In High Seas
Title: In High Seas
Author: nieded
Fandom; Pairing: House, MD; House/Wilson, Cuddy, OFC
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: NOT MINE OKAY
Spoilers: One reeaaaallly brief mention of the Tritter!arc.
Author's Notes: So, a long time ago someone asked for the aftermath of Asphyxiation. Over a year later, here it is.
Synopsis: The water must be cold.
This is a sequel to Asphyxiation.
- 0.0.5 > Waiting time.
When he first asked for time off, Cuddy stared at him curiously. It had been four years since he had taken any leave, spending his time at the hospital glaring at the new occupant in Wilson’s office; Doctor Jacobson needed a break. “This is good, House,” she told him. “You need a vacation. You’ve barely taken one in the last decade.”
“I took one four years ago,” he argued.
“Yeah, House. To go to rehab. That wasn’t vacation, that was you pulling your head out of your ass to keep from going to jail,” she scoffed.
He winced. “God you’re bitter. Must be menopause. I’ll send the rest of the hospital my condolences.”
“Ha,” she scowled. “I’m only forty-three.”
“Really?” he leered. “I thought you were above lying.”
“Not lying, House.”
“Huh, that’s funny. That’s not what you told Travington on your date last night.”
Cuddy scowled, “How the hell -”
“What?” House feigned innocence. “I can’t go out to dinner? You’re the one who just told me I didn’t go out enough.”
“Sure, maybe to China Wok but not to Boulevard Café,” she hissed. “You don’t even own a tie.”
Cuddy knew this wasn’t true. House didn’t own a tie of his own, but he had inherited Wilson’s vast and hideous collection after his disappearance. “I can’t believe you’re still looking at the same creepy, half-balding guys,” he reverted. “You should try Hutchinson in psychology -”
“-who is a woman,” Cuddy finished. She paused thoughtfully before adding, “And a psychologist. I know I’m crazy - I hired you- but I’m not that crazy.”
“Hey, you could branch out. Try something new! In fact I’ll capture every moment for you on my video camera. I’m an expertise videographer,” he suggested.
“I don’t think so.” Cuddy rolled her eyes.
“She’s hot.”
“I’ll let her know you said that.”
“I also saw her making out with that radiology resident, Sandra Flannigan,” he answered gleefully.
“In my hospital?”
“No, of course not. That would be unethical,” he gasped, offended. “At Delaware’s on the corner of Main and Hudson.”
Cuddy leaned back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest defensively. “Like that’s ethical, stalking colleagues. And it’s Susan, not Sandra.”
“Excellent. All three of you have been acquainted.” House folded his hands together maniacally and gleamed evilly.
“Get to the point,” she pressed. “You want to go on vacation. That’s good. You haven’t taken a long period of time off without getting in trouble with the law or getting shot.”
“I’m all about trying new things.”
“I’ve heard being nice is good.”
“Ha,” he sneered.
Her expression turned somber as she studied him briefly. “This is good House, really good. You weren’t -” she paused. “It’s been hard since Wilson disappeared, hasn’t it?”
House chewed the inside of his cheek and turned his head to the floor. He knew Wilson hadn’t disappeared, just sort of… relocated. Explaining this to anyone else would be insane if they hadn’t been there, but he had. He witnessed some of the transformation, but sometimes trying to explain it to himself seemed crazy. It made it easier for him to joke about Wilson, knowing he was alive and that maybe - just maybe - he would come back. He looked at Cuddy’s softening, examining expression she gave him and glowered. Of course she would try manipulating him into being emotional.
“Yes, it’s been so hard not listening to him rag on me about V. I think he was jealous of all the time we spent together.”
“Vee?”
“We’ve developed a very close relationship,” he said as he waved the little orange pill bottle.
Cuddy didn’t buy it as her eyes narrowed. “I bug you about your Vicodin use all the time. You could hardly miss being harassed.”
“Yeah, but you look so much sexier when you do it, and I love it when you harass me. Hey, maybe you should date me.”
She laughed mockingly, picking up the coffee mug she had stolen from Diagnostics. “I thought you said I should stop dating creepy, half-balding men.”
“Ouch,” he mocked, throwing his head back in despair. “Fine, I concede. So can I have the time off or not?”
“Fine,” she relented. “When?”
“Next week?”
“Next week? You need to submit notice at least two months ahead of time. Most doctors have their schedule planned for the year.”
“I am not most doctors. Besides, I live for spontaneity.”
“Fine,” she said, pushing away from her desk and standing up. “But I’m not letting you go unless you complete all your clinic hours for the week with three additional hours.”
“That’s cruel!”
“And four when you get back.”
“Blasphemer!”
“Keep talking, House, and I’ll add four to every week from now on,” Cuddy smirked. She watched as House rolled his eyes, mimed zipping his mouth shut and threw away the key. He stalked out of her office petulantly - not, of course, without demonstrating his vast knowledge of rude sign language.
---
- 0.0.1
It took House a whole week to get off his couch and begin rifling through his drawers, packing clothes for his trip to Maine. He spent his time glaring at the unplugged TV screen while debating on whether he should actually go ahead and do this or drive south where it was warm. He had three weeks that could be better spent on the sandy beaches of North Carolina than on the empty, icy one in Maine. In January he would need long underwear, undershirts, extra hats and gloves within mittens, scarves and thick socks if he wanted to keep warm. He briefly hunted for his old pair of boots before pulling Wilson’s out of the closet, trying them on for size. They were nice, probably polished back in their time, had a nice wool liner inside, and clashed horribly with his paint-splattered jeans. They were warm though, comfortable and undistinguished. He felt so bland and nondescript with every passing moment he wore them that he ripped them off and shoved them in the bottom of his suitcase.
When he finished packing (thermos, instant coffee and instant hot chocolate, a pair of old clothes for just in case - they were Wilson’s anyway), he sat heavily on his bed with the plane ticket in his hand, not knowing that Wilson had done the same thing once before. He examined the words, the date, the time, the flight number before slipping it back into its envelope and tucking it inside his jacket pocket. The luggage felt heavy in his hands as he waited outside and New Jersey’s winter breeze bit at his cheeks.
---
0.0.1 > Zero time.
The rental car looks eerily similar to the one they had taken. He glances over at the passenger seat, imagines himself asleep and oblivious and wonders how he could have slept through one of the most important moments of his life. The trees have been plastered with frost and the branches sweep toward the ground under the burden of the heavy snow. He winces as he slowly drives past one that looks ready to snap and thinks he knows how it feels.
It’s been a long time since he’s empathized with anything.
---
On the first day, he looks out of his window. The manager stops by twice to check in on him because there are only two other guests: businessmen who leave early in the morning and traipse in again late at night. He ignores them when they shut their separate doors and wakes up after they’ve left. Other people enjoy bed and breakfasts for the experience, coexisting with strangers in a cramped environment. House doesn’t believe in pretense, but most importantly, doesn’t think it’s possible to coexist with anyone if he isn’t existing at all.
The woman brings him toast and juice upon his request and sets it on the table. Her hair frames her round face, fingernails clean and soft from washing dishes. She vaguely reminds him of his mother - without John - and that’s fine. He can tolerate juice and toast and her warm hands when she greets him in the morning, but that’s about it.
“A good man like you shouldn’t be here alone,” she tells him, almost expectantly. “Are you?”
House turns his head and looks out the window. There’s a beautiful view of the ocean and the waves gently lap at the ice. He stares, weighing the likelihood of slipping on the ice and breaking something with his need to be out there even if Wilson’s not. He turns to look back at her. “I’m meeting someone,” he says, sipping from his juice glass.
She smiles again, following his gaze out the window curiously as she pats his hand reassuringly. “Good,” she tells him and picks up the empty dishes.
She leaves and once again House is all alone.
That afternoon he checks the Weather Channel. Negative twenty degrees, the weatherman announces, adjusting his tie. It’s an ugly paisley thing. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen it flashes 2:30 pm, Thursday, January 16: four years, four months, five days. He packs his bag with his thermos and the extra set of clothes, slips on Wilson’s boots and tramps out the door. He smiles grimly at the owner and lets her watch as he walks the 100 yards to the shore where he gets stiff and cold and angry and bitter. It’s better than getting drunk, he laughs, and then under his breath: let her stare.
House settles himself in the snow, stretching one leg out and tucking the other beneath his body. The waves are harsh and frigid, slapping against the rocks and slicking the ice. He stares at the rhythmic tide before fishing Wilson’s clothes out of his backpack. He rests them in his hands, weighing them. He almost can’t believe someone had worn these clothes; they’re still crisp and wrinkle-free, perfectly folded as if he was coming back tomorrow. House throws them into the ocean unceremoniously and it swallows them whole (it swallowed him whole). He waits four more hours, for what - he isn’t sure, and when the condensation from his breath freezes on his stubble and his leg stiffens, he hobbles back inside.
---
0.0.2
On the second day, House wanders across the beach. It’s January and his foot sinks so deep into the snow that it covers two thirds of his calves, making walking difficult and treacherous. With one wrong step, his body could tumble - with one wrong step he may never get up again. Carefully, he juts the cane into the ground, testing it with his weight before slowly moving his legs, dramatically lifting them up above the snow, gently setting them down. It’s a long process and by the time he reaches the shoreline a trickle of sweat has gathered on his forehead despite the cold temperature. Standing with his weight shifted onto his left leg, he jabs the saltwater with his cane and brings the wet end to his fingers to test how cold the ocean is. It’s frigid, bitter. His fingers stay wet and freezing long after he curls them back into his gloves.
