

Wilson sucked in a breath when the incision itself was exposed. Raw edges of white and pink skin had been pulled together like so much garment and stapled in place. It was a naked rape of once smooth, healthy flesh. From between his nipples to a few inches short of his navel, the wound grinned wickedly, like a grotesque set of braces. The skin around it still bore the rust colored stain of the pre-operative disinfectant.

Wilson shivered. An ugly but necessary assault on a perfectly beautiful chest. Precision strike. Save a life. Leave a scar. Something to remind him.

Wilson's hand shook to see close up the business end of a surgery he'd watched dozens of times. Cold, metallic, barbaric metal zipper. He reeled at the terrifying fragility of all things fleshly. Wilson snapped on sterile gloves, soaked a sponge in the antiseptic the nurse had provided and ever so gently swabbed the wound from top to bottom. He was glad House was still asleep. It would be as tender as a newborn's belly button. And as painful. As though to prove it House, even in sleep, jumped a little, just a twitch as Wilson swabbed a second time. He tried to keep his touch as soft as a feather's.

House's eyes opened then and he watched through a fog at his friend and boss cleaning him. "Why isn't the nurse doing that?" His voice was thick with drugs and far away. He coughed to clear a build up of phlegm from the intra-operative intubation.

"Because I'm doing it." Wilson answered evenly. Kindly. What reason to sound insistent? House could offer no resistance. What reason to be annoyed? House had almost died. Whatever irritation Wilson had felt because of can't-remember-the-reasons-right-now-anyway, they had vanished like a sneeze in the wind. "You're lucky to be alive. Good surgeon, good team. And Chase, actually."

House's volume increased slightly. "Chase?"

"He's the one who found you. Performed CPR. The crash team did the rest. Looks like you owe him one. Him among others."

"You my life accountant now?"

Wilson had to admit, House's mind certainly had a remarkable healing ability to go from drug induced haze to smart-aleck. All inside about sixty seconds. "No, but I am your boss and you are here for ten days at least, after which you'll convalesce at home with a nurse who be in four hours daily and then me for the evenings and nights."

House tried to sit up and made it two inches.

Wilson pushed him gently to settle down. It required almost no effort, House was as weak as a kitten. "Ah, where do you think you're going?"

"To the bathroom. I want to pee."

"You've got a catheter and you're not moving until your kidneys are back on line."

"What's wrong with my kidneys?" House sounded a bit worried. Nephrology was one of his specialties.

"Nothing that time won't fix. You just had a by-pass, House, your system's still in shock. Give it a while."

"Who assisted?" House was more alert now, his endless questions giving it away.

"Dalhousie."

"I want to see his surgical notes. And Michaels'."

"You don't need to. Michaels is the best thoracic surgeon in New Jersey. You're fine." God! Back to arguing and he's not even out of the woods yet. "How could you not know you were having a heart attack? Some Diagnostician."

"I was fooled by the lion I could see."

"What?"

"It's not the lion you see that gets you."

"You mean you've spent so many years worrying about your liver, you never gave a thought about your heart? The lion hiding in the grass snuck up on you."

House nodded.

"Weak metaphor, but I'll give you that one, you're sick."

"And thirsty."

"Ice chips in the cup on the table until your kidneys reboot."

"Turn on the T.V."

Wilson handed him the remote. "I took the liberty of locking out the kinkier channels. Can't have you trying to over jump all over me whenever I enter the room."

"Hmm. Colleague, lover, boss. Now comedian."

"My Guru thinks I needed more variety and excitement in my life. Then I told him about you and he repented in dust and ashes."

"Don't quit your day job, Robin."

Wilson turned away to put on his suit jacket and while he was at it, checked the monitors again, explaining, "Cameron will probably stop by later, and I'll be back-"

But by the time he turned around again, House had already fallen back to sleep. Wilson placed one hand on the bed above House's head and took House's limp hand in his other.

"First they broke the mold," He said softly, "then they made YOU."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson said as he turned the key to the door of his new condo, "You'll be fine. I've arranged for a nurse to be here half days."

House seemed ungrateful. He acted like a kid who's favorite toy had been taken away. "Super."

Wilson ignored it. "I'll be here every evening, unless I have a board meeting or fund raiser..."

"-Or a date."

"Right." Wilson answered, "My calender is packed with young, muscle-bound fags eager to do a worn-out, middle aged triple divorcee who's nurse-maiding his former lover."

House pressed his lips together. For once he didn't have a smart retort. "Why do I have to stay here?"

Wilson looked around his condo. "Because you need someone here at night just in case, and my condo's got two bedrooms."

House was sullen. "Does my room have a TV?"

"Yes."

House looked triumphant. "No it doesn't, you said you only had one, and I can see there isn't one in your living room."

"I'm giving you my bedroom. The TV's in there."

House had clearly not expected that. He seemed unsure whether Wilson's offer was sincere or a maneuver. But finally, quietly surprised, "Thanks."

"Let's get you settled in." Wilson lead the way to his spacious master bedroom. He had a large screen TV occupying one corner. A queen sized bed took up much of the space but the room was still large enough to accommodate a small desk and chair. On the desk sat a shiny new black computer with a twenty inch flat screen.

Impressed, "Nice." House was only staring at the TV and computer.

"Sorry. No porn channel. Your poor heart couldn't handle it."

"My heart thanks you anyway."

Wilson left him alone to settle in. House did so by surfing the Internet. After an hour, Wilson called him for dinner from the kitchen. House hadn't expected to be waited on.

He sat at Wilson's very modern faux marble top dining table in a captain's chair. "Comfy." House said but the felt ill-at-ease. "Why are you doing this?" House asked as Wilson served up a very heart healthy green salad topped with thin slices of steamed chicken breast. House was sorry to see no butter or condiments of any kind on the table. No salt either. And the only dressing for the salad was lemon juice.

Wilson noticed House not even tasting the food. "Come on, it tastes better than it looks."

"That's hard to believe." Using his fingers, he unenthusiastically bit into a small strip of chicken. It was as thin and bland as cardboard. "I was right."

Wilson munched his greens.

"So? Why are you doing this?"

Wilson decided on frankness for the evening, "Because I love you."

House stared for a second, his eyes blinking. Wilson had the distinct impression House didn't believe one word.

House said, "You've claimed to love me for years, why-?" Wilson dropped his fork on his plate with a clatter. "I love you, okay? I'm in love with you. God, even now, you can't accept that. No beating around the salad - I am in love with you. I love you. I love you no matter what shit you pull, no matter the stupid things you do to yourself, or to me. And no matter how you abuse your body or even if you tell me to go to hell, I still will love you. Are we clear on this?"

House stared at this drab salad, he had never picked up his fork. He didn't think he could now, his hands were shaking. "How long am I staying here?"

"House, you can stay here forever if you want. Or you can go home tomorrow. But if my opinion means anything to you, even if it's just my medical opinion, you should stay here at least a week. You should rest, eat properly, get better. But I won't make you do any of those things. You're a grown up."

For an answer, House stared at his plate and nibbled a single green lettuce leaf.

Wilson finished his food and took his plate into the kitchen, placing it in the dishwasher. "I'm going out to get a few groceries. You want anything special?"

