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Code of Honour
by Evilida
Wilson sometimes seemed unsure about whether he was a man or a vampire. Even after a month, he still looked distressed whenever he passed by a reflective surface that didn't show him his image, and he was hesitant about killing. House still had to be there to push him into action and to praise and comfort him afterwards. House felt like a mother coaxing a fussy toddler to eat his vegetables, but he'd decided that watching Wilson starve himself would be even more tedious.
House wasn't at all confused about who he was. House was a vampire. He was at the absolute top of the food chain. He was master of all he surveyed, or at least he would be, if it were not the powerful vampire who had called himself the Professor of Esoteric Medicine.
To the human eye, the Professor didn't look very formidable. He was an old man, wrinkled and frail, and his skin was pale as if he spent too much time indoors. Vampires saw things differently though. House saw the Professor's indomitable will to survive and the pleasure he took in forcing others to do his bidding. The Professor demanded obedience and respect from House, who was his apprentice. The old vampire wasn't wise, but he was experienced and cunning, which were almost as good. In a vampire, attitude and innate aggression counted for more than muscle. If it came to a fight with him, House would probably lose.
The three of them had made their way across country to Las Vegas. The car trip had been claustrophobic. It had reminded House of childhood vacations, stuck in the back seat of his father's car, while the old man bypassed all the interesting sights (World's Biggest Ball of Yarn, See the Three-Headed Calf) in favour of boring war monuments and museums. Then there had been the days spent in dismal motels, prisoners of sunlight, trapped until nightfall. Of course, he and Wilson had found ways to pass the time.
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Plundered. That was the word. James Wilson had been plundered. Every inch of him explored and claimed. Every thought in his mind, every cell in his body, belonged to Gregory House, vampire, and Wilson wasn't allowed to forget it.
First it was pain, and then it was pleasure, and now he could hardly tell the difference. House's razor sharp fangs bit into the muscles of his shoulder, holding him in place. They cut into him when he moved and little rivulets of blood flowed down his torso and spattered on the sheets. House's sharp fingernails dug into his flesh, and he pushed again, hard, and Wilson had to bite his own tongue to avoid crying out. Silence was the rule this time, and if Wilson broke the rule, he would be punished. Worse.
When House pulled out, when he finally relented, Wilson collapsed, trembling on to the bed. Wilson was crying, but he didn't forget the rule. He cried silently, except every once in a while there was a stifled gasp when he was sobbing too hard and needed to catch his breath.
Wilson rolled onto his back. House was watching him, leaning on one elbow, his expression unreadable. Wilson hated him at that moment, just for the way House looked at him - the way his gaze assumed that he owned Wilson body and soul (assuming he still had a soul). Wilson would gladly have ripped him to pieces, but Wilson knew House was stronger and more aggressive than he was. Wilson couldn't stand that impassive stare and turned away, pulling up the blanket to cover himself, but House didn't want that. He pulled the blanket down, so Wilson was naked and exposed. He forced Wilson to look into his eyes. Wilson's hands were balled into tight defensive fists and he tried to look away, and House displayed his fangs, which were still stained with Wilson's blood. He held Wilson's gaze steadily and bore down on top of him, looking for any further signs of defiance.
Wilson looked up into House's face, stubbornly determined that this time he would win this ridiculous staring contest. He lasted less than a minute. It was his own sense of the absurdity of the situation rather than his fear of House which finally defeated him. House was staring into his eyes like a cheesy stage hypnotist, and both of them were naked as the day they were born, and bodies without clothes were kind of comical really especially as seen from this angle, and he was getting chilly, and when was House going to give up? Wilson felt himself beginning to laugh which was not a good idea, because vampires take themselves very seriously, especially when they are playing their little status games. (Wilson put House and the Professor in the category of vampire but still mentally excluded himself.) To stop himself from laughing, Wilson looked away from House and let his tense muscles relax, and he lost the battle again.
House kissed him on the lips, and Wilson knew that this was his reward for submission - a tiny sliver of affection and a brief pretence of equality. It would not have been adequate compensation if he were a man, but, of course, he wasn't. Wilson was a vampire, whether he admitted it or not, and his emotions were like bolts of lightning. They were powerful, immediate and intense, but then they were gone, leaving only the faintest afterglow behind. House licked Wilson's wounds, and Wilson soon forgot that House was the one that inflicted them. House kissed him, held him and stroked him, and Wilson almost purred, shameless in his enjoyment of House's caresses.
"Promise me you won't flirt with any more gas station attendants, and I'll let you speak."
"I wasn't flirting with her!"
House nipped him on the earlobe playfully.
"Promise first; then you can talk. Not before."
"I promise not to flirt," Wilson said, "but I wasn't flirting," he added under his breath.
House nipped him again. He pulled the blanket up to cover Wilson, and the other vampire rolled over and closed his eyes. Wilson felt House's lips against the nape of his neck as he fell asleep.
House closed his eyes too but he couldn't get to sleep. Having Wilson there, sleeping like a baby, was irritating when House couldn't rest. He resisted the momentary urge to wake him up and send back to his own room. Instead, he got out of bed, pulled on a pair of pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt, and left the bedroom.