Today, it’s ten degrees colder than yesterday, and his gloves and hat somehow seem insufficient. His ears are frozen where they peek out from beneath the wool and the drafty wind snakes up his coat sleeves. Opening his backpack, he pulls out his thermos and takes a long draw of black coffee to combat the bitter weather, and a rush of heat floods through him but passes quickly, caving to the biting temperature outside. Nothing is ever good enough, he decides, and turns to stomp back indoors.
Halfway from the shoreline to the bed and breakfast he stops, eyes narrowing at the ground. There are two tracks of feet: one from his venture out yesterday, complete with little holes in the snow where he had vehemently jabbed his cane into the ground - the other a pair of bare feet decorating the fresh snow. He stares at it a moment longer before following the tracks. They lead him to the water’s edge and then disappear into the ocean. He breathes heavily, gaping at them. They disappear. They disappear.
When he makes it back inside, there are ice crystals clinging to his eyelashes, around the rim of his nostrils and the edge of his lips; his eyes are wide and alert, calculating, hoping. The owner sits in the dining area behind her countertop, sipping on hot cocoa while staring at him speculatively, and on the table stands an extra steaming mug. “Don’t you have something better to do?” he snipes when he catches her studying him curiously.
She smiles patiently, “Don’t you?”
He glowers at her, taking in her graying hair, the creases around her mouth, eyes, and forehead. She could have been very pretty, he thinks, but now she’s just old. “I have better things to do than sit and stare forlornly out windows at customers,” he retorts, turning to leave.
“I know,” she calls after him, leaning over the countertop. She pushes aside the untouched mug and smiles when he turns around, her forearms resting against the cool surface as she smirks.
House rolls his eyes. He doesn’t have time to play games with bored inn-keepers. “I know lots of things. Did you know that a cat sleeps 16-18 hours a day, and that ‘karaoke’ means ‘empty orchestra’ in Japanese?”
“Did you know that most suicides occur on Mondays?”
House stops, shoulders straightening as he stares at her, blinking. “What does that have anything to do with… with anything?”
“I know,” she says again, bluffing as she coats her voice with sureness and a hint of smugness. “I know. ”
It’s her tone of voice, low and jolting - so certain - that causes House to pause. His eyes narrow as he leans forward heavily on his cane. “You think I’m here to commit suicide? Why? Because I’m here alone during the slowest part of the season. Guess what, maybe I just don’t like people.”
“You said you were meeting someone here.”
“Everybody lies. I lied. That’s why people don’t like me.”
“Oh,” she smiles. “I don’t believe that. I think you’re probably more honest than most men, and brutally so.” She sets down her mug. “I don’t think you’re here to kill yourself either. I’ve seen my fair share of those kinds of men, however at first I must say you had me fooled.”
House rolls his eyes and shifts on his feet. He glances from her to outside where the sun blindingly reflects off the snow. If he squints he can see the outline of two sets of footprints trailing towards the water.
“Was it someone else?” she asks, breaking his reverie. “A lover, a friend. Family member?”
“What?”
She points with her coffee mug. “The ocean, suicide. Someone you knew.”
He stares at her plaintively, calculatingly. “No,” he says sharply, turning away for the final time. “And you don’t always know.”
She watches him exit, sipping slowly on her hot chocolate before sighing quietly. “But I eventually do.”
House walks down the hallway, tramping over the new red carpet, skimming his fingers over the paint while taking in the cozily lit hallway. His room is the last on the left past two other doors, and when he enters he promptly collapses on the bed. His right shoulder aches from the pressure he put on the cane, his thigh throbs from the cold and his head hurts just thinking about the psychoanalyzing owner. He doesn’t even know her name and yet she’s trying to pick him apart. Unsuccessfully, he reminds himself, but close. The shades are half drawn, the bed made; she must have come in to clean earlier. His luggage in the corner remains untouched.
It’s cozier than a hotel, but still so similar to those days Wilson spent at the Ramada. This small room with the navy blue carpet and the tan walls, azure bedspread and matching chair. It feels like a recycled hell. Is this why Wilson left?
House can’t figure it out. A sickness - incurable; an unheard of sickness like a secret national scandal so long forgotten that even the great Mara Wilson had forgotten about her family curse. But why? Why at thirty-seven did Wilson’s body reject him, did his legs fail him and his lungs ache for something thicker than New Jersey’s air? Why after so long?
It hurts knowing this case has no precedent, this case has no answer. The doctors forgot to write it in the books at Hopkins and Michigan; they forgot to teach him how to deal with best friends jumping off fifty foot cliffs just because the oxygen feels a little thin. It doesn’t feel that way to him. It’s thick in his throat, packed in his lungs and flooding each blood cell. He takes two breaths, one for him - one for Wilson.
In and out. In and out. How could the body forget something so simple?
Or maybe: how did Wilson’s lungs forget the ocean? If he hadn’t existed - existed here at all - then maybe things would have been different, better. House rolls over on his side and stares out the window.
In the kitchen, the owner slides off her stool and walks towards the door, pulling off her thick winter coat from the rack. It’s insulated with thick wool and tucked inside the sleeves are her mittens and a hat. She tromps outside, listening to the soothing crunch of snow beneath each weighted step, taking in the brisk air. She halts when she finds House’s footprints leading in circles around the beach: first to the shore than back towards the house before veering off in a completely different direction. Frowning, she follows them and takes note of how the tracks get smaller near icier patches and longer in the thicker, softer snow. And then her breath hitches.
Footprints - real footprints and not shoe prints. They’re virtually intact and she can make out the broad pads of the toes and balls of the foot, the long steps. When she leans forward, the size of the steps are noticeable, wavering unevenly and unsteadily much like a toddler’s wobbling gate: a few hesitant strides and then a tumble. Perhaps it’s more comparable to a drunkard. Could her guest have taken off his shoes and forgone the cane? But why? She glances back at the bed and breakfast she maintains, thinking about everything this man has said and done. He reveals much more than he intends to, she knows, as long as the listener knows the right places to look, but he strikes her as too smart to walk frozen in the snow barefoot - not smart enough to swallow the hope that surges within him when he sees a trail of hesitant, unsteady steps coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere.
She follows the shoeprints out to the ocean’s edge and places her feet in Doctor House’s footprints where she watched him stand for hours. Examining the placement of his feet - far larger than her own - she shifts her weight onto her left leg, mimics balancing with a cane and stares out into the distance. She wants the full picture. The wind bites at her cheeks and nose, making her eyes sting and water, and behind the frost gathering around her scarf, she sees nothing.
---
0.0.3
Edith knocks at two o’ clock. She usually wouldn’t bother, but her maternal instinct kicks in after Doctor House hasn’t emerged for breakfast by ten. In one hand she balances a tray with toast, orange juice and scrambled eggs - the same order he’s put in every morning. Tucked under her other arm is the copy of the Portland Press Herald. She doesn’t take him for the kind of man to follow the news, but she’s a woman who does and that’s all she gets in the mail. He’ll have to deal with it, she decides, since obviously he isn’t going out today.
Inside she hears grumbling, the shuffling of footsteps followed by a string of curses. She grimaces and puts on her game face - a face that clearly communicates, ‘You can’t scare me away because I have more balls than most sixty-year-old women.’ She’s also raised five sons and one daughter and firmly believes that counts for something. If teenagers didn’t scare her, certainly she can handle a grumpy middle-aged man.
Or so she thinks until Doctor House swings open the door sans his cane and a shave. “What?” he snipes. Inside she smirks. Obviously she struck closer to home yesterday than he admitted.
“Breakfast?” she says sweetly, shoving the tray in his direction. “I squeezed the oranges myself.”
“Really,” he rolls his eyes sarcastically. Edith continues to smile when Doctor House peers over the tray, momentarily caving into her hospitality when he picks up a slice of toast and sighs. He jerks his head towards the table in his room and clears the doorway, ravenously ripping off another bite of toast. “You here for a reason? Anymore psychoanalysis? Because I don’t need it. I know a guy.”
She folds the napkin carefully, sets the juice to the upper corner of the plate, the spoon the left, the knife and fork to the left. “You can call me Edith,” she says finally. “You’re here for two weeks, right? And it looks like your company decided not to show.”
Doctor House waves his toast around, crumbs tumbling to the carpet beneath his hairy bare feet. “So you think we’re going to become best buddies? Isn’t that fraternizing with the customers?”
Edith shrugs and opens up the newspaper to the obituaries. Another Jordan died. Emphysema the doctors said. All the Jordan's are dying of emphysema and yet not one ever touched a cigarette. She turns the page uninterested, jumping slightly when the doctor shouts, “Wait! Lemme see that.” He jerks with his piece of toast and more crumbs go flying. On closer inspection, she sees several pieces stuck to his four-day facial growth.
She lifts an eyebrow; he makes another ‘gimme’ gesture; she studiously returns to reading and he sighs. She’s good at playing games with men. “Please?” he asks, but it isn’t sincere enough and she tells him so with another pointed look.
Frustrated, he rolls his eyes and folds his arms across his chest. He looks uncertain with his hands without his cane. “You can call me House.”
“You don’t have a first name?”
“It’s House,” he snaps, gesturing for the paper again. It’s a small victory so she passes it over to him.
He flips to the opposite side of the paper. On the front cover is a picture of an old home on top of a cliff three miles off. “You know this place?” he asks, pointing at the picture.
Edith shrugs her shoulders. “Sure, that’s the old Jordan home. The last people to live there were… Let’s see…”
“Jacob and Tessa Jordan. They had three kids: Jonathan, Joe, and Mara. The two boys never married, and Mara had three kids with Charles Wilson. Why are they tearing this place down?”
“How do you know so much about it?” Her eyes narrow.
“Hey, I’m asking the questions,” he demands, pointing back at the picture vigorously.
“It’s rotting from the inside out. It became government property when it went into the hands of their oldest son, Jonathan. He died, Joe died, and last I heard Mara died.”