House shook his head. He listened to Wilson slip into his coat and tie his shoes. He heard the key in the door and Wilson's footsteps receding down the small front step. Listened as the car door shut and the engine started. Waited until the car pulled away and the quiet returned. Then he allowed his rebellious emotions the upper hand. Shaking hands folded themselves into a cradle for his head and he sobbed without tears and gasped without relief for at least ten minutes. When he felt empty, he scraped his untouched salad into the garbage, put the plate in the dishwasher, retrieved his back pack from Wilson's bedroom and called a cab.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Wilson returned to find his condo empty, he dropped the two bags of groceries on the counter, swiftly thrust the milk and other perishables in the refrigerator, got back in his car and drove to House's apartment building.

He firmly knocked on the door. "House? Answer the door or I'll just use my key."

House opened the door and went back to his couch. He was holding a small glass of whiskey and smoking a cigarette.

"You're smoking? You didn't hardly ever do that back when your heart was healthy."

"I'm a grown up. You said so, I can do what I choose. I choose to smoke."

Wilson was angry. Almost as angry as the day House came to his office in the south wing and he'd ended up showing him how angry by punching him in the head.

"You're unbelievable." Wilson couldn't contain himself. He was not going to punch House - never would he do violence to the man again - but he did need to know the reason. Any goddamn reason as to why this man refused to get healthy.

Wilson walked over to where House was sitting and, with a flick of his fingers, sent the cigarette flying across the room. Then he grabbed Houses glass and threw it into the fireplace, where it shattered into a hundred wet pieces. Momentarily unconcerned with the effect on House's convalescence, Wilson grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him to his feet. "Why do you want to die?"

House, un-used to seeing the furious side of meek Wilson, stared back defiantly and with a small amount of trepidation. Wilson was thin lipped and breathing hard - truly pissed off. But House did not answer.

"Why? Huh? You want to die, don't use pills. Use a gun or a really big-ass knife. Cut your own throat! Do it expeditiously, House. Don't waste my time!"

Wilson saw the fear in House's eyes, and, to his awful regret, the agreement as well.

He relaxed his hands on House's shirt but did not let go of him. "You really want to, don't you?" Wilsons was disbelieving but it was alive, there, in House's tormented eyes.

Wilson had always tap-danced around the possibility, poking at it with a long stick, not quite certain House's suicidal tendencies were real.

Even that horrible Christmas eve' when House had swallowed two dozen pills and a bottle of whiskey, Wilson still had not up, down and sideways believed that House had wanted to die that night. Wilson believed it now and so thanked God for the gag reflex.

Stricken by House's blind unhappiness. "Why?" Wilson asked - oh - so gently. "Why do you want to die?"

House looked away, afraid to speak and look at the same time. Too big an undertaking. "I don't know. I just know that I do." He said it as an unavoidable truth. A fact of life and death.

Wilson put his arms around him and held him as tightly as he could. House didn't return the gesture but didn't pull away either.

Wilson pleaded, "Please talk to me."

House breathed hard but he was silent. He leaned into Wilson's embrace, though, as if nothing in the world would hold him up ever again if he let go. "I can't. I'm sorry."

Wilson hugged him even closer, tighter. "I don't think I would survive if you did...anything. If you hurt yourself or-" He couldn't bear to say the words.

House finally spoke, "I wanted to love you, you know."

Wilson's heart fluttered like a bird's wing. He heard the words, accepted them, believed every character in each utterance. He held House even tighter. Even closer. Help him, God. Help me cure, fix, repair, love, envelope him completely in some kind of grace or joy. Something he would consider embracing as a gift not too pure for him.

Wilson kissed his neck, like that first night, tenderly and so thankfully. As his unbounded joy had been then, his bottomless sorrow was now. He had to save him, somehow, if only by endless physical contact.

"I love you. Please talk to me. Tell me why."

House pulled away. Broke the contact, widened the gulf. Chilled the moment back into its original form. The face he turned to Wilson was a phantom's. Spiritless. Vacant. A man condemned by self. "It won't make any difference; won't change anything." House limped to the bedroom. "I can't love you the way you want me to." And closed the door.

Wilson sat on the couch for a few moments until he thought he heard House snoring. He peeked into the bedroom. House was asleep fully dressed. For the moment he was in no danger.

But Wilson went home. He could not guard House; forever watch his back; make certain he did not fall off the nail point of balance on which he was perched. Or be there, at his side, every moment to still his hand if he suddenly decided to take up a knife. House was in the midst of a nervous break-down, Wilson was sure. The man should be hospitalized, drugged, strapped down until he was no longer a danger to himself.

But that was futile. If House wanted to die, he would achieve it somehow. No one controlled him. One loved him but he'd been rejected.

Wilson felt like he had just had his insides removed, strained of all substance and put back. He went home with a hole in his heart the size of a dinner plate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When House awoke, his apartment was in darkness. His bedside clock read three-twenty-one.

His emotional crisis had seemed to wear itself out and pass. Earlier he had weighed the options. In fact, ever since he woke up in the hospital after the heart surgery, he had done almost nothing but.

Option one was end the uncertainty. What he wanted and what his heart was allowing were in disagreement. He loved Wilson. He was not in love. Did not know if he would ever be. Yet he did not want to be alone anymore and Wilson wanted him. So end the uncertainty by yielding his heart to a love of sorts.

Option two was stay as he was: alone and unhappy. He knew he couldn't take much more of that, shortened life or no. He was an ass, he alienated people, he'd known that about himself most of his life. But even the jerks of the world still needed. Love and human well-ness went together. It made sense, even medically.

Option three was end all the pain that went with option one and two by dying now. He didn't really like that option but it did feel like the one that suited him best. He had always kept that option tucked out of sight but close by. Sort of a comfort thing.

The job. He loved the job. But it mostly took. It did not greet him at home. It could not touch him or laugh with him or do anything other than challenge his mind, training and experience. It did, in fact, very little giving. House was a trifle ashamed that he felt the need for affection, as he held it as a kind of weakness. If it happened TO him, fine and good, but he had never sought it out.

Therefore the Fates had put their heads together and had chosen Wilson for him. But thumbing his nose at the Fates, he had rebelled, asserted his free will and choose another. Then the Fates' counter measured by removing her from the equation altogether. And so House, licking fresh wounds, had retreated once more to the silent cave of options.

Until recently, Wilson had never suspected the cave. The cave was a dangerous place, but a familiar companion to House and answered to his needs. The decision to live or die was made inside the cave almost every month.

When things were bad, and lately his life had met every criteria for the definition of bad, he would stand inside the cave, far back in the dark parts and think about the far away light and how good things had been for a while. However, usually the light was too far and he was too tired anyway to walk toward it.

When things were good, he wasn't inside the cave at all, but out in the world under the light, fooling them all. Feel pretty good, look human, act human and they'd believe it. He knew the difference but he was a good actor. You settled for some contentment, some indifference, some laughter. You acted happy often, you felt happy occasionally. You acted a life and the curtain almost never dropped. He'd performed the act for his dad up until the day he left home for college.

Dad, infarction, Stacey, jobless, penniless, almost friendless...

Addictions, loneliness, fear, want, need, buy a pussy for a night and maybe feel like a man for a few hours, wonder what the humans were doing,...

Iffy liver, leg, heart failure - a triple cripple - more pills, more pitiful stares.