House and Wilson were living in the Professor's house outside Las Vegas. The Professor had had the house built to his specification years ago, and it was well-adapted to the needs of vampires. Shutters on the inside of the windows at the side and rear of the house blocked out daylight. There was a deep, wide porch at the front of the house, which the Professor had designed so that it protected the large picture window there from direct sunlight all year round. The Professor could sit in his front room and look out into the sunlit world that's only a few steps away. He could even sit on the porch and feel the early morning breeze in perfect safety. The Professor had bought acres of desert when the land was cheap, so there were no other houses nearby.
House found the professor looking out this window, watching the sun rise over the desert.
"I never tire of this view," the Professor said. "The desert has so many moods."
"I like greenery," House said, shrugging. "Grass and trees beat bare rock."
He headed towards the living room to watch television. The Professor's television was a relic and only picked up two channels, sometimes three if the conditions were right. (House planned to introduce him to satellite t.v. and the wonders of the 500 channel universe as soon as possible.) There were only two channels available that day, and one of them was showing a test pattern. The other had a lithe young woman demonstrating yoga positions. House was watching Downward Facing Dog, when the Professor entered the room, and House almost cursed. He'd listened to the Professor talk all night, tolerating his reminisces and opinions in order to glean a few useful facts about vampire life. The last thing he needed was another long rambling story about how the Professor had tortured some unfortunate person who had looked at him the wrong way.
The yoga teacher on screen had switched from Downward Facing Dog to Tree Pose, which House found a lot less interesting to watch, so he abruptly rose from his seat to turn off the television. The Professor's television was so ancient that it didn't have a remote.
"Your servant is asleep?"
"Yes."
"He's not selfish enough for our kind of life. A vampire has to be selfish," the Professor said. "I knew that you would make a good vampire fifteen minutes into our first conversation. All that intellectual arrogance, all that selfishness - I knew you would be ideal."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence - or no thanks for the insult."
"Looking after him is distracting you," the Professor said. "It may become necessary to get rid of him. As your teacher, I can't allow you to lose focus."
"You agreed to let me have Wilson."
The Professor nodded. "That's why I'm talking to you rather than killing him myself. I'm giving you a chance to deal with him."
"I'm not going to kill him."
"It's a sentimental impulse to cling to souvenirs from the lives we had before. Only the weak give in to sentiment."
House did not respond.
"Fine. I've done my best to make you sense.
If that is your decision, you should share him. It's not right that you should keep something you value all to yourself. What belongs to the apprentice belongs to his master. We used to have a saying when I was young: the apprentice goes hungry until his master is fed."
"We had an expression when I was young, too: hand's off!"
The Professor laughed mirthlessly.
"I've lived up to my end of the apprenticeship contract," House said. "If honour is as important to you as you keep telling me, you'll live up to your end of the bargain. So far I haven't been very impressed with your teachings. Aside from a few tidbits about biochemistry, which I could have figured out myself, you've given me nothing. I want useful information, not stories about thousand-year-old blood feuds! "
"I have a philosophy to offer you! Insights into the world that only someone who has lived for more than eight hundred years can offer you. All you want is trivia."
"I understand your philosophy. It's not that difficult. You're the big dog and you get to bite everyone else. Western Civilization has been going downhill ever since the Renaissance, and abolishing slavery was a mistake. Am I leaving anything out?"
"You owe me your respect. I should kill you for speaking to me that way."
"I don't think you're going to," House said. `While we were on our tour of America's worst hotels, motels, and inns, I had some time to think about things. What were you doing a cross-country lecture tour when you have a perfectly good home here? I don't think it was for the scenery and I know it wasn't for the money. You were desperate to find someone to talk to so you went out to find a new apprentice. You need me because you're going mad from boredom."
The Professor looked at House, deciding whether or not to kill him. His posture was deceptively relaxed and his expression was blank. After a long silence, he seemed to come to a decision and left the room without saying a word. House sank back down into the sofa in relief.
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Wilson had a perfectly good bedroom of his own - a windowless walk-in closet next to the laundry room - but the Professor knew that he usually slept in House's bed. This was another example of House's over-indulgence. House could use his servant as he wanted, but he ought to dismiss him immediately after.
House kept a light on in the corridor outside his bedroom, so that the room would not be perfectly dark. The Professor wondered whether that was a concession to Wilson's fear or whether House himself was uncomfortable with total darkness. He knew it was not at all uncommon for vampires to fear the dark. Several of his past apprentices had had the same phobia, and he had found that it was a useful tool for discipline.
The Professor opened the door to House's room. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of sex. He'd been celibate for more than a hundred years himself and didn't miss sex at all. The kill was so much more satisfying.
He looked at Wilson sleeping peacefully and was honestly puzzled. What did House see in this in-between thing, neither wholly man nor wholly vampire? For him, there was nothing more grotesque than a vampire who didn't know his true nature.
The servant was good-looking enough but not extraordinarily beautiful. The bushy eyebrows were an imperfection and his eyes weren't quite symmetrical enough. It had to be his blood that kept House interested. House had commented on how delicious it tasted; he said it was superior to anyone else's. The Professor could smell Wilson's blood on the sheets, intermingled with the odours of sweat and semen, but it was already dried and stale. Blood had to be fresh and flowing.
The Professor was tempted to bite, but he lived by a code of honour. Wilson belonged to House, and he could not steal from another vampire. House would have to give him his permission before the Professor could indulge his appetite. Or the Professor could kill House and take Wilson for himself. His code permitted either option.
The Professor licked the face of the sleeping vampire, tasting the salt of tears and sweat, and left the room.
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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.
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