House nods, “Yeah, two years ago. How come it didn’t go to anyone else?”
Edith knows, somehow, that House already knows the answer. “They’ve all died too. Except one.”
“Right, Benjamin.”
“Mara’s son, but he didn’t want it. He has no affiliation with the place and he’s hardly met any of his extended family before. They’re all old anyway. Another one died two days ago. It’s in the newspaper.”
House’s gaze shifted from Edith to the article before flipping to the obituaries. “What’d he die of?”
“It says emphysema - which doesn’t surprise me. They all seem to die of emphysema,” she points out nonchalantly. She watches him, wondering what this old family line has anything to do with… with anything. “You know one of them? Benjamin? I’ve heard things. An accountant, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” House answers distractedly. “You said they all died of emphysema? Coughing, weight loss, decrease in oxygen to the body, hardening of the lungs?”
“You’re the doctor, you tell me,” she answers baffled. “Yeah, emphysema.”
“Did they smoke?”
“Not a one. The doctors half suspect it’s some rare genetic mutation.”
House laughs softly at that, eyes widening. It takes her off guard when they light up in near-amusement. “A rare genetic mutation?” He snorts again. “God.” He shakes his head, and then under his breath he mutters, “Wilson wasn’t the only one.” A sort of realization dawns over his face that releases the tension in his posture, the ache behind his eyes. After staring at the carpet for several moments, he turns back to the demolition article. “Why’d they wait so long to tear it down?”
Edith swallows uncomfortably, leaning against the table’s edge. “Read the rest of the article. Four years ago they found clothes there, one sock, a pair of Nike’s, jeans and a sweatshirt. They think he jumped, but they couldn’t find a body. The police put out postings hoping someone would claim the clothes but no one did. The place became tainted almost, you know,” she said, feeling foolish. “There were rumors about it being haunted and for the last two years they’ve transformed it into a haunted house for Halloween, but they’ve deemed it too dangerous. There’s a lot of stigma around it or else the demolition wouldn’t have made the Herald at all.”
House hesitates, freezing in his place for only a moment, but based on Edith’s expression, he knows she saw it. He reaches for his orange juice and takes a long swig, imagining for a quiet moment that its tang is the dull fizz of beer in a bar in a corner with Wilson. For a moment - a moment Edith almost sees - he hears laughter and feels a kick in the shins for some rude remark. “This is good,” he tells her, setting the glass back onto the tray. “I haven’t had freshly squeezed orange juice since I was a kid.”
The sincerity in his tone shocks her. “Thank you,” she says mutedly.
He nods his head before returning to the paper once more. “What…” he pauses to think out his words. “What happened to the clothes they found?”
“After the police were done investigating, they went to the Salvation Army,” she answers.
“So, they’re gone?”
“No,” she tells him, crossing her legs. “No. I - I have them.”
House blinks, cocks his head to one side and stares at her in earnest. “You have them,” he repeats. “Why?”
Edith shrugs her shoulders - something she realizes she’s been doing a lot today. “I used to manage it during the off seasons for a little extra income. I… I just thought that maybe someone would come looking for this mysterious jumper’s clothes one day. Am I right?” House doesn’t respond and instead stares fixedly on the carpet. “Would you like to see them?”
She leads him out into the kitchen area, his padded feet outbalanced by the clunking echo of the tip of his cane in the empty space. She opens a door to the attic. “I’ll bring them down,” she tells him before climbing the stairs.
House sits himself onto a stool at the counter, lowering his head into his hands, running his fingers through his unkempt hair and down his scraggly face. When she places the bag in front of him, his calloused fingers fumble with the handles. Edith gauges his expression, the shock, the hurt, the weariness that flashes across his features until his emotions close up again. He studies the clothes each in turn with the utmost attention, dragging his hands over the pockets of the jeans and over the soles of the tennis shoes. He pats the back pockets of the pants before jerking his head towards them. “Was anything left behind in these?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Hmph,” he responds. He grasps the right tennis shoe in his hand and balances it, examining the sole. Edith looks carefully at it, hoping to see what he sees. The left heel is more worn down than the right as if -
It dawns on her slowly as she fights to conceal her surprise. “These - these are your clothes,” she stutters. “You jumped.”
“No,” he answers matter-of-factly as he slips his shoes on over his feet. The laces have been untied. It’d be so Wilson to untie his shoes before going kamikaze, he thinks, lacing them back up. The sneakers feel so normal, as if Wilson hadn’t been in them at all. “I can tell you that Mr. Jordan, in that newspaper, didn’t die of emphysema. None of them did.”
“What? The doctors -”
“Forget the other doctors,” House snaps, snatching up the bag. “I’m a real doctor, in a big hospital and everything. It wasn’t emphysema.”
Edith stares after him as he stalks back to his room.
---
0.0.4
At five in the morning, Edith’s alarm goes off but she’s already awake cataloguing all the ingredients needed for that morning’s breakfast. Steven likes waffles and strawberry cream, coffee: black. Tyler wants two eggs, sunny-side-up with orange juice and hash browns. At nine or ten House will come out: scrambled eggs, orange juice, and buttered toast. It’s nice to only have three customers sometimes, despite the low flow of income.
After her shower, she combs out her hair slowly in front of her vanity and chooses a red cardigan sweater and a pair of black pants. Every day is a workday, weekends more so than the others, but she’s certain these three men don’t actually care. The businessmen are too wound up in their Wall Street Journals to notice her manicured hands, and House - House is always preoccupied with other things than image.
What a strange man, she allows herself to think, a genius. And then: What a broken man.
By six she’s in the kitchen frying up fresh slabs of bacon in a pan and pieces of toast in the toaster. She peels two oranges for juice and opens the curtains in the foyer so the light filters in through the top of the stained-glass windows. Her countertops light up in reds and oranges, greens and blues. By seven, when the guests come in for breakfast, the sunlight will have shifted and the colors faded. Each morning, this is her private sanctuary.
Today she pulls back the curtains, basking in the rainbow of colors before prying open the window fractionally to smell the sharp winter air. The breeze causes her to shiver as she wakes up fully, and it’s a good feeling. She shuts the window again and adjusts the curtains, listening to the sizzle of bacon and butter in the pan.
And then she stops.
Her breath hitches - first in indignant anger and then curiosity. House has already positioned himself outside in one of her dining room chairs. She pulls out her binoculars, usually reserved for bird watching, off the coat rack and stares at him, making out the blue backpack he carries everywhere and a steaming thermos. Huffing, she puts a lid over the bacon and turns down the heat before gathering her winter coat, boots, hat and mittens together to stomp out the door in his direction.
“That’s my chair,” she accuses when she arrives, pointing at his choice of seating.
“Yes well, I don’t have my own chair since I’m a guest here,” House responds. “You wouldn’t want to be a bad hostess, would you?”
After yesterday when she discovered taunting worked better than politeness, she’s given up on niceties. “Do you know how much it will cost to repair the water damage done to these legs?”
“Your legs?” he scoffs, eyeing her up and down. Whatever vulnerability she saw yesterday in him has vanished. She studies him closer and sees his Michigan sweatshirt peeking out from his jacket - the same she had returned to him yesterday along with the shoes and probably the jeans.
“Those clothes haven’t been washed,” she tells him disgustedly. “You might catch lice or something.”
He smirks, apparently delighted by her newly revealed bitter sarcasm. “Smells clean,” he says, sniffing it. He pauses, and then inhales again deeply before frowning. “It doesn’t smell like me.” It doesn’t smell like him, he means. He grimaces when he looks out across the shoreline; the sun is particularly harsh and reflective this early in the morning.
“I have coffee inside,” Edith suggests, hands resting on her hips. He smirks again at this action and a flare of annoyance floods through her.
“I have coffee right here. I always plan ahead.”
She throws her hands up, aggravated. “You’re sitting in my chair,” she scolds, ready to grab him by his ears. She’s been an empty-nester for the last fifteen years, but that doesn’t mean she’s out of practice as a mother.
House gapes down at the chair beneath him, the fine leather upholstery soaking from snow. “Oh. My. God. I am. How kind of you to notice. I had no idea.”
“You don’t have many friends, do you?”
“I had one,” he answers, squinting into the sunlight. “I’ve seem to have misplaced him.”
She stops him as he begins to pat his front pockets. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
“Penis jokes too crude for you?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Five sons. I can serve them with the best of them. Now, out of my chair.”
House studiously ignores her, leaning back into his chair as he stretches out his long legs. “You should leave,” he tells her, looking back in the direction of the bed and breakfast. “I have private matters to deal with here that don’t involve women.”
Edith folds her arms, adopting her motherly stance as she stares down at him. His harsh, disapproving look slides off his face. Obviously the mother shtick is the only thing that works. “So you inquire about the old Jordan haunted house, you steal my newspaper, and these clothes I’ve been waiting to be claimed for the last four years. You tell me they’re your clothes, but that doesn’t make any sense. And for the last four days - except yesterday - you’ve stood out here for several hours just staring at nothing. Now you’ve stolen my chair too. I don’t like you. I could kick you out of my bed and breakfast.”
“But you won’t,” House states, a fact that’s very true. “You do too like me.”
“Also, you’re arrogant. Wonderful.”
He smiles then, a full blown grin with teeth and laughter, albeit it’s quiet. He leans his head against the back of her dining room chair. “A whole clan of Jordans dies of emphysema. They don’t smoke and they have no other pre-existing lung conditions,” he says. Edith blinks confusedly at the sudden non sequitur. “In fact, most of them are perfectly healthy until they magically contract a non-communicable disease presenting with coughing, wheezing and a lack of oxygen. Most victims of emphysema have to be put on oxygen because they’re essentially suffocating to death. People can live for years with the right medications - but the Jordans never do. They get… months maybe. Sometimes weeks, am I right? Let me guess, the first death was a real shock, and then the second. Now when one of them pops off nobody notices,” he takes a slow sip of coffee from his thermos before grinning again.