Cuddy...

House choked up. He missed her so much. Known and liked, and cared since college. Since that one really great night. Two great nights.

House wiped his eyes. Not wet but it always felt like they ought to be. Depression, the cause of and answer to, he supposed a life-time of reasons for tears but having none.

Wilson...

Heart fingered his spanking new vial of pills. Heart pills designed to keep his damaged muscle beating for another few years at least. On these, it would beat stronger if not longer. Not a life-time longer, unless you measured it in mouse years.

Doctor Michaels had, more than twice, near burst a blood vessel trying to convince his stubborn patient/doctor that getting off the Vicodin and all the other candy, not to mention the booze (but of course he HAD mentioned it), would be worth gaining a new heart. If House could get healthy, he'd have to wait on the list perhaps four or five years. Michael's had said a new heart was worth any sacrifice.

House had restrained himself from bitterly inquiring if Michael's was referring to physical or metaphorical organ (no doubt Wilson would be charmed with both). House had also pointed out that if he was gaining a heart cut from a corpse's chest cavity, it could hardly be labeled new.

Used heart. One that had about the same miles on it but not driven as hard.

The frustrated cardiologist threw up his hands while House explained he had no intention of living without Vicodin and in agony for four or five years so he could, maybe but not for sure, get a new-used heart in order to live without Vicodin and in agony for another four or five years. He liked his living agony-free.

Weirdly Wilson had kept his mouth shut.

House switched on a lamp and sat on his couch, thinking of Wilson. Kind man. Good friend. Excellent doctor. Great kisser. Considerate lover. House sat there and thought until he felt a little better. Until his mind's turmoil smoothed out. A breeze on a lake instead of a pounding ocean gale.

Until calm approached, on quiet feet, and told him something. Whispered it in his metaphorical ear. A Sprite's secret. A bare breath of truth....

Where darkness dwelled, the tiniest flicker of light sparked, shining back on memories, illuminating even more those that already dwelled in the cleansing day.

Something he had not recognized now shone brighter than the sun.

He really was an idiot.

House showered, changed his clothes, threw on his leather jacket, called a cab and left the cave.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilson gratefully shut and threw the deadbolt on his front door. His new two bedroom condo (thanks to a dramatic increase in salary) was in a nice, quiet neighborhood with stately trees and respectably groomed poodles. But he'd had no heart to enjoy it.

At the end of the week, the hospital board were set to review House's tenure. His behavior of late had been less than that befitting a physician at Plainsborough or pretty much anywhere. Extenuating heart attack or no, House might be on the way out of Plainsborough. Maybe life too. Wilson could hardly breath at the thought. He should have stayed with House. He'd half a mind to get his car and drive back.

While at work the mind of House had once done its job as well as ever. Brilliance rarely takes a day off. But that was the responsible, circling-somewhere-above-stable House no one had seen in a while.

Wilson tossed his keys on the phone table and hung his overcoat in the entryway closet. His mind, while on what did he have to eat for breakfast - it was four in the morning - endlessly dwelled on the face of House. And the mind and the frustration and the urgent need to shake sense into the man until his teeth rattled. And the crushing, unbidden desire to protect him from himself.

And the body of the man, which he wanted to undress and then curl himself around. Amidst all of these musings, he marveled at how it was possible to love someone so screwed up - but love so much it hurt - that it defied reason.

To befriend and then love so unique a human as Gregory House required another as unique. Wilson did not realize that he met the requirement in every way.

House, in an unloving and un-accepting world, had pursued selfish want out of an instinct to survive. Wilson, in the very same world, had pursued peace and it itself had been his survival. Of the two paths, the second was the more difficult.

To keep the peace, rather than giving in to instinct; jealousy or rage, in the face of antagonism or disappointment, was the harder task. Of the two men, Wilson was by far the stronger willed. And as the stronger, he had sparked the friendship, nurtured it, kept it alive, carried it - carried House when the man was being trampled under the worlds feet. Wilson had then found the love, watered it, raised it and offered it, almost without reward.

That kind of caring required conscience and principle. And a deep seated devotion very few ever experienced. To love House as he did all these hard years had proven Wilson a man of polished metals.

Wilson grabbed a diet coke from the fridge and eased himself down onto his dark blue mock-leather couch. Through the window behind it early pink light streamed in from the crisp April morning. He needed a diagnosis. He loved House. Why? What were the redeeming features of the man?

Smart. Went without saying. But you don't fall in love with a man just because he's smart. Accomplished? Yes. In a misunderstood, colleague's-squinting-their-eyes-and-not-getting-House-at-all kind of way.

Funny, if you can overlook the endless humorous insults directed at you.

Sexy? Wilson let out a breath he had been unconsciously holding in. How to count the ways? The thing in his dress pants remembered and sounded off a little. Sexy...? Let me tell you a fucking story. Hurting? Hiding?

Yes to both.

Yellow light rose and night dropped away. No diagnosis and no treatment for Wilson. In fact, he'd dropped off to sleep on his couch until a knocking awoke him.

Wilson opened his front door and House (looking and dressed like usual House but now clean) tried to enter. Wilson threw up an arm to stop him. "Hang on. Are you drunk?"

House appeared surprised by the question which surprised Wilson. House almost without fail showed up at his door in a state somewhere south of Tipsy Town. "Not anymore." He said.

Wilson wasn't done, "High?"

House shrugged. "Vicodin."

Pain under control, and brain not too high. Wilson left intoxicants for state of mind, "Lost?" He managed enough sarcasm to hit House where it hurt. House managed a modicum of contriteness. "No. Are you going to let me in so your curiosity can be satisfied or are you going to stand there in your white shirt looking suspiciously like Ward Cleaver?"

At least Wilson had gotten in a barb of his own before the sarcasm critter in House awoke. Well, at least the scary specter House was taking a breather and had sent along sarcastic jerk House.

Wilson stepped aside and let House in. "Would you like a beverage? Coffee? Milk? Several glasses of hard liquor?"

House heard and ignored Wilson's back-handed counsel against his alcoholism. "No."

Wilson sat back down on his couch. "Suit yourself."

House, second time at the new condo, first time actually noticing anything, glanced around a minute. Wilson's taste was something apart from his own but still uptown. The condo was sparkling neat and clean, no surprise for Mister Pocket Protector. The furniture square but comfortable in tones of dark blues and off-whites. A few carefully chosen pieces of art strategically placed on the end tables and on the walls were a last, softening touch. The place was Wilson all over. "Nice." House said.

Wilson watched House settle himself down onto a functional, thick cushioned easy chair, tucking his cane between his legs as was his habit. One Wilson always found a little sad (If the cane ended up out of reach for some reason, House had much greater difficulty walking to retrieve it. More of a hobble than a walk and Wilson suspected that particular predicament embarrassed him - cripple can't get to his cripple-stick!) But the cane between the legs was an endearment as well. Cane be tucked and even if House was being a total ass, forgiveness would wash over Wilson like an evening tide. House's dependance on his cane and his reluctance to let it get too far away was touchingly vulnerable.

Wilson shook himself from his thoughts and answered. "Thanks."

Outside the wind grew cold. Inside the condo waves of warmth rose from the floor's brass radiators.

"What can I do for you, Doctor House?"

House looked at Wilson, then away. "Brrrr." But instead of slapping on a few more layers of sarcasm, House shed his leather jacket.

Not near warm enough if he rode his bike over, Wilson thought. What the hell is he thinking? Two weeks from a heart operation and he's out riding on his motorcycle half nude. Does he WANT to catch pneumonia?

Underneath House wore his usual ensemble, a tan t-shirt with a dark blue button-up cotton long-sleeve and faded blue jeans. The three simple articles of clothing would look like nothing laying crumpled on a bed. Thrift store orphans. House put them together and, as cheap and unloved as they first appeared, on him became the latest fashion statement by Diesel.

House, oblivious to Wilson's scrutiny, took one courageous breath, clasped his hands together and leaned forward. Eyes on the floor, "I miss you." House said.

Wilson's heart damn near stopped. After a stunned nano-second, "I miss you too."

House looked at Wilson and again Wilson saw that haunted look in those glacier eyes. House was a hungry, half-wild creature cautiously sniffing at civilization.

"Is that why you came here today?" Wilson asked softly, "To tell me that?"

House tried swallowing but his throat was arid. Wilson's stare was both familiarly comforting and cooly aloof.

"No. I'm here to answer your questions."

Wilson wanted to be sure - HAD to be sure - this was not a high or a sheepish hangover. Wilson would no accept a "feeling bad about myself" House making some kind of confession so he could contentedly go back to his dug-out in the world and everything would be fine again for a while. "I'm not taking a survey."

House's expression was that of a man about to step off into the high unknown. Wilson saw it and relented. "Okay." Wilson said. "I do have questions. And you'll really answer them? No sarcasm? No jokes designed to take me down a peg? Evasions...?"

House nodded. "Yeah, I mean no."

Wilson tested the web. "I want at least ten minutes of truth."

House said, "Two."

Ah, there's the real House I know. Wilson showed the smallest crack of ivory whites and said, "Eight."

"Three."

"Seven!"

House said, "Two."

"You can't go down!"

"That's what you think."

Wilson blushed. "Was that sexual innuendo?" "It was certainly something. Two!"

Wilson shifted on the couch to get more comfortable physically and with the room's atmosphere. "Sex and that's my final offer or you can go home."

House smiled back. "Now THAT was sexual innuendo. Fine. Six." House rested his elbows on his knees and found a good spot on the carpet for his eyes to stare at. And never waver from.

When House spoke, he spoke to his own hands. Wilson imagined it was easier than talking to the real Wilson. No expression of expectation or disappointment ever flowed from one's own hands, Wilson thought. Like everyone's, House's hands nurtured and cared for him. Never judged him or caused injury. Almost never.

This thing House was trying to do, pour out his heart, was alien to him. Them. For it was as new for Wilson as for House. But Wilson knew House was too afraid of what Wilson might see - and recoil from? - in the words to raise those wary blue's and look him in the eye. House never looked at himself too closely. Wilson thought perhaps he never had, convinced that whatever he saw there others already saw and were shrinking from. Decent people did not want to see un-lovely things. House did not look up because he did not want to stain a good and clean soul like Wilson's.

Even for that loving, though misguided, gesture, Wilson treasured him. "I feel like...I'm going to disappear." House began.

Wilson carefully said nothing. A tiny peep of House insides had shown and Wilson dared not show surprise or the frightened doctor might duck back down his hole.

"I can't stand the thought of not having you somewhere in my life. Not just as my boss." As a speech of inner-feelings, for House it was a new record. "Other than my job, at which I kick everyone's asses off the play field, you're the only part of my life that's good."

House rubbed one hand with the other. "That's good for me. And I rely on that; on you being there when nothing...no-one else is."

What Wilson had just heard was more than a man pouring out his heart. House had exposed a fragile crumb of soul. House had admitted he needed another human being. It was huge. For a House confession, that crumb was a mountain.

But he, Wilson, had needs also. "I don't want to be just "dependable guy" in your life. I want more."

"I know."

An unprecedented moment. House accepting Wilson's word without a "but" or even an alternative theory. A near goddamn transfiguration, Wilson thought incredulously, in my very own condo. He half expected Jesus to show up.

House was still talking but his voice had grown very quiet and he looked...a little off. "When we were...together, that's the first time I've been close to anyone for a long time." Wilson remembered House's life with Stacey in it. A beautiful, strong willed, confident woman who had fallen for him hard. Pursued him and caught him up. For House, the hard fall for her had taken longer but when he had, there was no going back.

House was devoted to his few, very close relationships in the same manner he was dedicated to his job. It was all or nothing. Which rarely worked when applied to human beings who need room to move and breath. House's obsessive behavior, however coldly brilliant, left others outside looking in.

Stacey had been intelligent enough and strong enough to handle House in almost every way. She could match him brain for brain and stubborn for stubborn. But often times even she found herself on his perimeter looking back. House would be loving and attentive one week, then distant and withdrawn most other weeks. Stacey had loved him deeply and she might have stayed had her decision to override House's will not shattered whatever link she had managed to establish through all those thick House-erected walls.

It was only when she left, that it became clear to Wilson how deeply House had loved her. House fell apart into as many pieces as a man can fall. Crashed hard and burned long. And not just from the leg. House went into hiding from life. He quit striving for human normal and settled on genius-loner-freak. Wilson (and then Cuddy) had spent years picking up the jagged, silent, "nothing-wrong-with-me" pieces.

Wilson pulled his mind from the past back into the present. Trying to speak kindly but it needed to be said, "But we weren't together." Wilson reminded him.

House was pale and shaking. His voice barely above a whisper. "Yes." He took one, two deep breaths and tried to hide that he needed to. "Yes. But I was...content."

The last word blasted into Wilson's brain like a bullet from a deer rifle and not just because it had been said. It was the way he said it. House was shaking, breathing fast, head down and voice dropping low. Now was not the time to play the jilted lover and the perfect time to be friend-also-doctor. Wilson leaped up. Snatching a chair from his dining set, he set it directly in front of House and sat down.

House did not even noticed the Road-Runner moves of his worried host.

Wilson grabbed House's cold hands in his own. Cold, shaking, close to passing-out hands.

"Calm down. You're going to hyperventilate."

"Too late."

"Try to take deep, slow breaths." Wilson said.

"I know...the.." House scolded and took a shuddering gasp, "routine." - One, two, three quick breaths - "I went to.." - Quicker breaths - "m-medical..scho-ool..." - Even faster - "..too." His demanding lungs felt full. Full but empty. Not enough! they screamed. More, more!

Breathe slower. A simple treatment. A bitch to deliver. And the patient couldn't always cooperate.

Wilson encouraged him to keep talking. It would force House to slow his breathing somewhat. "You were happy with me? Then why did you run?" Wilson asked.

Still laboring under hyper O2 levels, House squeezed out, "Sorry....d-didn't.." Breaths showed no signs of slowing down..."expect...to care."

Wilson had to know, "But you weren't in love..." Very softly, "...and aren't now?"

House shook his head. A tiny shake so Wilson would take it as kind of No-but-Yes and not let go of his trembling hands just yet.