“Isaac, James, and Benjamin Wilson: three brothers, the youngest of the Jordan descendants. Isaac disappears after a series of mental breakdowns, James attempts suicide, and Benjamin is on pharmaceuticals’ finest anti-depression meds, but no one connected the two disorders. Not until now.”
“What are you saying?” Edith asks, shifting her weight uncomfortably under House’s scrutiny.
“James didn’t commit suicide. He tried to, once, and found out something completely different. He had it, but it wasn’t emphysema.”
“You’re not making any sense. I don’t even know anything about the people you’re talking about.” She recoils at the wolfish look on his face. “Didn’t have what?”
He looks back out into the ocean and points at a fresh set of footprints in the snow. “He’s still alive,” House says, wildly. “He’s still alive. ”
“You’re crazy,” she mutters as she turns to leave. She walks backwards, watching the hunger on his face as he redirects his gaze towards the footprints in the snow. “You’re crazy.”
Inside, the kitchen smells horrible as she scrapes off the charred bacon from the pan and starts a new batch. She glances back at Steven and Tyler sitting at the counter with their newspapers. For the rest of the morning she catches herself gazing out the window, wondering.
---
House returns outside at nine o’ clock in the evening after taking a five hour hiatus. The long underwear, two t-shirts and sweatshirt beneath his winter coat barely seem to be keeping him warm, but it’s hardly enough to distract him from staring at the moonlit ocean.
He doesn’t know when he dozes off, and when he wakes he curses himself. He shouldn’t be out in the cold anyway, but he has to be. Needs to be. Edith squeezes his shoulder, jostling him, and he jumps, ready to tell her off in his exhausted stupor. Then he sees the bare hand, hears his voice.
“House, are you crazy?” he murmurs, shaking him gently. “You’re going to kill yourself. Go home.”
It’s an illusion, House knows, because he’s sitting in his office where it’s warm and the clock on the landline phone tells him it’s two in the morning. Wilson stands before him with his arms crossed over his lab coat. His face is pale, lips blue. House remembers everything. “Go home,” Wilson tells him again, removing his hand from his shoulder.
House shakes his head. “You’re not real.”
“God, House,” Wilson laughs. “You are delusional. It’s cold. I can’t believe you’re out here.”
House sighs softly, listening to the familiar voice as he closes his eyes. He feels sleep overcoming him again and then two hands on his shoulders, jerking him roughly. “House, House!”
The second time he opens his eyes, he sees the ocean, the moonlight and Wilson’s bare feet. The black polo and jeans are soaking wet, clinging to his thin frame. He looks smaller, younger. Everything about him seems… better.
“God, oh God,” House groans, unfolding his arms from around his chest.
“House,” Wilson shouts, keeping his hands firmly planted on his shoulders to steady him.
“Oh God, oh God.” You’re not real, House wants to say. You’re not real - but the words don’t make it past his lips. There’s too much hope and too much delusion to make this something it isn’t. You’re not real. “Oh God, tell me you’re real,” he sobs, feeling the weight of Wilson’s hands bracing him.
“I - I’m real,” he answers, slowly lowering himself to his knees, half-hugging House in attempt to keep him upright. He feels unusually warm and alive, and when House tugs his hands free of his leather gloves, he can feel a pulse beating beneath his frozen fingertips. Wilson shudders at the frigid touch and takes his hand between his own, warming them.
“You’re crazy,” he murmurs. “You’re stupid. Of course you’d be out here. Of course you’d wait until the coldest month too. Idiot.” It’s all affectionate, warm. Something in House begins to thaw when Wilson puts his hands on his face. He leans forward and kisses him slowly on the mouth. “God.”
House’s fingers shake violently as they wrap around Wilson’s soaking shirt, pulling him over until he’s half-sitting on the chair and House. Wilson wraps his arms around him to keep him warm, the strange and unexpected body heat flooding through his limbs. “I know,” House tells him. “You’re not the only one. You - there are others just like you. Wilson-”
There’s a way, his silent words murmur. There’s a way to fix this. There has to be if there are others.
But Wilson won’t let House say them, covering his mouth again. The kiss is slow, deliberate, sad. The kiss is empty.
“Go home, House,” he tells him, pressing his mouth against his ear. The breath his hot and warm against his chilled skin. “Go home.” It’s a command, his voice low and demanding and gentle and scared.
“No, no, no. Come home. Come home. ”
Wilson slowly pulls away, tugging at House’s clutching fingers. “I am,” he murmurs, not meeting House’s eyes. He pulls his shirt over his head and unbuttons the clasp on his already too-loose jeans. “I am home, House. I am.”
“The water must be cold,” House says hollowly, as Wilson slides back into the water.
He sighs quietly, and at the right angle, House can make out the returning bluish color to his lips, the heaving rhythm of his chest sucking in the thin, suffocating air. “Most things are,” he answers, quietly. House squeezes his eyes shut concentrates on the rhythmic tide, ignoring the splash of water and the emptiness around him. When he opens them again, he sees nothing.
---
+ 0.0.1
He feels two hands shaking him roughly. Wilson, he thinks, but they’re smaller and tight with anxiety.
“Doctor House? Oh god.” He hears the bleeps of a cell phone and then: “He’s hypothermic. Help, he’s hypothermic.”
In his head, he thinks the words: Ma’am, please calm down. Can you tell us your location? These are words he knows well and they comfort him in this strange situation. Where’s Wilson? he wants to ask, but his mouth feels full of cotton. He slips back into unconsciousness again.
---
+ 0.0.2 > Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…
It’s unusually warm here and he feels naked. His eyes slowly open to the sounds of beeping and whirring. A hospital, his eyes register. Cuddy. Slowly his ears un-fog, and his brain informs him that this is unfortunate because she’s yelling. A lot.
“Are you crazy? House, this is what you did on your vacation?” She sighs, looking around the room frantically. “I thought… I thought this would be good for you, getting away, but of course you found some magic way to screw it up.”
“Nnngh,” he says, rolling his head back and forth on the pillow. He gestures at himself and the hospital room with a questioning look in his eyes.
“You were hypothermic. You fell asleep outside in negative thirty degree weather. You could have killed yourself,” she scolds. “Again.”
House grunts, swallowing harshly. “Where’s my stuff?”
Cuddy sits down in a visitor’s chair, leaning her elbows on the edge of the hospital bed. “Do you know how much sleep I got, House? I flew here red-eye because you were unconscious and I’m your medical proxy. I’m on three hours of sleep, and now that you’re okay and still crazy, I want to go home.”
“Wasn’t crazy,” he mutters, turning his head away.
“What were you doing, House?”
They’re interrupted by a knock on the door as a petite woman enters. Cuddy looks at her curiously when she smiles at the patient. “House? How are you doing?”
Her focus darts between the stranger and House. “You know this woman?”
“Yeah,” House says simply without explaining. Cuddy doesn’t push for answers as his eyes narrow on the plastic bag in Edith’s hands. “What’s that?”
“You left your clothes on the beach - again,” she says softly. “The rest of your stuff is still back at the bed and breakfast, but I thought maybe… maybe you’d want these.” House reaches for the bag, pulling out the long-sleeve polo and jeans. “I put them in the dryer,” she tells him simply, folding her hands over her lap.
Cuddy reaches out and picks the shirt out of House’s hands. He doesn’t protest much as he watches her examine it, folding the material in her fingers as a whiff of the salty Atlantic assaults her. She’s seen this shirt before and slowly pieces the clues together when she looks at the jeans. House would never wear anything Calvin Klein. “This is about Wilson, isn’t it?” she asks. She doesn’t know if she should feel empathetic or angry, but mostly it’s a mix of confusion and sympathy. “It’s been four years, House.”
“I know that,” he says softly.
Edith glances meaningfully at the clothes and then meets House’s gaze. “I don’t understand,” she tells him hesitantly. “Not fully, but… You’re right, aren’t you?”
He leans back into his pillow, exhaling four years of stress and anger and disbelief. Underneath it all, there’s a layer of hurt and disappointment he’ll never be able to let go of, but also understanding and hope. Cuddy hasn’t seen him reveal so much all at once before. He turns to Edith. “I’m always right.”
“And the others?”
“What others?” Cuddy asks, looking between the two of them. “What are you talking about?”
House laughs bitterly. “What others,” he repeats. “There’s only two left and then it will be over. One is lost to the world, the other will die soon. Just wait.”
Edith nods and stands. She stops at the doorway. “Just wait,” she says to herself, and exits.
“And then it will be all over,” he murmurs.
---
+ 5.0.0 > Now.
House stands in the snow, heavily leaning on his cane. He’s wearing Wilson’s boots again, Wilson’s pants, and Wilson’s shirt. They’ve lost their balmy scent, but the waves crashing against the shore is enough to assuage the emptiness within him - if only for a moment. Two weeks ago Benjamin’s medication stopped working and he spiraled into a deep depression. They found him dead in his large condominium alone. It’s over.
He steps into the water as it circles his ankles, seeping into the top of the waterproof boots. It soaks the liner, the laces, his wool socks. He closes his eyes and waits for the hands to wrap around his waist, the warm lips to press against his unshaved neck. They push him out further until the waves swirl around his knees, their feet tripping over one another as they laugh. He isn’t cold when Wilson’s warm hands slide underneath his jacket, down his stomach, across his back.
“It’ll be over soon,” Wilson says softly, gripping his shoulders - strong and certain. His knees buckle as the water rises to his chest. With a sigh, Wilson pushes him down with his hands. Together they go under.
---fin
Comments, suggestions, reviews?
Author: nieded
Fandom; Pairing: House, MD; House/Wilson, Cuddy, OFC
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: NOT MINE OKAY
Spoilers: One reeaaaallly brief mention of the Tritter!arc.
Author's Notes: So, a long time ago someone asked for the aftermath of Asphyxiation. Over a year later, here it is.
Synopsis: The water must be cold.
This is a sequel to Asphyxiation.
- 0.0.5 > Waiting time.
When he first asked for time off, Cuddy stared at him curiously. It had been four years since he had taken any leave, spending his time at the hospital glaring at the new occupant in Wilson’s office; Doctor Jacobson needed a break. “This is good, House,” she told him. “You need a vacation. You’ve barely taken one in the last decade.”
“I took one four years ago,” he argued.
“Yeah, House. To go to rehab. That wasn’t vacation, that was you pulling your head out of your ass to keep from going to jail,” she scoffed.
He winced. “God you’re bitter. Must be menopause. I’ll send the rest of the hospital my condolences.”
“Ha,” she scowled. “I’m only forty-three.”
“Really?” he leered. “I thought you were above lying.”
“Not lying, House.”
“Huh, that’s funny. That’s not what you told Travington on your date last night.”
Cuddy scowled, “How the hell -”
“What?” House feigned innocence. “I can’t go out to dinner? You’re the one who just told me I didn’t go out enough.”
“Sure, maybe to China Wok but not to Boulevard Café,” she hissed. “You don’t even own a tie.”
Cuddy knew this wasn’t true. House didn’t own a tie of his own, but he had inherited Wilson’s vast and hideous collection after his disappearance. “I can’t believe you’re still looking at the same creepy, half-balding guys,” he reverted. “You should try Hutchinson in psychology -”
“-who is a woman,” Cuddy finished. She paused thoughtfully before adding, “And a psychologist. I know I’m crazy - I hired you- but I’m not that crazy.”
“Hey, you could branch out. Try something new! In fact I’ll capture every moment for you on my video camera. I’m an expertise videographer,” he suggested.
“I don’t think so.” Cuddy rolled her eyes.
“She’s hot.”
“I’ll let her know you said that.”
“I also saw her making out with that radiology resident, Sandra Flannigan,” he answered gleefully.
“In my hospital?”
“No, of course not. That would be unethical,” he gasped, offended. “At Delaware’s on the corner of Main and Hudson.”
Cuddy leaned back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest defensively. “Like that’s ethical, stalking colleagues. And it’s Susan, not Sandra.”
“Excellent. All three of you have been acquainted.” House folded his hands together maniacally and gleamed evilly.
“Get to the point,” she pressed. “You want to go on vacation. That’s good. You haven’t taken a long period of time off without getting in trouble with the law or getting shot.”
“I’m all about trying new things.”
“I’ve heard being nice is good.”
“Ha,” he sneered.
Her expression turned somber as she studied him briefly. “This is good House, really good. You weren’t -” she paused. “It’s been hard since Wilson disappeared, hasn’t it?”
House chewed the inside of his cheek and turned his head to the floor. He knew Wilson hadn’t disappeared, just sort of… relocated. Explaining this to anyone else would be insane if they hadn’t been there, but he had. He witnessed some of the transformation, but sometimes trying to explain it to himself seemed crazy. It made it easier for him to joke about Wilson, knowing he was alive and that maybe - just maybe - he would come back. He looked at Cuddy’s softening, examining expression she gave him and glowered. Of course she would try manipulating him into being emotional.
“Yes, it’s been so hard not listening to him rag on me about V. I think he was jealous of all the time we spent together.”
“Vee?”
“We’ve developed a very close relationship,” he said as he waved the little orange pill bottle.
Cuddy didn’t buy it as her eyes narrowed. “I bug you about your Vicodin use all the time. You could hardly miss being harassed.”
“Yeah, but you look so much sexier when you do it, and I love it when you harass me. Hey, maybe you should date me.”
She laughed mockingly, picking up the coffee mug she had stolen from Diagnostics. “I thought you said I should stop dating creepy, half-balding men.”
“Ouch,” he mocked, throwing his head back in despair. “Fine, I concede. So can I have the time off or not?”
“Fine,” she relented. “When?”
“Next week?”
“Next week? You need to submit notice at least two months ahead of time. Most doctors have their schedule planned for the year.”
“I am not most doctors. Besides, I live for spontaneity.”
“Fine,” she said, pushing away from her desk and standing up. “But I’m not letting you go unless you complete all your clinic hours for the week with three additional hours.”
“That’s cruel!”
“And four when you get back.”
“Blasphemer!”
“Keep talking, House, and I’ll add four to every week from now on,” Cuddy smirked. She watched as House rolled his eyes, mimed zipping his mouth shut and threw away the key. He stalked out of her office petulantly - not, of course, without demonstrating his vast knowledge of rude sign language.
---
- 0.0.1
It took House a whole week to get off his couch and begin rifling through his drawers, packing clothes for his trip to Maine. He spent his time glaring at the unplugged TV screen while debating on whether he should actually go ahead and do this or drive south where it was warm. He had three weeks that could be better spent on the sandy beaches of North Carolina than on the empty, icy one in Maine. In January he would need long underwear, undershirts, extra hats and gloves within mittens, scarves and thick socks if he wanted to keep warm. He briefly hunted for his old pair of boots before pulling Wilson’s out of the closet, trying them on for size. They were nice, probably polished back in their time, had a nice wool liner inside, and clashed horribly with his paint-splattered jeans. They were warm though, comfortable and undistinguished. He felt so bland and nondescript with every passing moment he wore them that he ripped them off and shoved them in the bottom of his suitcase.
When he finished packing (thermos, instant coffee and instant hot chocolate, a pair of old clothes for just in case - they were Wilson’s anyway), he sat heavily on his bed with the plane ticket in his hand, not knowing that Wilson had done the same thing once before. He examined the words, the date, the time, the flight number before slipping it back into its envelope and tucking it inside his jacket pocket. The luggage felt heavy in his hands as he waited outside and New Jersey’s winter breeze bit at his cheeks.
---
0.0.1 > Zero time.
The rental car looks eerily similar to the one they had taken. He glances over at the passenger seat, imagines himself asleep and oblivious and wonders how he could have slept through one of the most important moments of his life. The trees have been plastered with frost and the branches sweep toward the ground under the burden of the heavy snow. He winces as he slowly drives past one that looks ready to snap and thinks he knows how it feels.
It’s been a long time since he’s empathized with anything.
---
On the first day, he looks out of his window. The manager stops by twice to check in on him because there are only two other guests: businessmen who leave early in the morning and traipse in again late at night. He ignores them when they shut their separate doors and wakes up after they’ve left. Other people enjoy bed and breakfasts for the experience, coexisting with strangers in a cramped environment. House doesn’t believe in pretense, but most importantly, doesn’t think it’s possible to coexist with anyone if he isn’t existing at all.
The woman brings him toast and juice upon his request and sets it on the table. Her hair frames her round face, fingernails clean and soft from washing dishes. She vaguely reminds him of his mother - without John - and that’s fine. He can tolerate juice and toast and her warm hands when she greets him in the morning, but that’s about it.
“A good man like you shouldn’t be here alone,” she tells him, almost expectantly. “Are you?”
House turns his head and looks out the window. There’s a beautiful view of the ocean and the waves gently lap at the ice. He stares, weighing the likelihood of slipping on the ice and breaking something with his need to be out there even if Wilson’s not. He turns to look back at her. “I’m meeting someone,” he says, sipping from his juice glass.
She smiles again, following his gaze out the window curiously as she pats his hand reassuringly. “Good,” she tells him and picks up the empty dishes.
She leaves and once again House is all alone.
That afternoon he checks the Weather Channel. Negative twenty degrees, the weatherman announces, adjusting his tie. It’s an ugly paisley thing. In the bottom right hand corner of the screen it flashes 2:30 pm, Thursday, January 16: four years, four months, five days. He packs his bag with his thermos and the extra set of clothes, slips on Wilson’s boots and tramps out the door. He smiles grimly at the owner and lets her watch as he walks the 100 yards to the shore where he gets stiff and cold and angry and bitter. It’s better than getting drunk, he laughs, and then under his breath: let her stare.
House settles himself in the snow, stretching one leg out and tucking the other beneath his body. The waves are harsh and frigid, slapping against the rocks and slicking the ice. He stares at the rhythmic tide before fishing Wilson’s clothes out of his backpack. He rests them in his hands, weighing them. He almost can’t believe someone had worn these clothes; they’re still crisp and wrinkle-free, perfectly folded as if he was coming back tomorrow. House throws them into the ocean unceremoniously and it swallows them whole (it swallowed him whole). He waits four more hours, for what - he isn’t sure, and when the condensation from his breath freezes on his stubble and his leg stiffens, he hobbles back inside.
---
0.0.2
On the second day, House wanders across the beach. It’s January and his foot sinks so deep into the snow that it covers two thirds of his calves, making walking difficult and treacherous. With one wrong step, his body could tumble - with one wrong step he may never get up again. Carefully, he juts the cane into the ground, testing it with his weight before slowly moving his legs, dramatically lifting them up above the snow, gently setting them down. It’s a long process and by the time he reaches the shoreline a trickle of sweat has gathered on his forehead despite the cold temperature. Standing with his weight shifted onto his left leg, he jabs the saltwater with his cane and brings the wet end to his fingers to test how cold the ocean is. It’s frigid, bitter. His fingers stay wet and freezing long after he curls them back into his gloves.