To convince House he was okay with the answer, Wilson held House's icy hands even tighter. One last question. A biggie. Huge. For House, a lung-sucking nightmare. While soaking up the sweet scent of House, Wilson spoke gently, so serenity would surround him, so the words would pass through his skin without touching and travel to the remotest part of his heart. So his soul would see them coming and be untroubled. "Why did you begin to care?"

House, coherent thought scattering under gasps coming hard and fast like the billows under the relentless hand of a blacksmith, said, "You...m-made me...h-happy."

Before unconsciousness pulled him down from physical panic and into a cradle of rest, Wilson took House's head between his own hands with the firm but gentle hold of the thousandth man. House's hair was soft in his fingers and it stirred memories of more. The memory of warm, whole, willing House.

House slumped into those kind hands; love-touched - a tactile taste of paradise unknown to him - which steadied his breathing just a little.

In his own living room, Wilson ate from what had been declared forbidden and he was filled utterly. No pale, silent memory, but the vibrant feel of House and the cherished word from his own mouth: He - Wilson - had made him happy.

Wilson wanted to hear those words again. See them in his hands to hold always. Touch them to his lips and taste forever. Guzzle them like a thirsty man in a water less country. Perfect never-before-spoken-by-Gregory-House words and Wilson would memorize their tune. Heart-swelling perfect syllables. Wilson made House look at him and House's eyes fluttered in an effort to obey. But his lids dropped shut and his lungs, still pumping hard and fast, refused to cooperate.

Still, Wilson was charmed by the man's effort. He's so afraid, Wilson thought, of what he might see in my eyes. Terrified of being human. Human was vulnerable. Human meant getting hurt. It came with the whole, damaged, dog-eared package.

House's head sagged in Wilson's hands, he was going to sleep but not without one last barely audible complaint. "This is...all your...f-fruity fault."

"I know." Wilson couldn't have felt happier. House trusted him. Not a lot, but enough. "It's okay." He told House as he passed out. Wilson supported his head and shoulders, letting them tilt forward onto his lap. He very tenderly kissed House's neck and whispered into his almost deaf ear, "I love you."

Wilson glanced at his watch. "Twelve minutes, buddy. Not bad."

Wilson turned House's head sideways so his breathing would not be hindered and his long, physician's fingers stroked the more pepper than salt hair. Wilson's left hand strayed to House's ruined thigh (though perfect, not ruined actually), while his right touched his own whole one. Now and again it still cramped, outraged by his treatment of it, though the memory of the pain had faded almost entirely.

House's pain, an ever current reality, would never fade but hang on with hooked claws.

Now Wilson would do the same. He would hang on to him, keep him close, keep him safe.

Because there were worse kinds of pain.

"I love you so much. You have no idea."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

House's eyes fluttered, then opened. "What happened?"

Wilson smiled down at him. "You fainted in my arms."

"How melodramatic of me."

Wilson said fondly, "Actually," - almost wistfully - "it was...unbelievably sexy." He led House to the bedroom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

House woke up first and rolled over. Wilson was still asleep on his side. His hair was ruffled, his face, half buried in a feather pillow, was peaceful. A downright gorgeous man.

House had never thought of himself as that. Whenever he looked in a mirror, he never considered his own appearance as handsome or even good looking. Some seemed to think so. Cameron, for one. And Cuddy.

Wilson also of course, who, the night before during some very heavy sex, had (in between moans) gushed, "You're hotter than the surface of the sun. And I'm going to screw you 'till it burns out."

I'm dating a closet poet.

House himself thought he maybe looked "okay". Average. A bit scruffy and not just because of the whiskers. He was very much aware that there were less years ahead than were behind, and that he had been hard on his body. And now it was failing.

But Wilson did not seem to care about any of that. Wilson had shown him over and over how much he loved his body and how much he adored his face. He almost never let up kissing him, even in the midst of a mind-blowing orgasm.

House felt both scared and comforted by that. Scared because one day Wilson might wake up and realize he was lying next to a dying, cranky old man. But comforted that Wilson had, after all, thus far stuck by him for many years - all the years he had known him - no matter what bone-headed move House himself had made. And Wilson was still there. Closer, in fact. In bed, wanting it. Wanting him.

For a year Wilson had said as much over and over. House hadn't listened or believed.

But the previous day again, Wilson had been against his skin and at his lips. Wilson was already there in his mind, in his conscience and in his life. Now in his heart as well. As close as anyone had ever been to him, including Stacey.

House got up and limped to the bathroom. As he pee-ed, he found himself a little choked up. Glancing back over his shoulder to where Wilson slept, he felt...that he ought to thank him for putting up with him. For tolerating him. For loving him. He couldn't remember a time when he had felt that wanted. "Why?"

"Because you're worth it." Wilson answered, wrapping his arms around House's waist. House had not seen him get up or walk up behind him. He was embarrassed that he'd been caught thinking aloud. Dropping the subject is what he wanted to do but instead he did what he thought he should do, what Wilson would want him to do. He kept talking. "I don't know...what that means."

Wilson, indulging in the silken sex of House's warm skin, ran his hands up and down his abdomen. He loved the feel of House's skin against his own and continued to kiss his neck and shoulders as he spoke. It was erotic repose. Resting his chin on House's shoulder - into his ear, "Why don't you like yourself?" He asked softly.

House shrugged. Wilson did not let go as House squeezed out toothpaste and began to brush.

"I can't alter the conclusions you've made about yourself over the years but I can tell you how I see you." Wilson nosed and kissed his hair. "Do you think I'm special? Am I worth anything, at least to you?"

House thought about it for a few seconds, not because he didn't have an answer, but because he wanted to tell Wilson what he really thought. He wanted Wilson to know that his answer was the truth. He stopped brushing and spit into the sink. Then rinsed. "I think you're the best man I've ever known." It was not flattery.

Wilson felt a rush. It was the best compliment that he had ever received. Solely because it was from House, the man who loved him - of course he did. Yes, he did! - but a harsh judge of people. People disappointed. People hurt. House had been hurt. A lot. He trusted no one.

Just me, Wilson thought. And, maybe, that was enough.

House added quietly and succinctly, "In the ways that count the most, you're nearly perfect."

At that moment Wilson wanted to kiss the man - remove all trace of anything painful that had ever touched him - kiss him without stopping. Ever. "You think I'm perfect...?" Wilson kissed his back again and held him tighter. Touching, holding tightly the man he loved more than his own life and knowing it was forever was a freedom he had never known before. "...then how can you believe you're anything less if I love YOU?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Morning became day and day became evening.

"Last night, and afternoon, was really good." House said as they drank their particular beverage choices in Wilson's living room.

Wilson nodded. "Yup." He'd chosen a double of whiskey for himself. Yesterday House had come to confess and not just with words. He'd shown Wilson his cut up arm. White scars were there, too, telling Wilson how long House had been at it. Wilson had blanched white, felt sick to his stomach, then hugged him. He loved him anyway. Despite. Regardless. Never-the-less. Doesn't matter. The fresh slices would fade like everything else. The cuts and the pain that caused them, were no longer hidden and so had no power over their creator.

House had hoped Wilson would pick it up from there. When he didn't, House scrambled to find the right words to express what he meant. And what he hoped. "It was nice to be here." House played with his cup and did not look at Wilson at all. "With you I mean."

"Ditto." It was uncharacteristic for Wilson to be so laconic.

Wilson, knowing where House was trying to lead the conversation, saw his let-down expression and came to his rescue, "Okay, so you want to try again, us, you and me? Right?"

House, still not looking at him, nodded.

"Are you sure?"

House swallowed hard. "I stayed the night, didn't I? It was great. Do I have to beg?"

"No, but a little groveling would be nice. Home cooked meal, wine, dancing-"

At the humor, House's relief could be sliced with a hatchet, "-Not for any amount of Wilson."

Wilson smiled. "So, we're a couple again? But I can't leave my toothbrush in your bathroom?"

"Sure."

"I'm not supposed to stand too close to you in public? I have to share you with hired ho's...?"

"No ho's. And the public thing, well, I'll work on acting less hetero'."

Wilson's last question was more sober, "And when I kiss you, do I have to wonder whether it might be the last time?"

"No."

"Because I want more than weekend House. I want weekday Greg. And weeknight Greg too. I want him in my kitchen, my living room, my bathroom and especially in my bed."

"We've already done it in pretty much all those places, so looks like we're good."

Wilson wasn't quite finished, "Because you're no longer free to tear out my heart when the next Cuddy comes along."

House looked at the floor. "I'm a forty-nine year old crippled, drug addicted, heart patient who's maybe going to see another three or four years. There aren't going to be any Cuddy's."

"So you're settling? That's flattering. Really, thanks."

"I'm not "settling", I'm admitting I was...an ass."

"Good start. But you're not in love with me?"

House felt a lump of panic in his throat. He wished he was in love with him. Really in love. But there had to be truth. Wilson had insisted, so - "No."

"But you love me, you know,...in a "way"?"

"Yes."

Wilson sighed. He felt happy but not as happy as he would like to feel. "The not in love thing might be a problem."

House answered back meaningfully, "Problems can be fixed. Feelings altered. I can change."

Wilson was stunned. Unheard of words from the man called House. "Don't take this the wrong way, but that doesn't sound like the House I know at all."

House shrugged. "Sleeping with you isn't the House you know."

Wilson sipped his whiskey. "Is any part of sleeping with me the House I know?"

House drank his non-alcoholic beer. It did not satisfy. "All this introspection is shifting my bowels. Can we just finish with "I like the sex. I enjoy you. You're not ugly and when's breakfast?"?"

Wilson had just heard House's version of 'You're sexy, I 'L' word you'. They soothed his wounds well enough. House had said all he was honestly capable of. The words were made tender by their truth. House said what was real and what was real was respectful. It was loving. The whiskey was very relaxing and Wilson sunk serenely into the couch cushions. He wanted House near him, and crooked a finger for House to move from the easy chair over to him.

House did so, with an endearing mix of uncertainty and hope. Once he was settled, Wilson placed his hand on House's hurt thigh and faced him. "Why did you stay that night in the hotel? You knew I wasn't moving, but you stayed anyway."

House examined his hands and sipped his beer. "Insurance. I wanted to make sure you stayed."

"I don't believe you. You wanted to stay."

"I wanted-"

"-You care a hell of a lot more about me than you're willing to admit."

"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just a pervert."

"It's nice to know."

"Which part?"

Wilson practically poured his brown eyes into House's blue ones. "Both."

House screwed up his face. "You're not going to start crying are you?"

"No. But I'd like to know more about you." "There's a wickedly accurate write-up on me in Playgirl. Length, girth, prowess, technique..."

"Fiction isn't really my cup of tea." Wilson smiled. "And I mean eventually know more about you. What goes on in that skewed brain of yours. Nothing hidden, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah." House rolled his eyes.

"Don't freak. This is what people who love each other do - they talk."

"I'm not in the 'L' Word with you."

"Close friends with great benefits then. Talking to me won't give you brain damage, I promise. I'm a doctor."

"Then let's play doctor." House said.

"I want to know again if you're in love? With me?" Wilson asked as they entered through his condo's front door.

House was first and walked directly to the kitchen. He snagged a cold beer from the fridge and perched on a bar stool. Wilson loved it when he sat in them, which is why he bought them. It gave him an unobstructed view of House's muscled legs. And he loved those jeans. House's fantastic thighs filled them thoroughly. Tight, shapely, suckably goddamn filled those jeans. Wilson filled his often enough thinking about them.

House cracked the beer can. "How many times do we have to discuss this? No, I am not in love. I don't have butterflies. My head doesn't swoon whenever you enter the room..." He stood and leaned against the counter to better talk to his busy, busy lover, as Wilson bustled back and forth in his spacious kitchen. His cane he'd left by the front door. He didn't need it as much at Wilson's place as there was lots more counter and sturdy furniture to lean on. "I don't even swoon when you kiss me."

Wilson walked by him and in passing brushed the backs of his fingers against House's jeans-confined penis. "Does this swoon?"

House blushed. "That...swells."

"Why?" Wilson disengaged and put on the kettle.

"Because IT loves you."

Wilson clattered cups and spoons around. Poured sugar into a white sugar bowl. Got the cream from the fridge and put it on the table. This was their weekly routine. During the week, one or two days at House's place - it was closer to the hospital - and on weekends, some Saturdays and usually every Sunday at Wilson's condo. Eat, talk, argue, sex, eat, sex, talk, sleep, T.V., sex, eat and sleep, sex, sleep, sex, sex, sex....it was, Wilson often thought, their delightful, delicious, oh-so-fucking wonderful routine.

"You're just afraid to admit," Wilson continued, "that you just might be in love. Or at least on your way there."

"I don't even know the address."

Wilson effected a very good and convincing hurt look on his face.

And it actually worked! House backpedaled with, "Look, I admit I "L" word you, but not that I'm IN "L" word WITH you."

"You love me, it's the same thing."

"No it isn't. You're talking about the weather. I'm talking climate."

"Again, same thing, House."

"Again, no it's not, Wilson. Don't you ever read anything but the I.J.C.? Weather is a transient occurrence. It comes and goes. Like emotions, changes all the time. Climate is a pattern of weather. Predictable, changes little over time and is based on past evidence."

"Okay, fine." Wilson scooped instant coffee into a shiny chrome coffee decanter. "Meteorologist of the heart that you are, what does my "climate" toward you tell you about me?"

House gulped his beer. He enjoyed these discussions, especially when he could show Wilson just where he was wrong. "That you're predictable. An unchanging, un-stimulating, un-bearably cheerless weather pattern with endless weeks and weeks of dry, dry, baking in the sweltering sun-"

"-Hilarious. Answer the question." Wilson poured boiling water into the decanter.

House paused and reached out his open hand, waiting. "Get me another brew and you too will better yourself by the wisdom of Doctor Gregory House." Wilson sighed heavily but he didn't mind, really. It was twelve feet from House's spot at the counter to the fridge. Nothing for him. For House... about this time of day, his leg would have had enough exercise and be demanding extra Vicodin.

"Here." Wilson put a can of Coors in his hand. "Answer."

"Your weather pattern says you're predictable. Smart that you hang low over House-country, but still predictable." "And...?"

"You "L" word me."

Wilson threw a cozy over the coffee decanter and put it on the table along with the cups and spoons. ""Love". Say "love". We don't have to code-talk in my kitchen."

"Fine. Love. You love me."