Today, it’s ten degrees colder than yesterday, and his gloves and hat somehow seem insufficient. His ears are frozen where they peek out from beneath the wool and the drafty wind snakes up his coat sleeves. Opening his backpack, he pulls out his thermos and takes a long draw of black coffee to combat the bitter weather, and a rush of heat floods through him but passes quickly, caving to the biting temperature outside. Nothing is ever good enough, he decides, and turns to stomp back indoors.
Halfway from the shoreline to the bed and breakfast he stops, eyes narrowing at the ground. There are two tracks of feet: one from his venture out yesterday, complete with little holes in the snow where he had vehemently jabbed his cane into the ground - the other a pair of bare feet decorating the fresh snow. He stares at it a moment longer before following the tracks. They lead him to the water’s edge and then disappear into the ocean. He breathes heavily, gaping at them. They disappear. They disappear.
When he makes it back inside, there are ice crystals clinging to his eyelashes, around the rim of his nostrils and the edge of his lips; his eyes are wide and alert, calculating, hoping. The owner sits in the dining area behind her countertop, sipping on hot cocoa while staring at him speculatively, and on the table stands an extra steaming mug. “Don’t you have something better to do?” he snipes when he catches her studying him curiously.
She smiles patiently, “Don’t you?”
He glowers at her, taking in her graying hair, the creases around her mouth, eyes, and forehead. She could have been very pretty, he thinks, but now she’s just old. “I have better things to do than sit and stare forlornly out windows at customers,” he retorts, turning to leave.
“I know,” she calls after him, leaning over the countertop. She pushes aside the untouched mug and smiles when he turns around, her forearms resting against the cool surface as she smirks.
House rolls his eyes. He doesn’t have time to play games with bored inn-keepers. “I know lots of things. Did you know that a cat sleeps 16-18 hours a day, and that ‘karaoke’ means ‘empty orchestra’ in Japanese?”
“Did you know that most suicides occur on Mondays?”
House stops, shoulders straightening as he stares at her, blinking. “What does that have anything to do with… with anything?”
“I know,” she says again, bluffing as she coats her voice with sureness and a hint of smugness. “I know. ”
It’s her tone of voice, low and jolting - so certain - that causes House to pause. His eyes narrow as he leans forward heavily on his cane. “You think I’m here to commit suicide? Why? Because I’m here alone during the slowest part of the season. Guess what, maybe I just don’t like people.”
“You said you were meeting someone here.”
“Everybody lies. I lied. That’s why people don’t like me.”
“Oh,” she smiles. “I don’t believe that. I think you’re probably more honest than most men, and brutally so.” She sets down her mug. “I don’t think you’re here to kill yourself either. I’ve seen my fair share of those kinds of men, however at first I must say you had me fooled.”
House rolls his eyes and shifts on his feet. He glances from her to outside where the sun blindingly reflects off the snow. If he squints he can see the outline of two sets of footprints trailing towards the water.
“Was it someone else?” she asks, breaking his reverie. “A lover, a friend. Family member?”
“What?”
She points with her coffee mug. “The ocean, suicide. Someone you knew.”
He stares at her plaintively, calculatingly. “No,” he says sharply, turning away for the final time. “And you don’t always know.”
She watches him exit, sipping slowly on her hot chocolate before sighing quietly. “But I eventually do.”
House walks down the hallway, tramping over the new red carpet, skimming his fingers over the paint while taking in the cozily lit hallway. His room is the last on the left past two other doors, and when he enters he promptly collapses on the bed. His right shoulder aches from the pressure he put on the cane, his thigh throbs from the cold and his head hurts just thinking about the psychoanalyzing owner. He doesn’t even know her name and yet she’s trying to pick him apart. Unsuccessfully, he reminds himself, but close. The shades are half drawn, the bed made; she must have come in to clean earlier. His luggage in the corner remains untouched.
It’s cozier than a hotel, but still so similar to those days Wilson spent at the Ramada. This small room with the navy blue carpet and the tan walls, azure bedspread and matching chair. It feels like a recycled hell. Is this why Wilson left?
House can’t figure it out. A sickness - incurable; an unheard of sickness like a secret national scandal so long forgotten that even the great Mara Wilson had forgotten about her family curse. But why? Why at thirty-seven did Wilson’s body reject him, did his legs fail him and his lungs ache for something thicker than New Jersey’s air? Why after so long?
It hurts knowing this case has no precedent, this case has no answer. The doctors forgot to write it in the books at Hopkins and Michigan; they forgot to teach him how to deal with best friends jumping off fifty foot cliffs just because the oxygen feels a little thin. It doesn’t feel that way to him. It’s thick in his throat, packed in his lungs and flooding each blood cell. He takes two breaths, one for him - one for Wilson.
In and out. In and out. How could the body forget something so simple?
Or maybe: how did Wilson’s lungs forget the ocean? If he hadn’t existed - existed here at all - then maybe things would have been different, better. House rolls over on his side and stares out the window.
In the kitchen, the owner slides off her stool and walks towards the door, pulling off her thick winter coat from the rack. It’s insulated with thick wool and tucked inside the sleeves are her mittens and a hat. She tromps outside, listening to the soothing crunch of snow beneath each weighted step, taking in the brisk air. She halts when she finds House’s footprints leading in circles around the beach: first to the shore than back towards the house before veering off in a completely different direction. Frowning, she follows them and takes note of how the tracks get smaller near icier patches and longer in the thicker, softer snow. And then her breath hitches.
Footprints - real footprints and not shoe prints. They’re virtually intact and she can make out the broad pads of the toes and balls of the foot, the long steps. When she leans forward, the size of the steps are noticeable, wavering unevenly and unsteadily much like a toddler’s wobbling gate: a few hesitant strides and then a tumble. Perhaps it’s more comparable to a drunkard. Could her guest have taken off his shoes and forgone the cane? But why? She glances back at the bed and breakfast she maintains, thinking about everything this man has said and done. He reveals much more than he intends to, she knows, as long as the listener knows the right places to look, but he strikes her as too smart to walk frozen in the snow barefoot - not smart enough to swallow the hope that surges within him when he sees a trail of hesitant, unsteady steps coming from nowhere and leading to nowhere.
She follows the shoeprints out to the ocean’s edge and places her feet in Doctor House’s footprints where she watched him stand for hours. Examining the placement of his feet - far larger than her own - she shifts her weight onto her left leg, mimics balancing with a cane and stares out into the distance. She wants the full picture. The wind bites at her cheeks and nose, making her eyes sting and water, and behind the frost gathering around her scarf, she sees nothing.
---
0.0.3
Edith knocks at two o’ clock. She usually wouldn’t bother, but her maternal instinct kicks in after Doctor House hasn’t emerged for breakfast by ten. In one hand she balances a tray with toast, orange juice and scrambled eggs - the same order he’s put in every morning. Tucked under her other arm is the copy of the Portland Press Herald. She doesn’t take him for the kind of man to follow the news, but she’s a woman who does and that’s all she gets in the mail. He’ll have to deal with it, she decides, since obviously he isn’t going out today.
Inside she hears grumbling, the shuffling of footsteps followed by a string of curses. She grimaces and puts on her game face - a face that clearly communicates, ‘You can’t scare me away because I have more balls than most sixty-year-old women.’ She’s also raised five sons and one daughter and firmly believes that counts for something. If teenagers didn’t scare her, certainly she can handle a grumpy middle-aged man.
Or so she thinks until Doctor House swings open the door sans his cane and a shave. “What?” he snipes. Inside she smirks. Obviously she struck closer to home yesterday than he admitted.
“Breakfast?” she says sweetly, shoving the tray in his direction. “I squeezed the oranges myself.”
“Really,” he rolls his eyes sarcastically. Edith continues to smile when Doctor House peers over the tray, momentarily caving into her hospitality when he picks up a slice of toast and sighs. He jerks his head towards the table in his room and clears the doorway, ravenously ripping off another bite of toast. “You here for a reason? Anymore psychoanalysis? Because I don’t need it. I know a guy.”
She folds the napkin carefully, sets the juice to the upper corner of the plate, the spoon the left, the knife and fork to the left. “You can call me Edith,” she says finally. “You’re here for two weeks, right? And it looks like your company decided not to show.”
Doctor House waves his toast around, crumbs tumbling to the carpet beneath his hairy bare feet. “So you think we’re going to become best buddies? Isn’t that fraternizing with the customers?”
Edith shrugs and opens up the newspaper to the obituaries. Another Jordan died. Emphysema the doctors said. All the Jordan's are dying of emphysema and yet not one ever touched a cigarette. She turns the page uninterested, jumping slightly when the doctor shouts, “Wait! Lemme see that.” He jerks with his piece of toast and more crumbs go flying. On closer inspection, she sees several pieces stuck to his four-day facial growth.
She lifts an eyebrow; he makes another ‘gimme’ gesture; she studiously returns to reading and he sighs. She’s good at playing games with men. “Please?” he asks, but it isn’t sincere enough and she tells him so with another pointed look.
Frustrated, he rolls his eyes and folds his arms across his chest. He looks uncertain with his hands without his cane. “You can call me House.”
“You don’t have a first name?”
“It’s House,” he snaps, gesturing for the paper again. It’s a small victory so she passes it over to him.
He flips to the opposite side of the paper. On the front cover is a picture of an old home on top of a cliff three miles off. “You know this place?” he asks, pointing at the picture.
Edith shrugs her shoulders. “Sure, that’s the old Jordan home. The last people to live there were… Let’s see…”
“Jacob and Tessa Jordan. They had three kids: Jonathan, Joe, and Mara. The two boys never married, and Mara had three kids with Charles Wilson. Why are they tearing this place down?”
“How do you know so much about it?” Her eyes narrow.
“Hey, I’m asking the questions,” he demands, pointing back at the picture vigorously.
“It’s rotting from the inside out. It became government property when it went into the hands of their oldest son, Jonathan. He died, Joe died, and last I heard Mara died.”
House nods, “Yeah, two years ago. How come it didn’t go to anyone else?”
Edith knows, somehow, that House already knows the answer. “They’ve all died too. Except one.”
“Right, Benjamin.”
“Mara’s son, but he didn’t want it. He has no affiliation with the place and he’s hardly met any of his extended family before. They’re all old anyway. Another one died two days ago. It’s in the newspaper.”
House’s gaze shifted from Edith to the article before flipping to the obituaries. “What’d he die of?”
“It says emphysema - which doesn’t surprise me. They all seem to die of emphysema,” she points out nonchalantly. She watches him, wondering what this old family line has anything to do with… with anything. “You know one of them? Benjamin? I’ve heard things. An accountant, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” House answers distractedly. “You said they all died of emphysema? Coughing, weight loss, decrease in oxygen to the body, hardening of the lungs?”
“You’re the doctor, you tell me,” she answers baffled. “Yeah, emphysema.”
“Did they smoke?”
“Not a one. The doctors half suspect it’s some rare genetic mutation.”
House laughs softly at that, eyes widening. It takes her off guard when they light up in near-amusement. “A rare genetic mutation?” He snorts again. “God.” He shakes his head, and then under his breath he mutters, “Wilson wasn’t the only one.” A sort of realization dawns over his face that releases the tension in his posture, the ache behind his eyes. After staring at the carpet for several moments, he turns back to the demolition article. “Why’d they wait so long to tear it down?”
Edith swallows uncomfortably, leaning against the table’s edge. “Read the rest of the article. Four years ago they found clothes there, one sock, a pair of Nike’s, jeans and a sweatshirt. They think he jumped, but they couldn’t find a body. The police put out postings hoping someone would claim the clothes but no one did. The place became tainted almost, you know,” she said, feeling foolish. “There were rumors about it being haunted and for the last two years they’ve transformed it into a haunted house for Halloween, but they’ve deemed it too dangerous. There’s a lot of stigma around it or else the demolition wouldn’t have made the Herald at all.”
House hesitates, freezing in his place for only a moment, but based on Edith’s expression, he knows she saw it. He reaches for his orange juice and takes a long swig, imagining for a quiet moment that its tang is the dull fizz of beer in a bar in a corner with Wilson. For a moment - a moment Edith almost sees - he hears laughter and feels a kick in the shins for some rude remark. “This is good,” he tells her, setting the glass back onto the tray. “I haven’t had freshly squeezed orange juice since I was a kid.”
The sincerity in his tone shocks her. “Thank you,” she says mutedly.
He nods his head before returning to the paper once more. “What…” he pauses to think out his words. “What happened to the clothes they found?”
“After the police were done investigating, they went to the Salvation Army,” she answers.
“So, they’re gone?”
“No,” she tells him, crossing her legs. “No. I - I have them.”
House blinks, cocks his head to one side and stares at her in earnest. “You have them,” he repeats. “Why?”
Edith shrugs her shoulders - something she realizes she’s been doing a lot today. “I used to manage it during the off seasons for a little extra income. I… I just thought that maybe someone would come looking for this mysterious jumper’s clothes one day. Am I right?” House doesn’t respond and instead stares fixedly on the carpet. “Would you like to see them?”
She leads him out into the kitchen area, his padded feet outbalanced by the clunking echo of the tip of his cane in the empty space. She opens a door to the attic. “I’ll bring them down,” she tells him before climbing the stairs.
House sits himself onto a stool at the counter, lowering his head into his hands, running his fingers through his unkempt hair and down his scraggly face. When she places the bag in front of him, his calloused fingers fumble with the handles. Edith gauges his expression, the shock, the hurt, the weariness that flashes across his features until his emotions close up again. He studies the clothes each in turn with the utmost attention, dragging his hands over the pockets of the jeans and over the soles of the tennis shoes. He pats the back pockets of the pants before jerking his head towards them. “Was anything left behind in these?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Hmph,” he responds. He grasps the right tennis shoe in his hand and balances it, examining the sole. Edith looks carefully at it, hoping to see what he sees. The left heel is more worn down than the right as if -
It dawns on her slowly as she fights to conceal her surprise. “These - these are your clothes,” she stutters. “You jumped.”
“No,” he answers matter-of-factly as he slips his shoes on over his feet. The laces have been untied. It’d be so Wilson to untie his shoes before going kamikaze, he thinks, lacing them back up. The sneakers feel so normal, as if Wilson hadn’t been in them at all. “I can tell you that Mr. Jordan, in that newspaper, didn’t die of emphysema. None of them did.”
“What? The doctors -”
“Forget the other doctors,” House snaps, snatching up the bag. “I’m a real doctor, in a big hospital and everything. It wasn’t emphysema.”
Edith stares after him as he stalks back to his room.
---
0.0.4
At five in the morning, Edith’s alarm goes off but she’s already awake cataloguing all the ingredients needed for that morning’s breakfast. Steven likes waffles and strawberry cream, coffee: black. Tyler wants two eggs, sunny-side-up with orange juice and hash browns. At nine or ten House will come out: scrambled eggs, orange juice, and buttered toast. It’s nice to only have three customers sometimes, despite the low flow of income.
After her shower, she combs out her hair slowly in front of her vanity and chooses a red cardigan sweater and a pair of black pants. Every day is a workday, weekends more so than the others, but she’s certain these three men don’t actually care. The businessmen are too wound up in their Wall Street Journals to notice her manicured hands, and House - House is always preoccupied with other things than image.
What a strange man, she allows herself to think, a genius. And then: What a broken man.
By six she’s in the kitchen frying up fresh slabs of bacon in a pan and pieces of toast in the toaster. She peels two oranges for juice and opens the curtains in the foyer so the light filters in through the top of the stained-glass windows. Her countertops light up in reds and oranges, greens and blues. By seven, when the guests come in for breakfast, the sunlight will have shifted and the colors faded. Each morning, this is her private sanctuary.
Today she pulls back the curtains, basking in the rainbow of colors before prying open the window fractionally to smell the sharp winter air. The breeze causes her to shiver as she wakes up fully, and it’s a good feeling. She shuts the window again and adjusts the curtains, listening to the sizzle of bacon and butter in the pan.
And then she stops.
Her breath hitches - first in indignant anger and then curiosity. House has already positioned himself outside in one of her dining room chairs. She pulls out her binoculars, usually reserved for bird watching, off the coat rack and stares at him, making out the blue backpack he carries everywhere and a steaming thermos. Huffing, she puts a lid over the bacon and turns down the heat before gathering her winter coat, boots, hat and mittens together to stomp out the door in his direction.
“That’s my chair,” she accuses when she arrives, pointing at his choice of seating.
“Yes well, I don’t have my own chair since I’m a guest here,” House responds. “You wouldn’t want to be a bad hostess, would you?”
After yesterday when she discovered taunting worked better than politeness, she’s given up on niceties. “Do you know how much it will cost to repair the water damage done to these legs?”
“Your legs?” he scoffs, eyeing her up and down. Whatever vulnerability she saw yesterday in him has vanished. She studies him closer and sees his Michigan sweatshirt peeking out from his jacket - the same she had returned to him yesterday along with the shoes and probably the jeans.
“Those clothes haven’t been washed,” she tells him disgustedly. “You might catch lice or something.”
He smirks, apparently delighted by her newly revealed bitter sarcasm. “Smells clean,” he says, sniffing it. He pauses, and then inhales again deeply before frowning. “It doesn’t smell like me.” It doesn’t smell like him, he means. He grimaces when he looks out across the shoreline; the sun is particularly harsh and reflective this early in the morning.
“I have coffee inside,” Edith suggests, hands resting on her hips. He smirks again at this action and a flare of annoyance floods through her.
“I have coffee right here. I always plan ahead.”
She throws her hands up, aggravated. “You’re sitting in my chair,” she scolds, ready to grab him by his ears. She’s been an empty-nester for the last fifteen years, but that doesn’t mean she’s out of practice as a mother.
House gapes down at the chair beneath him, the fine leather upholstery soaking from snow. “Oh. My. God. I am. How kind of you to notice. I had no idea.”
“You don’t have many friends, do you?”
“I had one,” he answers, squinting into the sunlight. “I’ve seem to have misplaced him.”
She stops him as he begins to pat his front pockets. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
“Penis jokes too crude for you?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Five sons. I can serve them with the best of them. Now, out of my chair.”
House studiously ignores her, leaning back into his chair as he stretches out his long legs. “You should leave,” he tells her, looking back in the direction of the bed and breakfast. “I have private matters to deal with here that don’t involve women.”
Edith folds her arms, adopting her motherly stance as she stares down at him. His harsh, disapproving look slides off his face. Obviously the mother shtick is the only thing that works. “So you inquire about the old Jordan haunted house, you steal my newspaper, and these clothes I’ve been waiting to be claimed for the last four years. You tell me they’re your clothes, but that doesn’t make any sense. And for the last four days - except yesterday - you’ve stood out here for several hours just staring at nothing. Now you’ve stolen my chair too. I don’t like you. I could kick you out of my bed and breakfast.”
“But you won’t,” House states, a fact that’s very true. “You do too like me.”
“Also, you’re arrogant. Wonderful.”
He smiles then, a full blown grin with teeth and laughter, albeit it’s quiet. He leans his head against the back of her dining room chair. “A whole clan of Jordans dies of emphysema. They don’t smoke and they have no other pre-existing lung conditions,” he says. Edith blinks confusedly at the sudden non sequitur. “In fact, most of them are perfectly healthy until they magically contract a non-communicable disease presenting with coughing, wheezing and a lack of oxygen. Most victims of emphysema have to be put on oxygen because they’re essentially suffocating to death. People can live for years with the right medications - but the Jordans never do. They get… months maybe. Sometimes weeks, am I right? Let me guess, the first death was a real shock, and then the second. Now when one of them pops off nobody notices,” he takes a slow sip of coffee from his thermos before grinning again.