"IN love, actually." Wilson did not sit down but poured himself a cup of coffee. Added cream and four heaping teaspoons of sugar. House made a face.

"And your climate?" Wilson prompted again. "You've stuck with me over the years, been beside me, been in my bed regularly for some of it. A pattern of hot, sweaty, sexing-me-up "weather", wouldn't you agree?" Wilson walked closer to House. Crowded him, confined him against his corner of the counter. The coffee was temporarily forgotten. "What does your "climate" say about you?"

House smiled, staring with wicked defiance back into Wilson's challenging but confident eyes. Wilson's brown bottomless smoking eyes that said...so many things. House cleared his throat. "That I "L" word you. But not IN "L"."

Wilson threw up his hands in mock exaggeration. "My God! You're going to deny it until the-" He was about to say "day you die" but his heart twisted around 'till it hurt, choking off the words...

"...the cows come home."

House smirked. "Since you own no cows, yeah, 'till about then."

Wilson sipped his coffee. "You've got to admit at least, that we're an item."

"Mmm, no. We're two items. Sitting on the same shelf. In the Prophylactic Isle. You know, next to the lube and ribbed condoms."

"Are we at least within jerk-off distance of each other?"

"Gross. Closer than that I guess."

Wilson stood and walked to House again. Not touching just yet. At arms length. "This close?"

House picked up instantly on Wilson's game. This was one of their routines that he liked. Who would cave first and be the one rushing the other into bed? House, so far, had held his ground - MADE Wilson take charge. The sex was way hotter when Wilson was in charge. James Wilson really did work hard in the sex department. Strived to horny heights to give his sex partner what he most wanted.

"Not close enough." House answered.

Wilson pressed his crotch against House's. "This close?" He said in a throaty whisper. Wilson was delighted to see House's pupils dilate and hear his sharp intake of air. This was his favorite part of all his favorite parts of undressing, kissing, caressing and fucking Gregory House - the seduction.

House's respirations had doubled and his voice was low and breathless, "Yeah, that's about the spot."

Wilson loved their foreplay games, too, and House's reactions even more. "Even this close?" Wilson kissed House's scratchy neck, temple, cheek, along his jaw. Tiny, deft, feather kisses, just side-stepping his lips, just teasing the corners of his mouth. Nibbled at him with his teeth, here, there, brushed his lips across House's but did not grant him the release of a deep, hard tongue swallow. Even when House's mouth followed his and fruitlessly tried to take one.

Next Wilson placed his hands on either side of House's abdomen, up under his shirt, stroking his flesh in small circles, sliding his fingers along his rib cage - he was still a little too thin - feeling each muscle, each part of his flesh that was in reach. Wilson knew this drove House to sexual distraction. House was breathing fast and hard now. Needing,... wanting...but still he stood his ground but on shaky, weakening legs, Wilson did not fail to notice.

Wilson had saved something up for today though. He reached down and unbuttoned, very slowly, House's jeans, brushing his ever hardening cock with the backs of his fingers again. Not a stroke, just a soft up and down tease. Then, making sure he kept his eyes locked onto House's, he kneeled down and with his teeth unzipped House. He looked back up at House who was staring down at him like a man seeing a vision. Ardent desire and utter disbelief. Wilson smiled with anticipation. Licked his lips so House would see it.

House bit his lip. "A-h-h-h...god..." He whispered in a shuddering breath..

Then Wilson quickly stood. Yawning he stretched like a cat and walked to the fridge. "Are you hungry?" He opened it and rummaged around in the crisper. "We've got foot-longs!"

Behind him House took one huge in and exhale. He hobbled to Wilson - who heard him of course, yet again amazed (and amused) at how fast a pent-up, sexual frustrated House could hobble! - grabbed Wilson, spun him and planted a hard, almost violent, deep throated kiss on his mouth. Fingers wound in Wilson's hair, House kept on kissing him, pushing Wilson up against the still open fridge. Jars and containers rattled and fell.

House finally let Wilson up for air. Both were breathing hard.

Wilson asked. "So you're NOT hungry?"

House stared at Wilson's cunning browns with his heat-stoked blue's. "Yes, I AM!" He growled. He pulled Wilson closer so he could grate the words right into his ear, and into his mind where they would never escape. "Get your ass in that bedroom and take your clothes off." House said in a register too low for anyone to hear but this man who was his. "Because I'm going to fuck you until the cows come home."

Afterward they returned to the kitchen. It was dusk by then and Wilson switched on the stove light. "The coffee's cold by now."

"Who cares. I hate that instant stuff. Why don't you buy the real stuff? You got money now. And you use a Cozy for God's sake. This is America. Nobody uses a Cozy."

"Jewish people do." Wilson sat down. "And Ukrainians." Wilson was in the mood to be House-ish. "And gays, even. Besides I like little sugar lumps. And the little sugar lump tongs with the pink handles." He pointed, "I've got two pair in the drawer there. And Homo'-genized milk."

"Hey," House said, drinking orange juice from the container, "I'm the only one allowed to make gay jokes in this relationship." Wilson froze for a second like a man in a waking dream. Then he nearly jumped out of his skin. "Hah!! - You said "relationship"!" He stood in front of House with a gleeful grin. "You said it, House." He stuck a finger in House's face triumphantly.

House rolled his eyes. "It was a slip of the tongue. You know all about that, don't you?" He stuck his tongue out and wagged it around seductively.

Wilson refused to be distracted. "You said the "R" word! Hoo-boy, can the "I am in "L" with you" words be far behind??" Wilson almost danced around. "You're done-for now, House. You are so screwed!" He announced happily. "You lose. I win!"

"Oh, for God sakes!" House storm-limped into the living room and turned on the T.V., setting the volume to loud.

"This isn't going away." Wilson called after him. "Television is just a temporary escape. A lonely port in the storm of love." Wilson was really getting into it; thoroughly enjoying himself. "You can't go back now. Can't un-ride the wave, House. Can't undo the "do-ing" of Wilson, the many positions, the sweat and tears, the triumphs and tickles...the lube-ing of moi!...You're stuck like a cork in my bottle. Like a cucumber in my potato sack-"

""Patch"! Not sack, you idiot!" House yelled back. "If you're going to use my metaphors, at least get them right!" He found a game and set the T.V. volume to it's highest.

Not too far away in the kitchen, Wilson put the kettle on again and hummed a tune.

In the livingroom with televison blaring so loudly it hurt his ears, House smiled.

Wilson washed the dishes and found House sleeping with his head back in front of the still blaring T.V. Wilson switched it off and nudged him. "Hey. Bed time."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two or three years.

That's what Michael's had said in his doctor-mode-speak.

That's the time House had heard and accepted with hardly a blink.

Those were the words Wilson heard and felt his chest cave in.

They were already within the first year. So there would be a next year, and a third. And then every year after that would become a year of maybe. Maybe I'll have him for one more. Just one more. Just one - please-God don't take this man from me - more.

Two or three tiny spaces of time. Far too little to uncover everything Gregory. Even less to complete a loving of him in mind, soul, body.

Heart.

Not enough minutes to read with hands all perfect and imperfect (then made perfect by biased touch) parts of a man now belonging to him, James Wilson. House's mind now his. Gregory's body, his body. The lover beside him, his soul now exposed and cherished. House's beating but injured heart laying beside him in his bed every night. The injured heart - the ephemeral one - healing. Slowly Gregory House, all given to him at last. His body was a fire for wintertime. His touch, food for the dying.

House was his life.

But coldly delivered almost too late. Wilson loved God for making him and hated God for taking him back. Each warm rise and fall of his lover's chest marked time leaving forever. Each heart beat in him a terrible clock; only so many movements left.

Wilson lay on his side and studied the sleeping form. Damaged. But beautiful. Scars but tiny weathering on an landscape made by a Master.

Wilson, wanting to protect him with a frenzied intensity, could only softly follow with finger-tips the paths of each fleshly insult thrust against House over the course of years. Unfeeling infarction that crippled him for life. Bullets that had almost killed. The skilled but ascetic surgeon's needle which had branded that divine thigh.

Finally, the heart that betrayed him and left as a reminder a six inch zipper that with time would fade, but never leave.

None of these had a hold on him.

Only the years. Months. Days.

Wilson watched him sleep, which he loved doing. Sometimes long after he should have been getting his own rest.

That evening, just a few small hours ago, (Wilson played it back in his mind on continuos feed), they had been making love. House asking, telling, begging Wilson - showing him how much he wanted him. His hooded blue's cloudy with desire as though a cocktail of drugs had washed through him like a river. And Wilson eagerly answering with hands, lips, teeth, mouth, fingers, body, cock and drawn out undulations of sexual succor. No matter how much of Wilson's body pressed against Greg's, it never seemed enough. Never close enough, long enough. Never, never satiated. More.

Always he wanted more.

Wilson had begun to worry that House's heart couldn't take another session. House, on the other hand, had seemed unconcerned as he deftly rolled Wilson onto his back and lay his body - he had a good twenty pounds on Wilson - full length on him. Wilson nearly fainted from desire. He relished the hot, trapped feel of House's hard sex pressing down on him. Teasing him. Holding him to the earth. While his body flexed and shuddered, his mind chanted: this mind-blowing sexy man let him never move off me. Make love to me, Greg. Fuck me again. Please, please...

Never ever stop...

The more bewitching moment came when House rolled over onto his back and held his hard cock up for Wilson. His eyes left no doubt. He wanted inside Wilson. He wanted James as James had first wanted him. Wilson had nearly quit breathing in the moment, so overwhelming was his love and lust for House in that second. Incredible that he had survived it at all.

Wilson generously lubed up House's perfect and hungry cock and settled himself down onto him. He did not move for many, many seconds, savoring the fullness of Greg inside him. Hot penetration. Holy invasion. And the driving power of Greg in him and him on Greg. Shared power. Mutual thoughts and flesh wanting exactly the same thing: to fuck the other mindlessly - desperately - until the world ended.

When they had spent themselves and slept a bit, one would wake and reach for the other and they would begin again. Over and over, all afternoon.

Wilson watched House slumber under the accommodating fog of drugs. Vicodin for his howling leg. Bis-phosphocholine-hexane for his scarred and tired heart. It's beat, steady now, would gradually fade to an uncertain whisper before falling mute. Far, far too soon. In the dim, muted hues of the nighttime room, shapes hinted at only by the orange glow of an alarm-radio, House looked...at home. The shadows of their small world and the timid glow from the flash of the 1:AM gathered around them. House's pale countenance slept a foot away on a glowing white cotton pillow. Such were the hushed colors of life. Wilson's had become golden radiance. Starlight. House was vulnerable in the way of all people. A slave to the physical. Frightened of the possible. And now, new-born within an absolute: he was loved. But Wilson's soul shook at the fragility of what he had been granted. Where losing House had sent him plunging, having him back offered delicate wings. Airy, wind worn things that could dissolve at any moment. Having this man was moonlight moving across a dusty floor. Find it, glow in its silver shine, and then watch it leave. Wilson watched House sleep and stood in the warm beam. He loved Greg beyond words to contain the meaning. And, as night follows day, someday he would have to watch him pass. It was a pleasure and a pain that Wilson never spoke of to him. The pleasure of it...Greg was alive and with him. The inconsolable pain of it...knowing how short that time might be. Wilson stroked House's rough cheek. His mouth twitch and he rolled over towards Wilson, not waking. God how he loved that scruffy face. And how much Wilson wanted to wake him, but didn't. Talk to him, but let him sleep. Kiss him, but left him peaceful. Make love to him, but allowed him rest.

With eyes on a cruel vision Wilson saw the heartless passage of perfect things - Greg House - a too soon unjust fate.

With his heart on the moment, Wilson watched over his lover...

And time stopped.

** The END (this really IS the end everyone). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Given sex, take your preference. An array of genitals are up for grabs. All colors, all sizes. Given love - caring, kindness, devotion - what has any of that to do with organs?" From the book "The Organ-ic Carrot" by G. Waldo-Hulce (me) Unpublished.

Coming sometime spring/summer 2008... HOUSE FANFICTION: "Dream Stranger" (House/Cameron, Gregory/Cameron) House's childhood in-a-dream-or-was-it-real?/vision of Cameron's. and "Click, Baby, Click." (House/Male) Voyeuristic smutfest. Cuddy arranges for a fund-raising Hospital Doctors Beef Cake Calendar and guess which reluctant Diagnostician doesn't want to partake? But guess who the photographer wants to make his "Special Feature"? *Already started writing this one - it won't leave me alone! ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ONE STEP CLOSER AWAY...Came to me one night in a flash. For me, no story begins as an opening line, it begins with an ending. If I do not know where and how the story will end, I cannot even begin to write it. I have never - and I mean never - sat down at a computer with writer's block, unable to type a word, or without knowing exactly what was going on the page. I make ink-notes every day for whatever story I'm currently writing (and sometimes for others too. Most writer's I have talked to are writing at least two projects and have three to six more up their sleeves.). These scribbles come home with me, written on 11 x 9's, envelopes, serviette's - my hand! - and get unceremoniously tossed on my desk until I have time to sort them out a bit and write the paragraphs and pages. Only I know the secret on how to transform that particular mixed up pile of nearly unreadable scrawl into characters on a screen, words in a line, and finally, a story on a page that many seem to like well enough to keep looking for more. All writer's have their own method. Mine is: *Powerful thought!* + "Where's my f**king pen?!" + "Where's some damn paper?!!" + *Scribble, scribble* = Story.

I have drawers and plastic shopping bags stuffed full of these old, original ink notes for stories written and unwritten. I am clearly not organized, I just remember. And I love spinning a tale so another person feels what I feel about it, see's what I see (or want them to see), hopes what I hope, cries when I cry, and laughs when I laugh. A writer is: a costume designer, location finder, set maker, script writer, director and ALL the characters in the play. If you do not see, feel, touch, smell, hear, taste, enjoy, hate, love and laugh all of the things your characters do, neither will your readers. ONE STEP CLOSER was easy to write because it is a story that reflects in many ways the things going on - or things that have been - in my own life pf late. Too many things to talk about here. Usually the ideas for my stories are taken from my own life or the lives of those I know. So I will always write more. But, in fact, I write for myself first. It is my therapy and my joy and my heartbreak and my frustration and my utter delight! Nothing equals it. Not a thing. GeeLady

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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.

The House Fan Fiction Archive

One Step Closer Away Part III