“Isaac, James, and Benjamin Wilson: three brothers, the youngest of the Jordan descendants. Isaac disappears after a series of mental breakdowns, James attempts suicide, and Benjamin is on pharmaceuticals’ finest anti-depression meds, but no one connected the two disorders. Not until now.”
“What are you saying?” Edith asks, shifting her weight uncomfortably under House’s scrutiny.
“James didn’t commit suicide. He tried to, once, and found out something completely different. He had it, but it wasn’t emphysema.”
“You’re not making any sense. I don’t even know anything about the people you’re talking about.” She recoils at the wolfish look on his face. “Didn’t have what?”
He looks back out into the ocean and points at a fresh set of footprints in the snow. “He’s still alive,” House says, wildly. “He’s still alive. ”
“You’re crazy,” she mutters as she turns to leave. She walks backwards, watching the hunger on his face as he redirects his gaze towards the footprints in the snow. “You’re crazy.”
Inside, the kitchen smells horrible as she scrapes off the charred bacon from the pan and starts a new batch. She glances back at Steven and Tyler sitting at the counter with their newspapers. For the rest of the morning she catches herself gazing out the window, wondering.
---
House returns outside at nine o’ clock in the evening after taking a five hour hiatus. The long underwear, two t-shirts and sweatshirt beneath his winter coat barely seem to be keeping him warm, but it’s hardly enough to distract him from staring at the moonlit ocean.
He doesn’t know when he dozes off, and when he wakes he curses himself. He shouldn’t be out in the cold anyway, but he has to be. Needs to be. Edith squeezes his shoulder, jostling him, and he jumps, ready to tell her off in his exhausted stupor. Then he sees the bare hand, hears his voice.
“House, are you crazy?” he murmurs, shaking him gently. “You’re going to kill yourself. Go home.”
It’s an illusion, House knows, because he’s sitting in his office where it’s warm and the clock on the landline phone tells him it’s two in the morning. Wilson stands before him with his arms crossed over his lab coat. His face is pale, lips blue. House remembers everything. “Go home,” Wilson tells him again, removing his hand from his shoulder.
House shakes his head. “You’re not real.”
“God, House,” Wilson laughs. “You are delusional. It’s cold. I can’t believe you’re out here.”
House sighs softly, listening to the familiar voice as he closes his eyes. He feels sleep overcoming him again and then two hands on his shoulders, jerking him roughly. “House, House!”
The second time he opens his eyes, he sees the ocean, the moonlight and Wilson’s bare feet. The black polo and jeans are soaking wet, clinging to his thin frame. He looks smaller, younger. Everything about him seems… better.
“God, oh God,” House groans, unfolding his arms from around his chest.
“House,” Wilson shouts, keeping his hands firmly planted on his shoulders to steady him.
“Oh God, oh God.” You’re not real, House wants to say. You’re not real - but the words don’t make it past his lips. There’s too much hope and too much delusion to make this something it isn’t. You’re not real. “Oh God, tell me you’re real,” he sobs, feeling the weight of Wilson’s hands bracing him.
“I - I’m real,” he answers, slowly lowering himself to his knees, half-hugging House in attempt to keep him upright. He feels unusually warm and alive, and when House tugs his hands free of his leather gloves, he can feel a pulse beating beneath his frozen fingertips. Wilson shudders at the frigid touch and takes his hand between his own, warming them.
“You’re crazy,” he murmurs. “You’re stupid. Of course you’d be out here. Of course you’d wait until the coldest month too. Idiot.” It’s all affectionate, warm. Something in House begins to thaw when Wilson puts his hands on his face. He leans forward and kisses him slowly on the mouth. “God.”
House’s fingers shake violently as they wrap around Wilson’s soaking shirt, pulling him over until he’s half-sitting on the chair and House. Wilson wraps his arms around him to keep him warm, the strange and unexpected body heat flooding through his limbs. “I know,” House tells him. “You’re not the only one. You - there are others just like you. Wilson-”
There’s a way, his silent words murmur. There’s a way to fix this. There has to be if there are others.
But Wilson won’t let House say them, covering his mouth again. The kiss is slow, deliberate, sad. The kiss is empty.
“Go home, House,” he tells him, pressing his mouth against his ear. The breath his hot and warm against his chilled skin. “Go home.” It’s a command, his voice low and demanding and gentle and scared.
“No, no, no. Come home. Come home. ”
Wilson slowly pulls away, tugging at House’s clutching fingers. “I am,” he murmurs, not meeting House’s eyes. He pulls his shirt over his head and unbuttons the clasp on his already too-loose jeans. “I am home, House. I am.”
“The water must be cold,” House says hollowly, as Wilson slides back into the water.
He sighs quietly, and at the right angle, House can make out the returning bluish color to his lips, the heaving rhythm of his chest sucking in the thin, suffocating air. “Most things are,” he answers, quietly. House squeezes his eyes shut concentrates on the rhythmic tide, ignoring the splash of water and the emptiness around him. When he opens them again, he sees nothing.
---
+ 0.0.1
He feels two hands shaking him roughly. Wilson, he thinks, but they’re smaller and tight with anxiety.
“Doctor House? Oh god.” He hears the bleeps of a cell phone and then: “He’s hypothermic. Help, he’s hypothermic.”
In his head, he thinks the words: Ma’am, please calm down. Can you tell us your location? These are words he knows well and they comfort him in this strange situation. Where’s Wilson? he wants to ask, but his mouth feels full of cotton. He slips back into unconsciousness again.
---
+ 0.0.2 > Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…
It’s unusually warm here and he feels naked. His eyes slowly open to the sounds of beeping and whirring. A hospital, his eyes register. Cuddy. Slowly his ears un-fog, and his brain informs him that this is unfortunate because she’s yelling. A lot.
“Are you crazy? House, this is what you did on your vacation?” She sighs, looking around the room frantically. “I thought… I thought this would be good for you, getting away, but of course you found some magic way to screw it up.”
“Nnngh,” he says, rolling his head back and forth on the pillow. He gestures at himself and the hospital room with a questioning look in his eyes.
“You were hypothermic. You fell asleep outside in negative thirty degree weather. You could have killed yourself,” she scolds. “Again.”
House grunts, swallowing harshly. “Where’s my stuff?”
Cuddy sits down in a visitor’s chair, leaning her elbows on the edge of the hospital bed. “Do you know how much sleep I got, House? I flew here red-eye because you were unconscious and I’m your medical proxy. I’m on three hours of sleep, and now that you’re okay and still crazy, I want to go home.”
“Wasn’t crazy,” he mutters, turning his head away.
“What were you doing, House?”
They’re interrupted by a knock on the door as a petite woman enters. Cuddy looks at her curiously when she smiles at the patient. “House? How are you doing?”
Her focus darts between the stranger and House. “You know this woman?”
“Yeah,” House says simply without explaining. Cuddy doesn’t push for answers as his eyes narrow on the plastic bag in Edith’s hands. “What’s that?”
“You left your clothes on the beach - again,” she says softly. “The rest of your stuff is still back at the bed and breakfast, but I thought maybe… maybe you’d want these.” House reaches for the bag, pulling out the long-sleeve polo and jeans. “I put them in the dryer,” she tells him simply, folding her hands over her lap.
Cuddy reaches out and picks the shirt out of House’s hands. He doesn’t protest much as he watches her examine it, folding the material in her fingers as a whiff of the salty Atlantic assaults her. She’s seen this shirt before and slowly pieces the clues together when she looks at the jeans. House would never wear anything Calvin Klein. “This is about Wilson, isn’t it?” she asks. She doesn’t know if she should feel empathetic or angry, but mostly it’s a mix of confusion and sympathy. “It’s been four years, House.”
“I know that,” he says softly.
Edith glances meaningfully at the clothes and then meets House’s gaze. “I don’t understand,” she tells him hesitantly. “Not fully, but… You’re right, aren’t you?”
He leans back into his pillow, exhaling four years of stress and anger and disbelief. Underneath it all, there’s a layer of hurt and disappointment he’ll never be able to let go of, but also understanding and hope. Cuddy hasn’t seen him reveal so much all at once before. He turns to Edith. “I’m always right.”
“And the others?”
“What others?” Cuddy asks, looking between the two of them. “What are you talking about?”
House laughs bitterly. “What others,” he repeats. “There’s only two left and then it will be over. One is lost to the world, the other will die soon. Just wait.”
Edith nods and stands. She stops at the doorway. “Just wait,” she says to herself, and exits.
“And then it will be all over,” he murmurs.
---
+ 5.0.0 > Now.
House stands in the snow, heavily leaning on his cane. He’s wearing Wilson’s boots again, Wilson’s pants, and Wilson’s shirt. They’ve lost their balmy scent, but the waves crashing against the shore is enough to assuage the emptiness within him - if only for a moment. Two weeks ago Benjamin’s medication stopped working and he spiraled into a deep depression. They found him dead in his large condominium alone. It’s over.
He steps into the water as it circles his ankles, seeping into the top of the waterproof boots. It soaks the liner, the laces, his wool socks. He closes his eyes and waits for the hands to wrap around his waist, the warm lips to press against his unshaved neck. They push him out further until the waves swirl around his knees, their feet tripping over one another as they laugh. He isn’t cold when Wilson’s warm hands slide underneath his jacket, down his stomach, across his back.
“It’ll be over soon,” Wilson says softly, gripping his shoulders - strong and certain. His knees buckle as the water rises to his chest. With a sigh, Wilson pushes him down with his hands. Together they go under.
---fin
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